Burnt Orange Report

Not Exactly The News

By Jim Dallas

I figure I might as well throw a little fuel on the fire since we're all watching the GOP's latest rendition of the timeless kabuki dance.

First, Rick Perry. I'm sure you will all be just plain shocked (SHOCKED!) to hear that Rick Perry was once a Democrat. Yes I know, that is totally and completely surprising... yawn.

However, Comrade Rick may not have been entirely forthright about his decision to switch parties. Consider:

In 1992, Rick Perry gave a little speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention:

Theme of the day: Aggies who used to be Democrats telling the Republican National Convention why they changed parties.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Rick Perry started it off
Tuesday, talking to a much smaller and less attentive crowd than
the one that later greeted U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm. Perry is a
graduate of Texas A&M University; Gramm used to teach there.

In a five-minute speech about an hour before lunch, Perry
told delegates that he and his family voted for Jimmy Carter in
1976 because they thought he would be good for them and other
farmers. "We were dead wrong," Perry said.

As he spoke, most delegations talked and milled around, but
the Texas group listened, clapped and waved bumper stickers from
Perry's last campaign.

"Folks, I joined the Republican Party because I learned that
the Democratic Party could not be trusted to run the state of
Texas, much less the United States. That time, I was dead right,"
said Perry, a former state representative who changed parties in
1989.

He was elected agriculture commissioner the next year.

George Bush and Dan Quayle, he said, had promoted agriculture
by pushing for free trade and expanding markets for farm products.

And he denied that farmers are in trouble, saying the industry is
changing but not declining.

He touted the North American Free Trade Agreement signed last
week by leaders from the United States, Mexico and Canada, saying
it could increase agricultural exports "by as much as $ 2 billion. "

He accused the Democratic candidates -- Bill Clinton and Al
Gore -- of ignoring agriculture at their convention in New York
last month and said the mentions of farms in the Democratic Party
platform are few and far between.

"Farming is a hard life, but it's a good life. I want my
children to have the same opportunity I had to live off the land
and make an honest profit from their labors," Perry said.

"That's why I won't be bothering to vote for another
Southern governor for president again."

Perry's Carter-bashing seems somewhat strange. Perry's hometown of Paint Creek is in Jones County, which unlike many of its surrounding counties is largely a wheat-producing county (as opposed to a livestock county, per the 1997 Agricultural Census) - and the value of short-term wheat futures, which is closely related to the market price of wheat - nearly doubled under Carter (rising faster than inflation), but back-tracked considerably under Reagan and Bush. Granted, Carter did, at the end of his term, make one decision which severely annoyed wheat producers - the grain embargo in response to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. I'm under the impression that cattle prices did not do all that badly under Carter, either, although I can't find any hard numbers.

But of course, Rick Perry knows a lot more about agriculture than I do, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Carter was "bad for farmers" and that's why he switched parties - 8 years after Carter left office. As noted by Andrea in comments and by others, Perry served as Al Gore's state campaign chair in the 1988 Democratic primaries. Of course, this had nothing to do with mere political ambition:

The campaign that permanently established Rove's reputation for foul play was Rick Perry's race against Jim Hightower for agriculture commissioner, in 1990. Rove and media consultant David Weeks persuaded Perry, an obscure Democratic legislator from Haskell who had co-chaired Al Gore's 1988 Democratic presidential primary campaign in Texas, to switch parties for the election. West Texas was swinging Republican anyway, and Perry, who was discouraged by his failure to advance in the House leadership and thinking of becoming a lobbyist, had nothing to lose. Hightower was the darling of the liberals, a wisecracking and outspoken populist who had been a big vote-getter for the Democrats in 1986. With Rove and the collective financial muscle of the Texas Republican community behind him, Perry ran a tough, negative campaign, charging that the agriculture commissioner's office was rife with scandal and abuse and using photos of Hightower with Jesse Jackson to paint Hightower as a left-wing activist. Perry even tried to link Willie Nelson's support of Hightower to a Kentucky candidate, also endorsed by Willie, who favored the legalization of marijuana.

Meanwhile, I think we all know that Carole Keeton Strayhorn (then McClellan) was a big Mondale backer in 1984
.

Of course that leaves us with Kay Bailey Hutchison, the only one of the three Republican contenders who has actually been a Republican for her entire elected career (since her first election to the Legislature in 1972).