The lines between friendship, politics and state business sometimes seem to blur for Perry. For Perry, being governor has perks

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s humble origins and down home straight talk are central to his political identity, but for years Perry has enjoyed lavish perks and travel — mostly funded by a group of deep-pocketed supporters — that are allowed under his state’s lax ethics and campaign rules.

Some of the same Texas donors who have funded Perry’s political rise also have footed the bills for Perry and his family to jet around the world, stay in luxury hotels and resorts, vacation in tony Colorado ski towns, attend all manner of sporting events and concerts, and to maintain, entertain — and even pay the cable bill — at the 4,600-square-foot mansion with a heated pool that taxpayers are renting for him at a cost of about $8,500 a month.


And that’s to say nothing of the wide range of sometimes-expensive gifts Perry has accepted over the years, including 22 pairs of cowboy boots, Stetson hats, belt buckles, cuff links and at least nine hunting trips.

Perry’s enjoyment of gifts and luxury travel led the Houston Chronicle to declare in a 2009 headline that he’s “a long way from the cotton farm.”

“He came from a family without means, and coming from a family without means, I think the perks of office can be more important to you, as opposed to if you grew up with means and are more accustomed to it,” said Gary Polland, a Republican lawyer and consultant who worked with Perry during Polland’s three terms as chairman of Republican Party in Harris County.

Craig McDonald, director of the liberal watchdog group Texans for Public Justice, is less charitable.

“He’s enhanced his lifestyle by taking advantage of a wealthy class that supports him and his campaigns and wants to lavish him with favors,” said McDonald. “Even though he may not have their money, he has favors that he can give them, including policy, legislation, appointments, state grants and tax subsidies.”

Perry, who has held elected office since 1985, earns a state salary of $150,000 a year and lives in a five-bedroom, seven-bath mansion in West Austin that the state has rented for him since 2007, when he moved out of the governor’s mansion, so it could undergo repairs.

It’s since been damaged by arson, extending the Perry’s stay at the rental, which has been enhanced by a fund including both state and campaign cash, which — according to documents obtained by the Texans for Public Justice and The Associated Press — was used for everything from $1,000 window coverings from Neiman Marcus to a $70 subscription to Food & Wine Magazine to cable bills that included hundreds of dollars in charges for “ movies and events.”

Watchdog groups and political opponents have argued Perry’s acceptance of such perks feeds a corrupt pay-to-play political culture in Texas, and they have filed complaints alleging ethics and campaign finance violations. But Perry appears to have been found in violation only once – for a relatively minor disclosure violation, though his campaign also paid $426,000 last year to settle an opponent’s lawsuit alleging it accepted illegal contributions from a top donor.

“Gov. Perry publicly discloses all gifts and travel in his campaign and personal financial disclosure statements in full compliance with the law,” said spokeswoman Catherine Frazier.

Frazier cast Perry’s ability to tap private cash for his trips, in particular, as a good deal for the state, pointing out “Tax dollars very rarely pay for his travel. In the vast majority of cases, official, economic development and campaign travel are covered by privately raised campaign or economic development funds.”

And Perry’s allies argue that personal gifts to the governor stem from long-standing personal relationships rather than a desire to win favorable treatment from the state.

Under Texas ethics rules, Perry and his family are allowed to accept personal gifts of unlimited value, and the state’s election laws are among the loosest in the country.

Though the law technically prohibits the conversion of campaign cash to “personal use,” it allow campaigns to accept unlimited contributions from individuals and political committees, and to spend the cash with few restrictions. In the past, Texas politicians have used campaign cash for apartment rent and baseball tickets for themselves, among other expenditures that appear more personal than political.

Texas also places some legal restrictions on travel funded by lobbyists or corporations that employ them. But Perry has accepted tens of thousands of dollars in travel funded by such corporations through a privately funded economic development nonprofit called TexasOne with an annual budget of more than $2 million, that has flown him and his family around the world in the name of recruiting business to Texas.

Frazier said Perry’s “working, living and travel arrangements are commensurate with other governors around the nation.” But elected officials in other states are subject to tighter restrictions on the types and values of gifts and travel they can accept (several states cap the value of gifts that can be accepted at $250 or less), as well as spending their campaign cash.

Perry in some ways is uniquely positioned to receive and accept such gifts and big campaign checks, not only because of Texas’s looser rules but also because of his long tenure as governor of a state with a high concentration of conservative money.

He also has a lot of friends.

Famed Houston bootmaker Rocky Carroll, who has given Perry at least 10 pairs of custom boots since 1991, according to Perry’s personal financial disclosure statements filed with the state, (and who told POLITICO he is now working on a pair with the presidential seal for Perry), said he expects nothing in return. He treats Perry to boots which start at $500 a pair for paying customers because “he’s a friend of mine. Been a friend for 20 years, ever since he was agriculture commissioner,” said Carroll.

“I consider (Perry) a close friend and a great American,” said Lanny Vinson, a Perry college buddy from their days together at Texas A&M University, who provided the governor hunting expeditions, and transportation to and from them, in 2008 and 2009, but declined to say why Perry didn’t pay for the trips himself.

With some benefactors, though, the lines between friendship, politics and state business seem to blur.

Insurance company owner Phil Adams of Bryan, Texas, another A&M buddy, over the years has given Perry, his wife and their children tickets to a range of football and basketball games — including the 2007 Big 12 basketball tournament — and picked up the tab for their lodging and transportation to some of the games, too. Additionally, between 2005 and 2009, Adams’s company at times employed one or both of the Perry’s two children, then in their late teens or 20s, to do secretarial work, and Adams has contributed nearly $290,000 to Perry’s gubernatorial campaigns.

Meanwhile, Perry appointed Adams to the A&M board of regents in 2001 and 2009, and a company in which he’s invested, Terrabon Inc., got $2.75 million from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, a state economic development program overseen by Perry.

Adams did not respond to telephone and email messages. But Frazier, Perry’s spokeswoman, said Perry makes appointments “based solely on an individual’s qualifications and ability to carry out the responsibility of the position” and explained that technology fund awards “go through a rigorous, appropriate and thorough vetting process” requiring “unanimous support from the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker of the House, as well as support from the local community.”

Then there’s James Leininger, a physician and businessman who has been a top donor to Perry’s campaigns and who, late last month, hosted a private meeting at which Perry and his presidential campaign team wooed about 180 influential social and religious conservatives over sweet tea and Texas barbecue at his ranch in Hill Country outside San Antonio.

Leininger has flown Perry, an avid hunter, to his various ranches (some of which are stocked with rare African animals) to go hunting several times over the years, given him tickets to see pro basketball’s San Antonio Spurs (of which Leininger has been a part owner) and helped pay Perry’s way on other trips, including one in 2004 to the Bahamas for scuba diving and golf.

Leininger, who could not be reached for comment, also has done well by the Perry administration, earning a 2001 appointment to the Texas Board of Health, and in 2009, benefiting when the emerging technology fund invested $1.75 million in a biotech company in which Leininger owned a major stake.

While Perry’s personal financial disclosure statements show gifts ranging from a signed football helmet from ex-Dallas Cowboy running back Emmitt Smith to high-end hair products for his wife, Anita — and even “ medical tests” from a Dallas doctor known as the father of aerobics, the most frequent perks accepted by the Perry appear to be hunting trips, tickets to sporting events — including the Super Bowl, Rose Bowl, NBA Finals and all manner of other football, basketball, baseball and hockey games — and travel.

Perry’s family often accompanies him on trips to enviable destinations including Key West, China, France, Italy, Qatar and Sweden, where ostensible political or business development purposes mix with stays at five-star hotels and meals at top restaurant — and where the bills are paid in whole or in part by deep-pocketed supporters, either through his campaign or TexasOne.

When the family traveled to the 2006 Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., to watch the University of Texas Longhorns play the University of Southern California Trojans, they flew on a private jet paid for (at a cost of $15,000) by the Texas Motor Transportation Association’s political action committee. Their game tickets were purchased by TexasOne, which hosted a business recruitment barbecue in Hollywood.

Then there were the family’s regular travels to temperate Colorado mountain towns this summer, when the temperatures back in Texas seldom dipped below the triple digits.

In late June, a mysterious company called Goldsmith Team LLC, which has donated more than $25,000 worth of in-kind services to Perry’s campaigns, reportedly flew Perry to Vail, Colo., where he and Anita stayed for a few days vacationing, before paying a brief unscheduled visit to a summit of major conservative donors convened by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers.

Less than one month later, Perry was back in Colorado, this time in Aspen, where the buzz in GOP circles is that he stayed in the second home of a Texas oil magnate whose identity could not be verified while hobnobbing with top donors to the Republican Governors Association, which he chaired, and attending an event hosted by the Aspen Institute think tank.

And late last month, when Perry returned again to Colorado for fundraisers in Aspen and Denver that raised $380,000 for his presidential campaign, he was accompanied by his wife, who had been in the Aspen area for a few days before the fundraiser, their son Griffin and his wife.

Now that he’s a declared presidential candidate, Perry is subject to stricter campaign finance rules, which will require his campaign to pay for trips and events that have a political purpose. But until now — under the more lax Texas rules — Perry’s travels could be funded by donors as gifts to him personally, to his campaign or to TexasOne or a combination of all three, and the sometimes blurry lines between the funding pools have in the past prompted complaints from across the political spectrum.

After the 2004 trip to the Bahamas, the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch filed a complaint with the Texas Ethics Commission, alleging that Perry illegally used campaign funds for personal use. But Perry said he and his fellow travelers — including Leininger, Brooke Rollins, the president of a Leininger-funded Texas anti-tax think tank, and Washington anti-tax activist Grover Norquist (who in 2006 told the Austin American-Statesman that Perry “is a very serious scuba diver”) — used the trip to develop “politically viable educational policy,” and the commission dismissed the complaint.

And Perry’s 2010 Democratic opponent Bill White cited a 2009 Perry family trip to Israel as an example of Perry’s “ extravagant lifestyle funded by secretive corporate contributions” who get favors in return.

The trip had been organized and partly funded by Irwin Katsof, an international energy financier and Israel backer who also helped fund a 2007 Perry trip to Israel. Before the 2009 trip, Katsof asked attendees what type of scotch they’d like on hand for a “scotch and cigar bar” where they would admire “a starry Jerusalem, according to an investigative report by KTVT, the CBS affiliate in Fort Worth/Dallas.

While the trip does not appear to have been planned initially as a TexasOne venture, the month afterward, Doug Pitcock, a major Perry campaign contributor who runs a road building firm that does millions of dollars in business with the state, revealed that he had loaned his plane to the governor to fly to Israel and wanted to donate the cost of the flight — $180,000 — to TexasOne as an in-kind tax-deductible contribution.

Pitcock could not be reached for comment, while Katsof, asked by POLITICO if the trips were junkets intended to curry favor with Perry, hung up the phone.

Perry spokeswoman Frazier said the 2007 trip spurred the formation of the Texas-Israel Chamber of Commerce and “served as a catalyst to the governor’s support of Texas’s divestment from companies that do business with Iran, a main opponent of Israeli freedom.”