Perry’s forceful recruitment campaigns promise low-tax, pro-growth policies in Texas. Perry faces backlash over jobs raids

Gov. Rick Perry’s high-profile efforts to lure jobs to Texas from other states may be good business and smart politics back home, but they’re infuriating to prominent Democrats around the country.

And now at least one Republican business leader says Perry’s taking the Lone Star swagger a little too far.


Perry’s forceful recruitment campaigns, featuring radio and magazine ads as well as personal appearances, promise low-tax, pro-growth policies in Texas — and they also trash the business climate in places like California (“I hear building a business in California is next to impossible”) and Illinois (“an environment that, intentionally or not, is designed for you to fail”).

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Those attacks hit where it hurts and have touched off an angry political backlash against Perry outside the Texas borders, with Democrats mocking his attempts to steal jobs as clownish — and warning the Republican governor to keep his hands off. In a memorable put -down, Gov. Jerry Brown said Perry’s incursions into California were about as effective as breaking wind.

But other observers say Perry knows exactly what he’s doing.

“At the end of the day, no matter how any of the [states] respond, people are left with two distinct messages: That guy down in Texas has got big brass balls and he’s creating a lot of jobs,” Mark Mc-Kinnon, a political strategist with deep Texas ties, told POLITICO. “It’s brilliant marketing and very smart politics.”

McKinnon also noted, “Of course, it breaks all the rules of interstate diplomacy and protocol.”

Perry has stepped up jobs raids into the blue states of Illinois and California this year, efforts that come as he looks to announce his next political step after the Texas legislative session concludes. His current gubernatorial term is up in 2014, and he hasn’t ruled out a 2016 presidential run.

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The governor’s bids to encourage companies to relocate — critics call it “poaching” — are the most aggressive in the nation, according to experts.

“It’s irresistible to a lot of governors, but Perry has been the leader,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow and director of policy for the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. “This is not necessarily the best way for state executives to spend time, but it’s hard to resist. It’s politically attractive, the chief executive is seen as, quote, ‘trying to do something.’ Any successful relocation offers the tried-and-true moment of the ribbon cutting, so it’s pretty intoxicating stuff.”

President Barack Obama’s home state of Illinois has been in the sights of several Republican governors, including Chris Christie of New Jersey, Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Rick Scott of Florida. They all have tried to lure Illinois companies to move and set up shop in what the GOP chief executives bill as their lower-tax, lower-regulation states. But even Scott acknowledged — in a letter to members of the Illinois business community — that Texas is leading the way. He noted that the Sunshine State is “nipping at the heels of Texas everyday, as we approach the No. 1 spot.”

Some of those who have been on the receiving end say that Perry raises eyebrows as much for his grating style as for the substance of his pitch.

“The biggest difference with Perry was, he was kind of like a Roman emperor coming into town with horns blowing in front of his arrival, his parade,” Doug Whitley, the president and CEO of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, told POLITICO.

Whitley, a Republican who said he “generally [doesn’t] have any negative comments to make about” Perry, was referring to an April trip the governor took to Chicago, where he also addressed a conference.

“It was unusual in the fact that he spent some money to buy radio airtime to announce his arrival. … I thought it was a bit over the top,” Whitley added. “Other governors tend to do it with a little less fanfare but no less desire to make a positive impression in the Illinois business community.”

Perry has led numerous economic missions to other states since arriving in the governor’s mansion in 2000. But in February, he took his pitch to a new level with an ad buy on California radio, asserting the superiority of the Texas business scene and belittling the economic climate in California. “Building a business is tough, but I hear building a business in California is next to impossible,” Perry said in the ad.

The media blitz in California was also followed by an “economic development trip” to the Golden State, where Perry met with business leaders in the high-tech, financial, film and other industries. Perry’s moves sparked an irate Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown to dismiss the Texas governor’s efforts as “barely a fart.”

Perry got a similarly hostile reception with his trip to Chicago to meet with financial leaders. He ushered in his visit with a similar message, once again, that not only promoted Texas but slammed Illinois. “If you’re a business owner in Illinois, I want to express my admiration for your ability to survive in an environment that, intentionally or not, is designed for you to fail,” Perry charged in a full-page ad in Crain’s Chicago Business. The text continued, “There is an escape route to economic freedom … a route to Texas.”

Perry hasn’t left unscathed the blue-state bastion of New York, either.

“I’m thinking that Gov. Cuomo would not admit that he’d want to be a Texan,” Perry said in January of the Democratic governor, who has sought to take a business-friendly approach. “But if he were truthful, you could say that the economic climate that has allowed the state to grow and create jobs, he’d dearly love to be able to stand up and say, ‘We did this in New York.’ But he can’t.”

Whether he is successful in luring the jobs or not, observers say that playing hardball with big Democratic states and the officials who run them is all upside for Perry.

“Guys like Jerry Brown … and guys like Andrew Cuomo, in New York, are kind of a punch line to voters outside their home states,” said GOP strategist Rick Wilson, a proponent of Perry’s jobs recruitment. “It’s a great contrast.”

Democratic governors and lawmakers have been merciless in their attacks on Perry.

“I hope when he comes, he remembers all three of his reasons” for coming to town, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel retorted, according to DNAInfo.com — a reference to the embarrassing moment a presidential debate in 2012 when Perry could remember only two of the three agencies he wanted to eliminate.

“Gov. Perry is not the first, nor will he be the last, to covet Chicago’s workers and companies. We are ready for the challenge,” Emanuel told POLITICO in an email.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he didn’t feel threatened by Perry’s efforts to entice jobs away — but he laid down a warning anyway.

“Listen, Gov. Perry’s always welcome to come to Illinois and spend some money,” the Senate majority whip told POLITICO with a laugh. “But he better not take our businesses away.”

And Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) couldn’t resist a few digs.

“He can come to my state anytime, he should learn a lot from my state,” Boxer told POLITICO. “We’re compassionate people, we want to make sure all our people get health care — unlike him. I hope he comes again because I’ll show him around all the alternative energy we do, and how we value our children and have after-school programs.”

The assertive approach is nothing personal, Perry’s office says.

“Our point has always been about competition,” Perry spokeswoman Lucy Nashed said. “We do what we do because we want to be out there, we want to be getting jobs to move to Texas.”

In Texas, Perry’s out-of-state business recruitment also has prompted a debate.

“I think Republicans like it, I think they like hearing you pound your chest about the remarkable jobs climate in Texas,” said longtime Texas GOP strategist Todd Olsen.

But Democrats sound more conflicted.

“My loyalty is always going to be with Texas, OK, there’s no question about that,” said Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa. “But I can’t, in any sense of the word, justify the conduct of this guy that calls himself the governor of Texas. He is just constantly making a fool out of himself by that conduct; it ends up making people believe, like people from California, that Texans are like him, which is far from the truth.”

Rep. Pete Gallego (D-Texas), who says that he and the governor have “historically not been particularly close,” suggested Perry could take a lighter touch to his jobs effort — but the gist of his message speaks to Texans on both sides of the aisle.

“I think Texans are all very, regardless of their political stripes, are all very proud to be Texans, they’re Texans first, and I think that makes us fairly unique,” he said. “So it’s always good to see statewide elected officials going out and marketing Texas. The question is how we do it. Do you do it by raising hackles or do you do it in another manner? And, you know, Gov. Perry’s personality is such that he certainly tends to like the press and his ability to generate it, so I think that is very Rick Perry.”

Whitley, the Illinois Republican, also chalked up the controversy surrounding Perry’s visit in part to his Texas-size persona.

“It can be done with a little more finesse and grace than he chose to use,” Whitley said. “But, hey, he’s from Texas.”