Texas Governor Rick Perry is taking his campaign to New Hampshire and South Carolina, which hold GOP presidential primary elections this month. Perry had members of the press corps scratching their heads after Iowa over the mixed messages from his campaign staff.
Perry’s decision to continue his bid for the Republican presidential nomination grabbed headlines most of the day Wednesday. But as Evan Smith, CEO of KUT’s political reporting partner, theTexas Tribuneexplains, Perry’s relationship with the press has been cautious for many years.
“He's not a big fan of the media. I think he thinks that we have something against him and he hasn’t been particularly eager to engage with us. When he has sat for long interviews, as he did with me during the 2010 campaign, it’s a rarity, it’s the exception. The rule has been that the governor hasn’t been particularly eager to engage us, and I don’t think this campaign and the treatment he got by the national press is going to change that particularly," Smith said.
If Perry does drop out of the race at some point he still has three years left in his current term as governor. He could serve that out, he could retire in January 2015, or he could run again in a state where he’s never been defeated and has already become the longest serving governor in Texas history.