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For Immediate Release
Contact: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

The Rick Perry Model

WASHINGTON

ABBY RAPOPORT, rapoport at texasobserver.org

Rapoport is a reporter with the Texas Observer. She said today: "Don't assume a gaffe or two means Rick Perry doesn't have an excellent campaign strategy. The Texas governor rewrote the playbook on political organizing back in 2010, when he created an expansive grassroots network. No mailers, no yard signs, few television ads. His only request to supporters: recruit 12 Perry voters from friends and family and get them to the polls. The Republican primary campaign--against the popular and very well-funded Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison--defied all expectations. Unprecedented turnout gave Perry the victory. The strategy has particular advantages in Iowa and New Hampshire, where small town relationships can help swing support. So why are no other GOP candidates giving it a try?"

Number of People with Family Earnings Below Poverty Remains Way Up

See Rapoport's article.

JOSHUA HOLLAND, joshua.holland at alternet.org

Holland is a senior writer at AlterNet and the author of "The Fifteen Biggest Lies About the Economy (and Everything Else the Right Doesn't Want you to Know About Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America)." He said today: "Rick Perry is absolutely, 100 percent correct when he said that Texas was a model for conservative governance. He slashed taxes to the bone, handing out credits to his political cronies like they were candy. He decried the evils of 'Big Government' while hypocritically using federal stimulus funds to help close Texas' budget gap in the short term, and now he's using the state's longer term fiscal disaster -- one of his own creation -- as a premise for destroying an already threadbare social safety net serving the neediest Texans. As a result of immigration and other external factors, his state's added a lot of low-paying poverty jobs, but he's added very little in the way of 'prosperity.'"

See Holland's recent piece: "Rick Perry's Campaign Strategy? Distorting His Abysmal Economic Record"

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