Texas swoops in!
Texas Governor Rick Perry is working to lure business owners to Texas from other states. This week, Perry hit Connecticut. There’s a reason why Perry went for Connecticut this time around, as opposed to, say, making a repeat appearance in California. Dan Malloy, Connecticut’s Democratic governor, recently signed several new pieces of gun-safety legislation. The new laws strengthen the state’s background check requirements, expand its assault weapons ban, and ban the sale of gun magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
Enter Rick Perry, with a pitch to Connecticut gun manufacturers who are displeased by the new legislation. On Monday, Perry challenged the state’s business leaders during a news conference.
“Is your regulatory climate one which really allows your citizens to be able to enjoy the freedoms that they can have or they should have or that they think they should have? Or are they going to relocate somewhere?”
If you thought Governor Malloy would look the other way, you were wrong. He arrived at an event Perry was hosting with business leaders and held a makeshift news conference outside the building, ready to welcome Perry with a taste of, as he put it, “Yankee hospitality.”
Malloy stressed the fact that just six months after the Newtown massacre, guns remain a sensitive topic in Connecticut. “I don’t think he understands that kind of loss and how it’s affected people in our state,” he explained. Malloy also made it clear that Perry isn’t the only one who can try to lure business or brains.
According to the Hartford Business Journal, Malloy said Connecticut recruiter Texas talent, especially university faculty for Bioscience Connecticut and UConn’s $1.5 billion expansion in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics curriculum. “I guarantee you we will be poaching faculty from Texas for UConn,” Malloy said. The Connecticut governor also landed a few jabs at Perry. “Maybe he can talk about Texas’ higher crime rate, the higher murder rate, and higher assault rate… also, low educational achievement,” Malloy suggested. In addition to his five-day spin through the Northeast, Perry launched a $1 million radio and television ad buy in the same region to promote pro-business policies in Texas.
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