IOWA CITY, Iowa — He’s traded in cowboy boots for stylish glasses, and social issues for promoting the arts. It sometimes seems like Rick Perry isn’t just courting Iowa Republicans—he’s making a play for the hipster vote.
On a four-day swing through barnyard barbecues and backyard ice-cream socials in the first-in-the-nation presidential nominating state, the Texas governor presented a revamped image—in style at least, no longer the Bible-thumping hardliner who mused about secession and seemed to embody his state’s ethos of rugged independence. And he offered an early glimpse of how he’ll try to overcome the issues that plagued his last run for the White House in 2012.
The Iowa caucuses are still a year and a half out, and Perry hasn’t yet said he’s running—technically, he was in the Hawkeye State to campaign for local GOP candidates. Still, if he does run, as the longtime governor of the nation’s largest and most important red state and an often skilled performer on the stump, he could re-emerge as a top-tier contender, with a built-in fundraising base. And the amount of time he’s spent in Iowa lately has only added to the speculation.
But Perry’s challenge will be to solve the twin problems from his last run. Back then, he often seemed ill-prepared on policy questions— “oops,” he famously mumbled at a debate after blanking on the third federal agency he wanted to eliminate. He also allowed himself to be painted by his primary rivals as a bleeding-heart liberal on immigration, saying those opposed to in-state tuition for the children of undocumented immigrants don’t “have a heart.” Perry finished fifth in Iowa, and dropped out of the race soon afterward.
This time around Perry’s stump speech focuses heavily on the need for border security, and on his four ingredients to successful governing—low taxes, stable regulatory environment, tort reform, and accountable public schools—which he rattled off without an ‘oops’ moment.
“Border security is a very real threat to this country,” said Perry Monday at a business roundtable in Des Moines. “There is a criminal element that knows that the border is porous and they’re taking advantage of it.”
Earlier this summer, Perry took the dramatic step of deploying some 1,000 National Guard troops to stem the surge of child immigrants, many unaccompanied, into the Rio Grande Valley. Asked after an event in Grand Mound what he was doing to address the needs of the children, Perry seemed at pains to avoid showing too much compassion.
“They’re being addressed,” he said, adding that it was “not the bigger issue from [his] perspective.”
Evangelicals made up more than half of all Republican caucus-goers last time around. But Perry on this trip seemed eager to downplay social issues, despite his hard line on immigration.
Asked about a brief last week by Texas lawmakers arguing that same-sex marriage could lead to “other morally reprehensible actions” – including bigamy, incest, pedophilia and group marriage—Perry said only that he was on the side of Texans, who voted overwhelmingly for the state’s gay marriage ban. “The conversation is about that,” he added.
It’s a far cry from two years ago, when Perry released an ad that declared: “There’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.”
Same sex marriage is legal in Iowa. And Perry’s shift in tone could help appeal to younger Republicans, 61% of whom support marriage equality, according the Pew Research Center.









