By Christy Hoppe, The Dallas Morning News
In mounting evidence that Governor Rick Perry is preparing for another presidential run, about a dozen New Hampshire Republicans are scheduled to visit Texas next to meet with the governor.
The New Hampshire Journal is reporting that Perry has engaged GOP strategist Mike Dennehy to organize the meeting. Dennehy is well known in the Granite State, the first state to vote in presidential primaries, where he helped engineer victories for John McCain.
Dennehy, according to the report, is working through Americans for Economic Freedom, a group created with seed money left over from Perry’s last presidential campaign and organized by his top supporters.
Perry has been using the group to promote his message for economic growth, and to visit Democratic-controlled states to meet with business owners and run ads featuring the governor.
He has just completed a trip to New York, where he made the rounds of morning talk shows and suggested that he and Governor Andrew Cuomo should hold a debate over economic philosophies. The challenge prompted the Democratic Governors Association to respond by sending out a clip of Perry’s “oops” moment in the 2011 debate when he forgot the third of the three federal agencies he had pledged to dismantle as president.
Perry is expected to speak to the New Hampshire officials and political activists about the Lone Star State’s economic success and the landscape heading into 2016.
“I believe that people will give him a second chance if he decides to run for president,” Dennehy told the Journal. “That is the nature of America and that is certainly the nature of New Hampshire.”
Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr
