Bob Perry Needs a Hug
The biggest campaign contributor in the country is a reclusive Houston homebuilder who doesn’t cooperate with the press (until now), never poses for photographs (until now), and keeps his personal life top secret (until now). Maybe it’s because so many people blame him for dragging American politics into the gutter.
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Perry’s money was hugely influential; when it moved, especially in a Republican primary, it was often the kiss of death for anyone opposing Perry’s candidate. It meant that, if you were going to run as a Republican and not put tort reform at the top of your agenda, you had better have independent wealth. Like James Leininger’s support for candidates who favored school vouchers, Perry’s money became a de facto enforcement mechanism for Republican candidates in the primaries. And, of course, inflows of such money meant that any Democrat who smelled remotely of “trial lawyer” invariably—through the efforts of Perry, Texans for Lawsuit Reform, and others—found himself in a race with a well-funded opponent.
One such case is particularly illustrative. In 2002 Perry gave $31,000 to Dionne Roberts, who opposed incumbent Democrat Scott Hochberg for the Texas House of Representatives. Shortly after this, Perry appeared at a United Negro College Fund gala dinner in honor of the late John Coleman, a prominent Houston physician and civic leader and the former chairman of the fund’s Houston chapter. Also present at the dinner was Coleman’s son, Democratic state representative Garnet Coleman, who had been bothered by Perry’s support of Roberts. “I went up to him and said, ‘I don’t understand why you spend your time and money going after someone like Scott Hochberg,’ ” Coleman told me. “ ‘He’s just trying to help schoolchildren get an education.’ ” According to Coleman, Perry responded by saying, “Well, he is supported by those trial lawyers.” To Coleman, this confirmed that Perry’s donations were made for purely ideological reasons. The problem, as he saw it, was that “Perry’s only reason for going after Scott was that Scott had gotten a check from the trial lawyers. He didn’t look to see whether Scott had value in the Legislature, and he didn’t look to see some of the things Scott had done that he might have agreed with … It is things like this that contribute to the clear partisan and ideological divide in the Legislature.”
Perry’s financial clout sometimes works in the Democrats’ favor. In 2004 Democratic representative Patrick Rose was thought to be facing a tough challenge from a Republican opponent. But when Perry signaled his support for the pro-tort reform Rose with gifts totaling $15,000, it virtually guaranteed Rose’s victory. Minority Democrats in particular have been the recipients of some of Perry’s largesse, a fact his critics often fail to mention. While his biggest contributions to individuals in 2006 went to Republican losers Joe Nixon ($262,500), Jim Landtroop ($100,000), and Michael Schofield ($100,000), he also dropped substantial amounts on minority candidates, including Democratic representatives Sylvester Turner ($50,000), Eddie Lucio III ($25,000), Ana Hernandez ($22,500), Norma Chavez ($20,000), and Senators Rodney Ellis ($17,500) and Mario Gallegos ($21,000).
It should be noted, though, that most of the minority Democrats in the statehouse who have received Perry’s money are supporters of Republican Speaker Tom Craddick. Perry, in fact, has repeatedly proved his willingness to use his money against Republicans who are deemed insufficiently supportive of the Speaker. You could see this sort of thing happening in 2006, when six incumbent Republican representatives were targeted for opposing Craddick or for being RINOs— Republican in name only. Perry gave $62,500 to Republican challenger Chris Hatley in his losing primary race against incumbent Charlie Geren; he gave $40,000 to Lorraine O’Donnell in her losing race against Pat Haggerty; and he gave $10,000 to Nathan Macias in his bitterly fought primary victory over incumbent Carter Casteel.
Much of this has had to do with pursuing his primary issue of tort reform, and as almost anyone in Texas will tell you, Perry and fellow travelers like Weekley have succeeded in curtailing litigation. Moderate reforms over the years culminated in major legislation in 2003 that severely limited the jury awards plaintiffs could win. Perry’s enormous giving during the elections of 2002, leading to the Republican sweep of the statehouse, in effect made that happen.
But Perry is by no means a single-issue donor. Land commissioner Patterson notes that back in 1984, when he was running for Congress, “Perry asked me, ‘What is your position on life?’ It kind of confused me at first. Then I realized he was talking about abortion. So I told him what I thought.” Some of Perry’s large-gift recipients in 2006 included the Republican Party of Texas ($780,000), Texans for Lawsuit Reform ($601,000), the Harris County Republican Party ($125,000), and Texans for Marriage ($100,000). They summarize his fundamental conservative Republican leanings: He is pro-tort reform, anti—gay marriage, and anti-abortion.
Perry wields some of his power in Texas through his relationship with the Austin lobbying firm Hillco Partners, one of his closest and most important affiliations and a firm closely aligned with Craddick. For roughly the past ten years, Perry’s lobbyist has been Neal “Buddy” Jones. Jones’s partner Bill Miller was until recently Perry’s spokesman and has now assumed the less visible role of adviser. Jones consults regularly with Perry both in his lobbying efforts for Perry Homes and as an adviser to Perry on legislative issues and on various candidates and races in Texas. Though no one knows exactly what Jones tells Perry, the implicit power in that advice is huge, having the potential to channel Perry’s resources into specific races. This of course means that Jones—already one of the most powerful lobbyists in Texas—has just that much more clout. Perry also gave $545,000 last year to Hillco’s political action committee, which amounts to Miller and Jones’s private piggy bank to dole out to legislators and candidates as they see fit. And though Hillco has full discretion on how the money is spent, it acts as a de facto conduit for Perry’s personal money.
Perhaps nowhere was Perry’s Texas clout more apparent than in the 2003 creation of the Texas Residential Construction Commission (TRCC). An offshoot of the tort reform movement, the TRCC was ostensibly intended to make it easier to resolve disputes between builders and homebuyers and to amend the old system that was notoriously builder friendly. The result, says a chorus of critics, was just the opposite. In practice the TRCC became a captive agency to the industry it was supposed to regulate, and the law forced consumers to go through a lengthy complaint process only to find that at the end, the TRCC had no power to compel builders to do anything. This outcome was, of course, entirely favorable to the homebuilding industry, and in fact, it turned out that the person who’d written most of the bill that had created the commission was Perry Homes’ corporate counsel John Krugh, who was later appointed by Governor Perry to the newly created TRCC.
As soon became known, Governor Perry had received a $100,000 contribution from Bob Perry roughly a month before signing the law and appointing Krugh. Bob Perry also spread money around to the two legislative committees that had worked on the legislation. Texas homebuilders in general had given $8.9 million to candidates for state office between 2001 and 2003. The inherent conflicts of interest touched off a large and ongoing controversy. In January 2006, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn issued a blistering report, saying, “After reviewing TRCC and its enabling statute, it is clear that the agency functions as a builder-protection agency … For these reasons, if it were up to me personally, I would blast this TRCC builder-protection agency off the bureaucratic books.” Many people came to believe that, in effect, Bob Perry had been given his own state agency. Says Janet Ahmad, of Homeowners for Better Building, a watchdog group and consistent Perry critic: “Perry was the kingpin and the brains behind the TRCC. He was always behind the scenes.”
AND THAT IS WHERE HE IS content to stay. Because he refuses to speak to reporters, it has never been possible to know what Perry himself actually thinks about his position as one of the most powerful and controversial private citizens in American politics. For the purposes of this article, however, he agreed to answer some questions through his spokesman, Holm. The arrangement was informal: I would give questions to Holm; Holm would relay them to Perry and take notes on the replies; then Holm would convey the answers back to me.
What does Perry think about the savaging he receives in the media? “He doesn’t dwell on it,” Holm said. “And he tends not to say negative things about people, though he thinks the media portrayals are not an accurate reflection of him. There is a real and negative impact on his family, however, who think these stories and portrayals are gross mischaracterizations of the man that he is—a benefactor of society and a caretaker of the underserved.”
I asked Holm to ask Perry to list the five issues that he cared the most about. Holm gave them in order of priority, as follows:
1) Jobs. “He’s very free market,” Holm explained. “He believes that job creations are the way to empower families.”
2) Education. “As you can see from his donations, he feels that education really is the great equalizer.”
3) Immigration. “Mr. Perry says we have to have immigration policies that give people hope. What is this nation other than a nation of hope? And we have hope because we have lots of jobs and educational opportunities.”
4) Security. “Perry is a big supporter of domestic security, from cops on the street through the war on terrorism.”
5) Tax reform. “He believes in tax relief, empowering the middle class and giving back to families.”
My first response to this list was surprise that tort reform was not on it. “That’s deliberate,” Holm said. “A few years ago it absolutely would have been.” My second response was that the agenda could easily be that of a Democrat. “Exactly,” Holm replied. “And of course, as you know, he funds lots of Democrats.”
I also wanted to know how Perry reconciled his obvious desire for privacy with his desire for political action. For the first time in our exchange, Holm put Perry’s response in the first person: “I don’t know that I desire absolute anonymity. I’m rather private and don’t have a need to go out there, but I am willing to make important sacrifices. Obviously I am because I give up substantial amounts of money, and I am also giving up my privacy. I do it because I think it is in the best interests of the cause, be it political or charitable. I just view it as a sacrifice.”
Whoever Bob Perry really is, such selflessness will no doubt be chilling news for his foes.
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