and don’t forget to make a big deal about tort reform. The general principle is that of limited government—which is, after all, built into the state constitution—and Perry has in many respects stuck to that plan. He has signed two major tort reforms, as well as the 2006 “swap” that restructured the business franchise tax and lowered property taxes. That last deal created a recurring hole in the budget that amounts to about $5 billion every year (or, as Republicans call it, a tax cut).  

More interesting are the ways in which Perry has broken with the limited government playbook. When the Texas model itself isn’t enough to close the deal, he hasn’t hesitated to step in with tax incentives or “awards” from the Texas Enterprise Fund and the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, both of which he signed into existence and both of which he administers. Some of those efforts haven’t panned out; according to a 2010 analysis from Texans for Public Justice, a watchdog group, the TEF doled out $363 million in subsidies to recipients who initially pledged to create or maintain almost 47,800 jobs; as of 2008, only about 31,300 such jobs could be located. Other awards, however, have wildly exceeded expectations. The plan to use TETF dollars to help create a “biotech corridor” around College Station sounded pretty dubious until 2012, when Texas A&M won a massive federal contract to become one of three new biodefense centers in the country. 

Perry has also supported greater investment in infrastructure—more spending on roads and water—which sounds like a no-brainer but is a deviation from the scorched-earth rhetoric the state and national GOP all too often advocate. And he has similarly resisted red-meat rhetoric when it comes to immigration. During his first session as governor he signed a bill allowing certain undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities. In the 2011 campaign, his opponents for the Republican nomination took him to the woodshed over that one, but back in 2001, the measure passed the Lege with nearly unanimous support, because it makes sense from a workforce perspective: if young people are ready to go to college, you should probably let them. 

The direct effects of all of Perry’s efforts are, of course, hard to measure. Still, there’s one state that is clobbering the others on the job numbers, and it happens to be the one state where the governor has been bird-dogging jobs for the past thirteen years. The only reason people might think that’s a coincidence is that the governor in question is—there’s no getting around it—Rick Perry. 

That being the case, it remains to be seen whether Perry’s stepping down will qualify as a shake-up or only a reshuffling. Because he’s been governor for so long, he’s created some stability in the state’s political leadership. No Democrat has held statewide executive office during his years at the helm, and Republican officeholders have seen very little turnover. After 2014, the state will have a new governor, a new attorney general, a new comptroller, a new agriculture commissioner, a new land commissioner, and very likely a new lieutenant governor. Whether any of them will share Perry’s vision is hard to say, because it’s hard to say what his vision has been. 

And although Perry isn’t running in 2014, he has a new slogan, which suggests that he might be running in 2016. That slogan is “Texas Works.” It’s an oddly modest comment, but it happens to be true, and it wouldn’t be a bad message to bring to a country that, after a punishing recession, still isn’t working well enough. Texas has prospered during his years as governor. That much is nearly unquestionable. Can Perry convince critics that he played a big role in that, when even Texans are skeptical? That, at least for now, is unanswerable.