Supposedly he was set to declare even earlier but decided to wait until after the Ames straw poll. Why rush into Iowa if you’re not on the ballot and half the big names in the field can’t be bothered to compete?
While Perry has focused on determining whether he can raise the funds necessary to run a credible campaign, his strategists have begun locking down verbal commitments from vendors and other potential top staff who would fill out a campaign organization. One who was contacted about a senior staff position was told, “This is a 99 percent sure thing.” Another said he was told, “He is 100 percent in.” That wouldn’t seem to leave much margin of error, but a third vendor who was approached said that while Perry’s political circle is lining up a staff, they are doing so without knowing what Perry’s final call will be…
Sources steeped in Texas politics also told RCP that Perry has made follow-up calls to many of his own state’s biggest donors to inform them that he is running so he can confirm the level of financial commitment he can count on from them. That may be to determine what his overall funding will look like in the early stages of a campaign so he can figure out how to structure his organization — and have a strong one in place by the time he announces…
A source with knowledge of Team Perry’s plans told RCP last week that an announcement had been planned for the second week in August, just days after the governor is scheduled to host a “day of prayer and fasting for our nation’s challenges” on Aug. 6 at Reliant Stadium in Houston.
Those tentative plans may have been scrapped for the later window in conjunction with more recent developments about the straw poll. Perry will not be listed as a choice on the ballot, and it has become clear that it was getting to be too late to prepare for what is mostly a display of organizational heft.
How serious a contender is he? According to ARG’s new poll of Republican likely voters in Florida, this serious:
Not a statistically significant lead but, given that it’s a swing state and he’s not yet in the race, it’s a politically significant one. Hard to say where his support’s coming from since there’s a lot of movement there from May to July. Huckabee dropped out, Gingrich cratered, Bachmann surged, and Romney went from leading by 12 to … trailing by one. That’s actually a bigger story than Perry’s lead, I think: The new guy might be a passing fad, juiced by Rush Limbaugh talking him up and Thompson-esque buzz about his true-conservative credentials, but Romney’s pulling just 15 percent now compared to a combined 55 percent for the tea-party bloc of Perry, Palin, Bachmann, and Cain. My gut about Florida is that its Republican base is more RINO-ish than other states’ — McCain won there, didn’t he? — but maybe that’s not true anymore. If it were, we’d have Senator Crist instead of Senator Rubio. Romney’s gameplan all along has been to win New Hampshire and Nevada and then face a Florida death match against whichever tea partier emerges from the other side of the field, but how does that gameplan look given numbers like these? (On the other hand, the runaway winner among Florida Republicans who’ll “probably,” not “definitely,” vote next year is, er, Rudy Giuliani with 25 percent.) As I write this, InTrade puts Perry’s odds at the nomination at 32.8 percent. Romney’s odds? 29.3 percent. Hmmmmmm.
Exit question: Is this actually short-term good news for Pawlenty? Long-term it’s horrible since it means he’ll have another formidable social conservative to cope with in the caucuses, but he’s in dire enough straits that he can’t think long-term now. He’s thinking about the straw poll to jump-start his campaign, and the more buzz there is about Perry leading up to that, the more misgivings some “soft” Bachmann supporters may have about voting for her. In fact, “Americans for Perry” is urging people to write him in; if enough erstwhile Bachmann voters do that, it’ll improve T-Paw’s margin against her and finally finally finally give him some traction.
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