A Texas Two-Step: When Rick Perry Backed Al Gore
There’s an inconvenient political truth for Texas Governor Rick Perry: he was his state’s 1988 campaign chairman for then U.S. Senator Al Gore’s first run at the presidency.
The way their partnership has dissolved and their paths diverged in the past three decades speaks eloquently to the way American politics has been reshaped. Gore has sailed left, while Perry’s political odyssey has seen him tack in the other direction — and to the opposing party. The two men opted for different paths across a dynamic, changing political landscape, and while one man fell short of the White House, the other now contemplates that prize. (See the top 10 debate flubs.)
The tale begins in 1984, four years before Perry took the helm of Gore’s Texas campaign, when Gore, then 36 and a congressional wunderkind from Tennessee, followed in his father’s footsteps by winning a U.S. Senate seat. That same year, Perry, who was 34 and from much humbler roots as the son of a Texas Rolling Plains cotton farmer, won a seat in the Texas house of representatives. Both young men were handsome sons of the South and proudly touted their philosophical bearings in the regionally dominant conservative wing of the Democratic Party.
And now… the rest of the story. …..
Harold
