Governor Rick Perry's Best Contributors

Next month Texans will be electing a governor for the state of Texas. The candidates are the current Republican governor Rick Perry, who is running for re-election and his rival the Democrat Bill White. They have created impressive campaigns to win these elections and have spent a lot of money. I always wonder how they support their campaigns, especially Rick Perry who has been governor for the last 10 years. I found this interesting editorial commentary that talks about how the current governor Rick Perry has received substantial donations for his campaign from people he had appointed as regents for top Texas universities.

The author of this commentary is Michael Landauer, who is the assistant editorial page editor in The Dallas Morning News. His credibility is sustained by his work on the voices program since 2002 and his higher education acquired from Texas A&M University. His commentary “Rick Perry has amassed a financial army of appointees” is about Rick Perry’s political campaign capital. His intended audience is the general public because this information involves public Universities in Texas, which is significant for every Texan. Landauer argues that “$17 million has come from people appointed to boards of regents for our top universities”. He offers a link to the Texas Tribune which has a list of names of different regents of universities in Texas, which gives credibility to his argument. This list shows that “Texas A&M regents were Perry’s second source of appointee cash, $113,127 per appointee and where Wendy Lee, the Texas A&M regent, was the most-lucrative appointee”. “The University of Texas regents ranked fourth, with a contribution that averaged $83,463 each”.

Personally, this information surprised me because I did not know that the regents of these universities contribute these amounts of money. I think Mr. Landauer is trying to make a statement that Rick Perry chooses appointees that will be good contributors for his campaign. Based on this information we can assume that these appointees were very good donors because some were appointed multiple times. I agree with Mr. Landauer that it shows that the appointees supported Rick Perry in order to be appointed. I thought that in order to hold a position as a regent of a University was based on qualifications, and not on being good contributors to a political campaign. The author is not satisfied with the re-election of Rick Perry. He states:” if Jesus Christ himself were governor, I would not want him to serve more than 10 years because no one should be able to appoint all the members of the state’s important boards and commissions”. Mr. Landauer also states that even thought he has always voted for Rick Perry in past elections, now he is undecided because our current governor has been in office for too long. I agree with him, we need a new person that brings diversity to the state and gives appointments to people who are well qualified and understand the diversity of the state and brings innovation, and takes in a new direction.