Though Rick Perry is running fifth in the newest poll out of Iowa, he’s still optimistic that his record will lead him to victory on Tuesday night in the first primary contest in the nation.
The Texas Governor said that part of the reason he’s no longer surging in the polls is because of his late entrance into the race. Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Perry said that he was doing well, considering his relatively light experience campaigning nationally.
“We got in the race late. Some of these folks have been running for years in Iowa, multiple times in Iowa. So I think for us to come in and over the course of the last five months to have a ground-game […] nobody’s got a better ground-game,” he said.
But some say that Perry’s decline was due to gaffes on the campaign trail and a poorly-run campaign, an idea that gained traction thanks in part to a recent Politico report that cited anonymous senior staffers within his campaign criticizing his organization's performance as “unbelievably subpar.”
Perry said he had not read the piece, calling it "inside-the-beltway chatter," and he refused to discuss it further.
“Name names and then we’ll have a conversation,” he said.
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