Rick Perry’s Financial Implosion

Barely 60 days after de­clar­ing that he’d run for pres­id­ent, Rick Perry faces a fin­an­cial crisis that threatens to short-cir­cuit his comeback can­did­acy months be­fore the elec­tion be­gins.

The longest-serving gov­ernor in Texas his­tory is so cash poor that his pres­id­en­tial cam­paign has stopped pay­ing its own ad­visers. Na­tion­al Journ­al first re­por­ted Monday that Perry had frozen pay for South Car­o­lina staff, and CBS and The Wash­ing­ton Post soon re­por­ted the freeze ap­plied all across the na­tion — in­clud­ing in Iowa, New Hamp­shire, and his Aus­tin headquar­ters.

“There’s no way to spin this that’s pos­it­ive,” said Matt Mack­owiak, a Texas Re­pub­lic­an strategist.

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The shock­ingly early fin­an­cial im­plo­sion (four years ago, Perry hadn’t even an­nounced his 2012 can­did­acy yet) is a po­ten­tially crip­pling blow for a can­did­ate who, des­pite en­er­get­ic­ally cam­paign­ing in Iowa and else­where on the polit­ic­al cir­cuit, has found little trac­tion in the polls.

“We’ll be able to live off the land for a while,” pre­dicted Katon Dawson, Perry’s South Car­o­lina state dir­ect­or.

But while his of­fi­cial cam­paign has been re­duced to a vo­lun­teer op­er­a­tion, a trio of in­de­pend­ent pro-Perry su­per PACs re­main well-heeled, mak­ing it less likely Perry will be forced to exit the race en­tirely.

“Oh God, yes, full steam ahead,” said Aus­tin Bar­bour, a seni­or ad­viser to Perry’s su­per PACs. “Be­cause we raised $16.8 mil­lion.”

The re­mark­able im­bal­ance between the cash-strapped cam­paign and the flush su­per PAC will likely test the lim­its, already be­ing pushed by oth­er un­der­fun­ded can­did­ates, of how much re­spons­ib­il­ity can be pushed off onto un­lim­ited-money out­side groups.

“We raised as much money as pos­sible so that we would have the abil­ity to spend it in whatever way we needed to spend it,” Bar­bour said, “wheth­er it was tra­di­tion­al su­per PAC ways on paid me­dia or whatever oth­er ways we need.”

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It’s not clear if or when an­oth­er round of ac­tu­al Perry cam­paign paychecks will be is­sued. And Perry’s su­per PACs can’t simply re­hire his of­fi­cial strategists and staff. “They have a 120-day morator­i­um,” noted Bar­bour of Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion reg­u­la­tions. Some Perry aides were already eye­ing the job mar­ket else­where on Monday, mul­tiple Re­pub­lic­an sources said.

Perry’s cam­paign re­por­ted an an­em­ic $1.1 mil­lion fun­drais­ing haul through the end of June, and the cam­paign ended the quarter with $883,913 cash on hand. For per­spect­ive, that’s about one-tenth of what Ben Car­son, a polit­ic­al neo­phyte who has nev­er held polit­ic­al of­fice, raised via his cam­paign dur­ing that time.

Mean­while, Perry was burn­ing through what little cash he had raised — spend­ing al­most $593,000 in little more than five weeks in May and June. Nearly two-thirds of the money Perry spent ($391,000) went to Ab­stract Com­mu­nic­a­tions LLC, a busi­ness re­gistered in Aus­tin to Jeff Miller, Perry’s cam­paign man­ager.

“As the cam­paign moves along, tough de­cisions have to be made in re­spect to both mon­et­ary and time-re­lated re­sources,” Miller said in an email Monday even­ing.

With a crowded 17-can­did­ate GOP field, Jeb Bush dom­in­at­ing among big donors, and Don­ald Trump dom­in­at­ing the news, there has been little space for longer-shot can­did­a­cies. Perry’s fin­an­cial fal­ter could be only the first of many, as oth­er Re­pub­lic­ans could soon face a cash crunch of their own: Bobby Jin­dal, Rick San­tor­um, Mike Hucka­bee, and George Pa­taki all had less than $1 mil­lion banked at the end of June, the same or less than Perry had.

Fun­drais­ing was nev­er sup­posed to be the chief ques­tion about Perry, es­pe­cially after he raised more than $20 mil­lion for his 2012 race. He has been lay­ing the ground­work for a 2016 cam­paign al­most since the mo­ment he quit four years ago: study­ing up, meet­ing with for­eign policy ad­visers, and hon­ing policy po­s­i­tions. He even began wear­ing much-com­men­ted-upon new glasses. “The last 20 months,” Perry told Na­tion­al Journ­al last year, “have been spent in a fairly in­tens­ive prep mode on all the big is­sues that face the com­mand­er in chief of this coun­try.”

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But Perry has struggled to re­define him­self fol­low­ing that dis­astrous 2012 cam­paign, which saw him fin­ish in fifth in Iowa. The race was punc­tu­ated by Perry’s pain­ful de­bate lapse when he for­got the name of a gov­ern­ment agency he would elim­in­ate. “Oops,” he said on stage.

In 2016, Perry has so far has been defined by the de­bate stage he missed. He fin­ished 11th in the Fox News’ polling av­er­age last week, when only the top 10 were al­lowed in­to the prime-time de­bate. In­stead, Perry had to com­pete in a 5 p.m. show de­rided as the “B-list” or “kid­die-table” de­bate be­fore an empty arena in Clev­e­land. And even then, polit­ic­al new­comer Carly Fior­ina ec­lipsed him.

Perry had tried des­per­ately to make it onto the main stage. In Iowa, his su­per PAC spent more than $1 mil­lion on ra­dio and TV ads hop­ing that boost­ing his poll num­bers there might ri­co­chet in­to news cov­er­age na­tion­ally. No dice: The num­bers didn’t budge, even as the only com­pet­i­tion on the air­waves came from Jin­dal, who also missed the polling cut for the prime-time de­bate.

On the stump, Perry tried to take on the con­tro­ver­sial Trump, lash­ing out at him as “bark­ing car­ni­val act” and a “can­cer on con­ser­vat­ism.” That, too, failed to garner much at­ten­tion.

Last Thursday, Trump stood cen­ter stage as a re­cord 24 mil­lion Amer­ic­ans tuned in. Perry was one of them, watch­ing with fel­low polling bot­tom-dwell­ers San­tor­um and Pa­taki, over beers and wine.

Pres­id­en­tial cam­paign his­tory is littered with can­did­ates who, after fin­an­cial woes, re­treated to fo­cus on a single state, most not­ably John Mc­Cain in 2008, who went on to win the GOP nom­in­a­tion after win­ning in New Hamp­shire. For Perry, most be­lieve that state must be Iowa.

“Bot­tom line is to make sure we get him in place to win Iowa,” Bar­bour said of their strategy, “or at least get a top-three fin­ish in Iowa.”

Mack­owiak, the Texas GOP strategist un­af­fili­ated with Perry’s cam­paign, said, “Perry ought to move to Iowa, pull a San­tor­um, and do the 99-county tour.”

“That is not a fun way to run pres­id­ent,” he ad­ded. “It is hard. It is un­pleas­ant.”

The prob­lem for Perry is that that ap­peared to be his strategy already. He has held more events in Iowa than any­one oth­er than San­tor­um (Perry con­duc­ted 74 events over 38 days, ac­cord­ing to The Des Moines Re­gister), and still garnered little renown.

Miller, the cam­paign man­ager, said that, Perry “re­mains com­mit­ted to com­pet­ing in the early states and will con­tin­ue to have a strong pres­ence in Iowa, New Hamp­shire, and South Car­o­lina.”

An un­paid Dawson said, he ex­pec­ted to pick up Perry at the air­port in South Car­o­lina on Thursday.

“We’re on a mis­sion right now,” Dawson said, “and we’re go­ing to worry about the fin­ances later.”