Edging closer to a plunge into the 2016 presidential candidate pool, Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry now has a political committee to help fund candidates he supports.
According to
Federal Election Commission documents, Perry filed the necessary paperwork for RickPAC last week, naming as treasurer Stefan Passantino, previous counsel to Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker who ran for president in 2012,
Bloomberg News noted.
Spokesman Mark Miner told Bloomberg the PAC's goal was "helping elect Republicans to office who share the governor's philosophy of low taxes, limited government, border security, and job creation."
Perry's national profile has been raised recently by his call to deploy 1,000
National Guard troops to the Texas-Mexico border in response to an unprecedented surge of unaccompanied migrant children crossing into the country illegally.
"He's been talking about the same issues for a number of years, border security, job creation, fiscal responsibility," Miner told The Associated Press.
Former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin also used a similar political committee to fund candidates through SarahPAC, the
Dallas Morning News noted.
Perry has $4 million left in his state campaign account, some of which can be shifted to the new PAC, the newspaper reported.
The preparation ahead of a possible White House bid echoes a theme Perry has been voicing lately: that he learned something from his disastrous 2012 presidential run.
"You cannot parachute into the process of being vetted for the nomination for the Republican Party without proper preparation. It is a long and arduous task," he told the
National Journal.
"If he does" run for president, Miner told
Business Insider, "he's going to be prepared."
© 2023 Newsmax. All rights reserved.