ADDISON, Texas -- Rick Perry, the former Texas governor whose 2012 campaign for the White House turned into a political disaster that humbled and weakened the most powerful Republican in the state, announced Thursday that he will run for president again in 2016.
Perry is the latest candidate to officially enter a crowded field of Republican presidential contenders, declared and undeclared, several of whom have Texas ties and have overshadowed him in recent months, including Sen. Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush, the brother of former President George W. Bush, Perry's predecessor in the Governor's Mansion.
Several senior aides confirmed Thursday that Bush also will seek the Republican nomination and will formally announce his widely expected decision in Miami later this month.
Bush teased his announcement Thursday morning, writing "coming soon" on Twitter with a link to the website jebannouncement.com. On that page, the date June 15 was listed, followed by the tease, "Be the first to know. RSVP now!"
Perry made his announcement Thursday in Addison, a northern suburb of Dallas.
"We will make it through the Obama years," he told a cheering crowd at a small municipal airport there. Saying that "it's time," he declared, "I am running for the presidency of the United States of America."
The location had to do with his giant stage prop: a C-130 plane, the type Perry flew while serving in the Air Force in the 1970s. The plane -- parked behind the stage and emblazoned with "Perry for President" -- illustrated one of the ways Perry plans to distinguish himself from the other Republican candidates, by emphasizing his service in the military and his support from veterans, several of whom joined him on stage.
In his speech, Perry also sought to separate himself from other Republican contenders by casting himself as a leader who has done the work rather than a politician who talks about doing it, pointing to his handling of natural disasters and crises at the border and his 14-year tenure as governor of a state with the 12th-largest economy in the world.
"The question of every candidate will be this one: When have you led?" Perry said. "Leadership is not a speech on the Senate floor. It's not what you say. It's what you do. And we will not find the kind of leadership needed to revitalize the country by looking to the political class in Washington."
But whether Perry has done enough to repair the damage from his failed run in 2012 remains unclear. Even in Texas, Perry has already lost crucial support to some of his rivals.
Steve Munisteri, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, has been heading up the presidential campaign in Texas for Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. Many of the grass-roots Tea Party activists in Texas have flocked to Cruz, while some of those in the more mainstream Texas Republican establishment are supporting Bush, whose son, George P. Bush, is the state's new land commissioner.
Perry's 2012 bid for president was filled with gaffes that became national punch lines. He famously uttered "oops" during a debate after he failed to recall the name of one of three federal agencies he would eliminate if elected president. Shortly before he dropped out of the race, he ended up in fifth place in the Iowa caucuses.
In the years since, Perry has worked at retooling and sharpening both his image and his political chops, making frequent trips to early-voting states, meeting with influential policy experts and attending the World Economic Forum in 2014 in Switzerland.
But Perry stressed his small-town roots in his speech Thursday, talking about growing up in Paint Creek, Texas -- "we had an outhouse, and mom bathed us in a No. 2 washtub on the back porch," he said -- and working on his family's farm. And he appealed to both fiscal and social conservatives, saying Texas created 1.5 million new jobs during the last seven years of his tenure and describing actions he would take if elected president.
Those actions included signing an executive order approving construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, rescinding any agreement with Iran "that legitimizes their quest to get a nuclear weapon" and, on his first day in office, issuing "an immediate freeze on all pending regulations from [President Barack Obama's] administration."
As governor, Perry was widely regarded as one of the most influential politicians in the history of Texas, using his bully pulpit, veto pen and thousands of appointees at every level of state bureaucracy to extend the reach of the governor's office through three four-year terms.
Yet after leaving office in January, Perry has been outshone by some of his rivals in terms of fundraising, building a national operation and political buzz. T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oil tycoon and billionaire, is backing Bush. When Charles and David Koch, the big-spending conservative donors, identified five candidates they were considering supporting, Perry was not on the list, but Bush, Cruz, Paul, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida were.
And Perry has another problem, one that political consultants say has the potential to ruin or at least hurt his campaign: a criminal indictment.
A grand jury in Austin indicted Perry in August on two felony charges of abusing his official capacity and coercing a public servant, the result of a long-running case involving Perry's use of his veto power as governor.
Perry pressured the Democratic district attorney in Austin's Travis County to step down by threatening to cut off state financing to the anti-corruption unit in her office, a move that Perry's critics and the special prosecutor in the case, Michael McCrum, have said crossed the line from hardball politics to the criminal act of threatening an elected official.
The district attorney, Rosemary Lehmberg, had been arrested on a charge of drunken driving, but she resisted Perry's efforts to get her to resign and remained in office. Perry followed through on his threat by vetoing $7.5 million in state money for the public-corruption unit in her office.
Perry and his lawyers have denied any wrongdoing, saying the veto was lawful and casting his indictment by a grand jury in a Democratic-dominated city as politically motivated. As the case continues to drag on in court, both Democrats and Republicans believe it could prevent deep-pocketed donors from contributing to Perry's campaign and dampen his attempts to become a front-runner.
"This indictment is not going away soon," said Craig McDonald, the director and founder of Texans for Public Justice, the government watchdog group that filed the original complaint against Perry. "I'd be surprised if the electorate regards a felony indictment for abuse of power as a qualification for the presidency."
Cruz apology
As Perry joined the race Thursday, another Republican presidential candidate aimed to make peace with a potential Democratic rival. Cruz apologized for cracking a joke at Vice President Joe Biden's expense even as Biden mourns the death of his son, 46-year-old Beau.
During an appearance Wednesday in Howell, Mich., Cruz rattled off a Biden line he's been using in speeches on the stump.
"Vice President Joe Biden. You know the nice thing? You don't need a punch line," Cruz said, prompting laughter from the audience.
By Thursday morning, Cruz used his Facebook account to say he was sorry.
In his post, the Texas senator says, "It was a mistake to use an old joke about Joe Biden during his time of grief, and I sincerely apologize."
Biden has said he may seek the Democratic presidential nomination.
Meanwhile, another GOP candidate took aim this week at the woman widely seen as the Democratic front-runner.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in an interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader on Tuesday that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's reluctance to talk to the media has reached North Korean proportions.
"There's more spontaneity in North Korea than there is with her campaign," Graham said in a comment he echoed on Fox News on Thursday morning. "I mean, it's easier to talk to Kim Jong Un than it is to her. At the end of the day, you're not going to be president of the United States with this model."
The media and Republicans have frequently criticized Clinton for not taking enough questions from journalists and tending to attend only tightly scripted events.
Graham, who is is known for both his foreign-policy hawkishness and tendency to make off-the-cuff remarks, added that he believes she has avoided the press so she doesn't have to speak about foreign policy.
"Her biggest nightmare is for somebody to ask her: 'Hey, do you think the war on terror is going well? Do you agree with Barack Obama's foreign policy? If you don't, tell us why,'" he said on Fox.
Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Information for this article was contributed by Manny Fernandez of The New York Times; by Steve Peoples, Thomas Beaumont and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Ben Brody of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 06/05/2015