Rick Perry’s 10 Worst Crony Capitalists

Texas Gov. Rick Perry<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kutaustin/5141523257/">Chris Kosho</a>/Flickr

If presidential candidates were elected based on how well they rewarded their political donors, then Texas Governor Rick Perry would lead the pack. Since 2001, more than a fifth of the $83 million in campaign donations received by Perry have come from his past and present political appointees. In 2009, the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washigton cited his administration’s rampant cronyism in naming him to its “Worst Governors” list. A recent analysis of Perry’s 150 largest political donors by the LA Times found that more than half of them received hefty business contracts, tax breaks, or appointments from the governor. Here are ten Perry supporters who’ve been handsomely repaid for their patronage:

1. Bob Perry: America’s largest individual political donor, the Houston-based homebuilder has given $2.3 million to Rick Perry, making him the governor’s leading money man (the two Perrys aren’t related). In June, 2003, Rick Perry helped push through a bill creating the Texas Residential Construction Commission, ostensibly a watchdog for unethical homebuilders. In reality, the agency was created with the help of Bob Perry’s lobbyist, John Krugh. Shortly after receiving a $100,000 check from Bob Perry, the governor appointed Krugh to the TRCC’s board of directors. Consumer groups fought back and got the agency abolished in 2009.
2. Harrold Simmons: The reclusive buyout king has amassed $5.7 billion from garbage collection, drug stores, metals, and chemicals, making him the 55th richest American. In 1995, he set about converting an isolated patch of land in West Texas into a nuclear waste dump. In part, that’s meant dumping $1.2 million in campaign cash on Perry. Though three staffers with Perry’s Texas Commission on Environmental Quality resigned rather than approve the waste dump, it was ultimately green-lighted by TCEQ executive director Glen Shankle, who left the agency a few months later to work as the dump’s lobbyist. In January, a commission stacked with Perry appointees gave the dump permission to accept nuclear waste from around the country.
3. David Nance: In 2009, the founder and chairman of Convergen LifeSciences Inc, a tiny biotechnology firm, applied for a $4.5 million grant from Texas’ Emerging Technology Fund, a sort of public-sector venture capital fund. When the grant was denied, Nance appealed the decision to a Perry-appointed statewide advisory committee (of which Nance had once been a member), the Wall Street Journal reports. The committee ruled in favor of Nance, who has given more than $100,000 to Perry’s campaigns since 2001. But that’s not all. Perry also appropriated $2 million in state funds to a business-services nonprofit, Innovate Texas, which pays Nance a six-figure salary but does not have a working phone number, the Journal reports.
4. Lonnie “Bo” Pilgrim: In March 2008, the owner of the Pilgrim’s Pride poultry company met with Perry and soon after gave him a $100,000 donation for the Republican Governor’s Association, which Perry chaired at the time. Less than a month later, Perry asked the Environental Protection Agency to waive ethanol standards that Pligrim believed would drive up chicken feed costs. Pilgrim later donated $25,000 to Perry’s political action committee and footed the bill for him and three aides to fly to Washington, DC, to speak out against ethanol.
5. Kenneth Lay: In 2001, Rick Perry appointed an Enron exec to chair the Texas Public Utilities Commission, and the next day, Perry got a $25,000 check from Lay. As Molly Ivins mockingly pointed out, Perry “explained this, to everyone’s satisfaction, as being ‘totally coincidental.'”
6. B.J. “Red” McCombs: The San Antonio Clear Channel billionaire, who contributed nearly $400,000 to the governor, is the primary financial backer for a Formula One racetrack to be built near Austin. The state has pledged $25 million a year in subsidies to support the project, the LA Times reports.
7. Mike Toomey: Perry’s former chief of staff earned up to $2.2 million last year as a Texas-based lobbyist. He owns a private island in New Hampshire with Dave Carney, Perry’s campaign manager. In 2007, Perry signed an executive order requiring all teenage girls in Texas to take a vaccine manufactured by Merck, one of Toomey’s lobbying clients (the legislature eventually repealed the order). Toomey is now creating a Perry-focussed super-PAC, Make Us Great Again.
8. Phil Adams: A college friend of Perry’s who gave his campaigns at least $314,000, Adams was a backer of Terrabon Inc, a Houston company that received a $2.75 million grant from Perry’s Emerging Technology Fund.  Perry also appointed Adams to a coveted post on Texas A&M University’s Board of Regents (other regents who aren’t Perry supporters say they’ve been pressured to resign). Adams has returned the favor by giving the Perry family free tickets and transportation to basketball and football games. 
9. James Leininger: The state’s largest political donor during much of the 1990s, Leininger gifted Perry’s campaigns at least $264,000, in addition to a $1.1 million loan that’s credited with putting him over the top in a 1998 race for lieutenant governor. Leininger is an investor in Gradalis Inc, a Dallas biotechnology firm that received $1.75 million from Perry’s Emerging Technology Fund, the Dallas Morning News reports.
10. James Dannenbaum:  Donated more than $320,000 to Perry’s campaigns and received multiple transportation contracts from the state. His company, Dannenbaum Engineering, was implicated last year in an FBI investigation of El Paso officials who’d swapped political donations for county contracts, according to the El Paso Times. In 2007, Perry appointed Dannenbaum to the University of Texas Board of Regents.