Perry (no relation to the governor) owned Perry Homes and became a significant supporter of both the Republican Party (though he supported some Democrats) and various conservative causes. He played a significant role in Texas' political transformation from a Democratic to Republican state. Some detail:
From Texas Tribune:
From Texas Tribune:
The self-made Houston homebuilder was one of the biggest bankrollers of conservative causes over the past two decades, a financier of politicians like George W. Bush, Rick Perry and Greg Abbott, of Super PACs like American Crossroads and Make Us Great Again, and of 527s that include, most famously, the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth. He gave $28 million to Texas candidates and causes between 2000 and 2010, and another $38 million over that period outside of Texas, according to a Texas Tribune analysis. The Center for Public Integrity counted $23.5 million in contributions to super PACs during the last election cycle, among other contributions.
. . Perry fits into a line of rich Texans involved in politics, a list of names that includes brothers Herman and George Brown, Dan Root, members of the Hunt family, Louis Beecherl, Fred Baron, Bernard Rapoport and a few dozen more, who gave big to both parties. They weren’t the only sources of political money in their times, but they were often the most important ones.
Mr. Perry attracted wide attention as a national donor during Mr. Bush’s re-election campaign, in 2004, when he gave $4.4 million to a group known as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for its attack ads accusing Mr. Kerry of overstating his military accomplishments in Vietnam and discrediting his former comrades in arms.
. . . Mr. Rove’s causes and candidates often benefited from Mr. Perry’s money. They worked together in Texas in the 1980s on limiting the liability of corporations in civil lawsuits, an effort known as tort reform.
Mr. Rove once said that Mr. Perry had contributed to Republicans in Texas when few others were “willing to write checks to Republican candidates.”
In 1986, Mr. Perry served as campaign treasurer for the successful campaign for governor of William Clements, a Republican, while Mr. Rove was a political consultant.
“He plays big, and he plays often,” Bill Miller, a Texas lobbyist, said of Mr. Perry in an interview with The Texas Tribune in 2010. “ ‘Small’ is not a word that’s in his vocabulary.”
Rove tapped Bob Perry as a major donor for his super PAC, American Crossroads, in 2010 and 2012. In 2004, Perry was also one of three major contributors who launched Swift Boat Veterans, a group that targeted Democrat John Kerry and helped elect George W. Bush to a second term in the White House.
But Perry’s role as godfather of Texas political giving began years earlier as part of a small network of GOP donors who methodically backed Republican candidates in down-ballot races with hopes of eventually ending the long Democratic dominance in Texas.
“Karl Rove laid the groundwork. His donor list developed in Texas was the base when Bush first ran for president,” said Craig McDonald of Texans for Public Justice, a nonprofit group that tracks campaign fundraising. “What we see now with the super PACs is that federal elections have been Texasized.”
Perry was one of the earliest contributors to the GOP effort to turn Texas red.
When Bill Clements ran in 1978 to become the first Republican governor in Texas in a century, Perry sent the campaign committee a check for $5,000 — a large sum at the time in state political races.
“Prior to 1978, all the big business money was going to conservative Democrats,” said Jim Francis, who was Clements’ campaign manager. “When Clements won the governorship in ’78, it became acceptable to give money to Republican candidates who might have a chance of winning.”
Clements won, then lost four year later. When he ran again in 1986, Perry was a major donor in a campaign where Rove headed direct-mail fundraising.
