Perry Campaign: Double Duties and Revolving Doors

Mark Miner, one of Gov. Rick Perry's new campaign hires, shows how not to control your own message (Hint: He's not the one in the chicken suit.) (Image courtesy of Burnt Orange Report)

Should we be expecting a large number of resignations from the Governor's Office on Tuesday? After all, several current members of Gov. Rick Perry's official staff are joining his campaign staff. And obviously the governor's office would not want any implication out there that he is managing his presidential run out of his capitol offices.

Let's go through that list, announced on Friday, shall we?

Communications director: Ray Sullivan. Also Perry's chief of staff, current state salary $179,412.

State press director: Katherine Cesinger, also Perry's press secretary, current salary $72,500.

National press secretary: Mark Miner, also the governor's communications director. The wannabe mini-Rove is a perfect example of Perry's belief in personal loyalty, as his survival of the famous chicken dance press event disaster shows.

Campaign manager: Rob Johnson, also senior advisor in the governor's office.

Those are all current staff and, while it is legal for them to pull this double duty, it does not look good. However, Texas reporters have got used to this permanent campaign style, because it's been standard operating procedure for years.

As for the rest of the staff, it's basically a revolving door of old Perry loyalists.

Chief strategist: David Carney, a man so synonymous with Perry that when he went to work for Newt Gingrich's abortive campaign, that was taken as a sign that Goodhair was not running.

Policy and strategy director: Deirdre Delisi, because what's a Perry campaign without a Delisi? Perry's former chief of staff, who he inexplicably shuffled over to the Texas Department of Transportation in 2008 (a move that Sen. Glen Hegar, R-Katy, decried as the appointment of "a political 'yes man' with little or no practical experience involving transportation issues other than carrying out the Governor's myopic vision.") Expect people to pay close attention to whether any campaign cash goes to Delisi Communications, the firm run by Delisi, her husband Ted and her mother-in-law and former state rep Diane.

Deputy communications director: Eric Bearse, the governor's former communications director who also helped run Perry's pray-for-votes event the Response, and was connected to the peculiar way the Green Party got ballot access last year. Bearse's specialty is going negative against Democrats and fellow Republicans, as he showed when he was attached to Travis County GOPer Rep. Paul Workman's campaign last year.

Political director: Wayne Hamilton, former executive director of the Republican Party of Texas and another Response organizer. Not that prayerpalooza was his first stab at melding elections and evangelism. In 2005 he was linked to the Texas Restoration Project, a group backing Prop. 2's constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

Travel press secretary: Robert Black, another long-time Perry associate who pulled double duty in 2007 as press wrangler for both the governor's office and Texans for Rick Perry.