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Governor speaks out on marital rumors
In first public comments on talk that's traveled around the state and nation, Perry says his marriage is fine and castigates those who spread rumors online.
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By Ken Herman
© 2004 AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Thursday, March 4, 2004
Gov. Rick Perry, speaking out for the first time about a widely circulated rumor about his personal life and professional future, said Thursday that he has been targeted by "an obvious, orchestrated effort" launched by political foes.
For almost two months, variations of the rumors have swirled around the Capitol, been repeated among friends across the state, been investigated by reporters from around the nation, been gossiped about in Washington and been posted on Web sites that harbor political ill will toward Republicans in general and Perry in particular.
In almost all versions, the main theme has been the same: Perry, caught in an act of infidelity, is headed for divorce from wife Anita, who has moved out of the Governor's Mansion. The rumors also say Perry will resign.
Perry said it's all false.
"This thing got up to a critical mass," he said, acknowledging that the rumors have spread far wider than he has ever seen political gossip travel.
"I don't think a rumor can just get to critical mass by itself," he said. "I think you have to have a well-thought-out, organized effort to disseminate that kind of information and keep it going day after day after day after day."
After weeks of declining to have Perry personally address the rumors, the governor's staff approached the American-Statesman this week and said Perry wanted to respond. In mid-February, Perry referred questions about an interview on the topic to press secretary Kathy Walt. At the time, she said Perry would not respond to unsubstantiated rumor.
Throughout, the governor's staff has branded the rumors as false. Perry himself denied them on camera when asked about them Feb. 17 by a San Antonio television station, which didn't air the question or Perry's response.
Perry's previous strategy of doing or saying nothing that would promote the spread of the rumors into mainstream publications changed this week as he decided to mount a counteroffensive against the political foes he blames. At the Governor's Mansion on Thursday, his 54th birthday, Perry said he decided to speak out to shine light on what he sees as a dangerous new political trend.
Political rumormongering, perhaps as old as politics itself, takes on new, more dangerous proportions when fed through the instant information machine now available to anybody with a computer, Perry said, noting that e-mails and Web sites have been used to perpetuate the rumors.
"It is a cancer on the political process that is deadly," he said of Internet-driven political rumors.
Perry said the rumors have come back to him through friends, from his son, Griffin, who heard them at Vanderbilt University, and from daughter Sydney, a student at a local high school.
The rumors also have been a hot topic on the local cocktail circuit, and at social and political events.
"They are not correct in any shape, form or fashion," Perry said. "These are irresponsible. They're salacious. They're hurtful to my family."
Perry said the rumors have not affected his job performance but have been particularly troubling to his friends. Perry's press staff has said it has fielded calls about the rumors for about two months.
He said he decided to speak out, knowing it would invite further publication of the rumors, because "this is a phenomenon that if it's not analyzed and, I think, exposed for the vicious nature that it encompasses, could be devastating to public service, to people coming into this business or running for office."
"I think there is a very, very extraordinary story here about the anatomy of a smear campaign, and I think it's appropriate for the mainstream media to expose this," he said.
Perry declined to point fingers at a particular political foe — and he has some in both parties — but had harsh criticism for Texas Democratic Party Chairman Charles Soechting, who referred to the rumors at a recent political rally.
On Feb. 24 in Houston, at an event featuring then-presidential candidate John Edwards, Soechting was one of several speakers called on to kill time as Edwards ran late.
Several hundred people were in the cafeteria at Houston's Stephen F. Austin High School as Soechting, after making generic political rally comments, referred to an event earlier that day in which a dozen people, carrying signs such as "It's OK to be gay, guv," stood outside the Governor's Mansion and encouraged Perry to address rumors about his sexuality.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Soechting told the Democratic audience in Houston, "I ask you to stay tuned. There's a lot of things happening in Texas. For those of you that know, there's a lot of stuff happening at the state Capitol. And you're going to be excited when you learn more and more about it. So I wish I could tell you more, but I think if you've got someone sitting next to you (who) knows what's going on, just get them to whisper it to you.
"How many of you all know? Raise your hands up. That's right. They had a rally up there in support of the governor today. Some of his friends said, 'Come out, Rick, and we'll support you.' Anyway, it's a good time for us," Soechting said.
Perry said he expects political debate from Soechting. But he excoriated the Democratic chairman for talking publicly about "uncorroborated filth."
"Yes, I think he crosses the line of everything decent. I think he crosses the line of good behavior," Perry said, adding, "I don't think that was taught in anybody's manners class that it's acceptable behavior to go spread those types of malicious and hurtful rumors for no other reason than to further some political objective.
"I understand people's desire to pass on salacious rumors in a private setting," Perry said. "He took it to a new level, I would suggest to you, knowing there were TV cameras and knowing there was a reporter from a mainstream newspaper there."
Told of Perry's comments, Soechting said: "What crosses the line of everything decent is the utter hypocrisy of Rick Perry injecting his mean-spirited politics into everyone else's personal life while insisting his own personal life is off-limits.
"What is truly indecent is the state of children's health care, public schools and insurance rates under Perry's regime," Soechting said in a statement issued by the Texas Democratic Party.
Perry said anyone trafficking in rumors is fair game for criticism.
"In the last eight years, it's been difficult for our political opponents to defeat us at the ballot box. I guess this is the new mode of attack," Perry said. "I think it's inappropriate. I think it has great potential for backlash for those who start it."
'Ever-evolving rumor'
Until Thursday, Perry's only public response to the rumors came Feb. 17 after a political event at Bexar County GOP headquarters. After Perry fielded a few questions at a lectern, a reporter for KSAT-TV approached Perry, camera rolling, and asked about the presidential election.
The reporter followed up: "I also understand that there are rumors about your wife and whether there is talk of separation, talk of divorce. Do you have any comment on that?"
Perry responded: "What rumors are you making reference to?"
The reporter said, "I'm making reference to rumors that have been coming out about your wife leaving you, and I wanted to know whether you had a statement on that."
Perry: "Totally and absolutely false."
Reporter: "And do you have any plans to leave the political phase for the private sector?"
Perry: "Totally and absolutely false."
Perry then left the room as Walt, his press secretary, ripped into the reporter for asking "totally irresponsible" questions about a rumor.
The TV station did not air the Perry responses, and newspapers that had reporters on hand, including the American-Statesman, opted not to publish Perry's responses to unsubstantiated rumors.
The American-Statesman, like other major news organizations, had looked into the rumors, found no evidence to substantiate them and, until Perry requested to be interviewed about them, had published no mention of them.
"We don't report rumors. We report facts," American-Statesman Editor Rich Oppel said. "However, should a public official choose to address rumors about himself, as Governor Perry did in this instance, that is a news event worthy of coverage."
Though the rumors went unreported in daily newspapers, at least two media outlets recently addressed them.
The Austin Chronicle, a local weekly, reported about the rumors last week and noted that it found "no truth to any of them, whatsoever."
Capitol journalist Harvey Kronberg, publisher of the Quorum Report political newsletter, wrote last week in a report titled "Enough is Enough" that "we have not been able to find even a scintilla of corroboration for any of the rumors."
"And since the rumors change every day, the matter is now simply silly," Kronberg wrote, adding: "Besides having devolved into an exercise in tedium, the ever-evolving rumor is becoming insulting. It presumes that a voracious and adversarial Capitol press corps is asleep at the wheel."
Kronberg continued, "The Jerry Springer mentality that promoted the relentless nonsense of the last six weeks represents the worst side of politics and demeans all of us who participate."
Perry, in no uncertain terms, said there is no problem in his marriage.
"I love my family. I have probably got about as good a marriage as anybody's ever had. This is the first girl I ever had a date with in my life. We dated for 16 years and we married and we started a family, and Anita has been about as perfect a wife as anybody could ever ask for," he said.
The governor noted that as a politician, his life has been thoroughly reviewed.
"I'm a big, tough guy, and I have run now for four times against some pretty darned good political opponents, people who have probably gone through my background about as well as you can go through a background and written everything about me, investigated everything about my life from the time I was born until 15 minutes ago," Perry said. "And I put up with all of that and understand it. I go do my job every day. This is like a bombing mission for me. The missiles come up on a regular basis. I know they're going to come up."
Anita Perry on Thursday declined to comment on the record about the rumors. She joked privately and amiably about it after her husband's interview with the American-Statesman.
"Look," Perry joked upon seeing his wife walk in, "she's back again."
Perry said he knows of no fact, no situation that could have given rise to the rumors. Several versions included alleged specifics about the time and date that a moving van pulled up at the Governor's Mansion to help Anita Perry move out.
"They move furniture when there are big events, but I can't tell you in the last six weeks that there has been a moving van here," the governor said. "There are big trucks that move in and out of here. Did I throw her through the front balcony and they're having to fix that? That's the idiocy of the rumors. It changes daily."
No evidence offered
In mounting a counteroffensive, Perry would like to see political foes suffer if they helped spread the rumors. For weeks, American-Statesman employees have had the rumors repeated to them by anonymous letter writers, cab drivers, hairdressers and Democratic operatives who have passed along what they claimed to have heard.
Frequently, reporters were offered specifics that could not be verified: The day Anita Perry would file for divorce, the time a moving van was seen at the mansion, the "draft" of an official report referring to indiscretions by the governor.
To date, no piece of tangible evidence has become public.
In a recent incarnation, forwarded to 18 recipients by someone who got it from "one of her friends who's in-the-know politically," an oft-repeated version continued to make the rounds:
"Perry's wife has taken a job with a lobbying group, the first sitting Texas First Lady to ever accept employment while her husband is governor," the e-mail said, incorrectly classifying the job but accurately reporting the first-ever status of Anita Perry's fund-raising job at the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault. "She either has filed a divorce petition today in Haskell County or else will be doing so in the next 48 hours."
"The big rumor is that Perry will resign as governor within the next few weeks to accept the executive directorship of the American Automobile Association," the e-mail reported, getting wrong a rumor detail that had Perry going to work for the American Automobile Manufacturers Association. Perry's staff, in trying to track down the source of the rumors and who is helping spread them, has collected some bits of cyber-evidence, including a lengthy online column posted Feb. 21 by Jackson Thoreau of Dallas, who bills his writing as "political and social commentary with a liberal bias."
Thoreau addressed the rumors and wrote: "While I can't take credit for starting this Perry rumor, I have helped it along. I see this campaign as part of my duty and my contribution to restore some legitimacy and sanity to the White House."
Variations of the rumor have been perpetuated on Web sites that publish unsubstantiated rumors that the mainstream media won't touch. Among those that have mentioned the rumor are the Burnt Orange Report, BuzzFlash and MadLife.
For Web site operators, whose success is measured by "hits," it's been the kind of hot topic that attracts visitors.
For the Burnt Orange Report ("News, Politics and Fun from Deep in the Heart of Texas"), publication of the Perry rumors has meant unprecedented attention.
According to the site, the Burnt Orange Report is published by University of Texas students active in Democratic politics.
The site had its first posting about the Perry rumors on Feb. 13 under the headline "Rumors circulating about Gov. Perry."
"I've been hearing some interesting things from multiple sources about the marital relations of Gov. Rick Perry in the past day or two," the Web site's Byron L. wrote. "If anyone knows what I'm talking about and has information about the rumors, drop me a line."
Five days later, the Burnt Orange Report noted that it had received more visits in one day than it had in all of January. The traffic was credited to another Web site, atrios.blogspot.com, that linked to "my post on the rumors circulating about Governor Rick Perry."
"We'll see if something breaks in the mainstream media about that story. There's so many rumors about it. I'd be very surprised if nothing eventually hits the mainstream media, but you never know," Byron L. wrote.
On Feb. 20, he noted his distaste for "reporting on rumors, scandals and speculation, but I find it hard to believe that this is all just an accident."
"In the past several days I've received a barrage of e-mails with information on this story. Today, I received an e-mail from a news station that said that they are following details of a possible affair by Rick Perry but are waiting for the story to hit the AP wire," Byron L. wrote.
According to a biography on the Burnt Orange Report, Byron L. is Byron LaMasters, a 21-year-old "pragmatic progressive Democrat" raised in suburban north Dallas now studying government at UT and active in University Democrats, including a stint as its president. Eventually, on Feb. 27, Byron L. told his readers: "I posted on the Perry rumors because I thought that there was legitimate cause to warrant investigation by the mainstream media, I still don't know if there is any truth or not to the rumors and I was very clear in all of my posts on the issue that the scandals regarding Rick Perry were only rumors."
"I've received multiple e-mails over the past week from people claiming to know something or able to prove something regarding the scandal, but I haven't received anything that has proven the suggested rumors," he noted. "I've certainly appreciated the increased traffic and I hope that it continues, but if you're coming back here to see me post more on the Perry rumors, in all likelihood, it won't be happening unless something big is uncovered by the mainstream media."
Contacted Thursday about Perry's comments, LaMasters had little to say.
"I basically said all along these are rumors," he said. "I think everything I've written on my Web site speaks for itself."
Perry had no sympathy for anyone using a we-said-it-was-just-a-rumor defense.
"What's wrong is they have been a Web site that has denigrated the political process, in my opinion, to a great degree," he said. "If the future of politics is this, the future is dismal and dim for Texas, for America, for the political process."
kherman@statesman.com; (512) 445-1718 |
