Rick Perry’s Ranch keeps Texas Governor Backpedaling

Stephanie Condon

Republican presidential candidate and Texas governor Rick Perry spent Sunday on damage control after a stinging report in the Washington Post tying Perry to a racial slur used at a Texas hunting camp his family once leased.

The Perry campaign and some Republican commentators downplayed the story, saying Perry was not associated with the use of the name “Niggerhead” at the Throckmorton County property. The word was painted on a large rock at the entrance of the camp, but Perry said he and his father quickly painted over the word when they started using the property and noticed it in the 1980’s. Some of the people interviewed by the Washington Post gave different accounts, with one former ranch worker saying he saw the word as late as 2008.

Even if the Perry campaign is right about the story, however, it keeps Perry backpedaling as his campaign continues to falter. Almost immediately after bursting into the race and seizing frontrunner status in August, Perry was left defending controversial statements, weak debate performances and overall questions of electability.

Perry’s ties to the ranch were criticized over the weekend by Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, the businessman who in recent days has stolen some of Perry’s thunder and the only African American vying for the Republican nomination. Cain said Perry was insensitive for not acting sooner to remove the offensive name from the camp.

As conservative voters once intrigued by Perry turn to Cain (as evidenced by his victory in a Florida straw poll) and moderates pine for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to get into the race, liberals suggest Perry’s campaign is unraveling.

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“Even though he’s running in a party whose primary [does] not have a substantial African-American vote, the average American does not want to be identified to such racial insensitivity,” liberal Rev. Al Sharpton told Politico.

David Axelrod, senior strategist for the Obama re-election campaign, declined to comment specifically about the ranch to the New York Times, but he said it illustrates the challenges Perry and other candidates face.

“Campaigns are like an MRI for the soul — whoever you are, eventually people find out,” he told the Times. “Time will tell whether this comes to reflect him or not.”

White House Calls Republican Rick Perry’s Niggerhead Offensive

The White House says the name of a hunting camp once leased by Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s family is “clearly offensive.” But press secretary Jay Carney says Perry evidently thinks so, too, and he passed up a chance to criticize the GOP presidential hopeful over the racial slur.

Carney was asked at the White House press briefing Monday about the controversy over the name, Niggerhead, that was painted on a rock outside the Texas camp. Perry has said it’s an offensive name and that once he saw it, sometime in 1983 or 1984, he raised it with his parents and the word was painted over.

Carney said the name was clearly offensive but that from what he’s seen, Perry shares that opinion, and that’s all he could say about it.

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