Website compiles 15-plus years of reporting on Texas Gov. Rick Perry

The Austin Chronicle is proud to announce The Perry Trap, a comprehensive collection spanning a decade-and-a-half of original reporting on Texas Governor Rick Perry. Perry is widely expected to announce a presidential run this weekend.

Enter The Perry Trap at www.austinchronicle.com/perry

“Texas Gov. Rick Perry is now a national player, expected to take the stage in the GOP presidential campaign any day now (as of mid-August), and he’s making his rep as a coyote-shooting, Christian conservative, Tea Party sympathizer,” writes Chronicle News Editor Michael King. “All of those roles are accurate, as far as they go, but Texans (and The Austin Chronicle) have followed Perry’s rise from a state House Democratic backbencher, to a turncoat Republican Agriculture Commissioner and Lt. Governor, to the man-in-waiting to favorite GOP son George W. Bush. And at each stage, the ambitious politician, slicker’n spit on a griddle, has kept his eye on the main chance and risen by his willingness to be more calculating and ruthless than his colleagues.”

The Perry Trap highlights several passages in Perry’s career that he’d prefer you not notice, including:

How in the 1990s, Ag Commissioner Perry’s campaign to kill off farm pests almost destroyed cotton farming in the Rio Grande Valley

How the recent execution of Mexican national Humberto Leal Jr. wasn’t the first time Perry risked an international incident in his rush to the killing chamber

What his big campaign donors – including Enron – got out of his time in office

How Perry worked behind the scenes to block hate crime legislation

How, despite the Texas “economic miracle,” the state leads the country in uninsured children and citizens

News Editor Michael King continues:

“In the last decade, Perry has emerged from Bush’s shadow to become the longest-serving governor in state history — cutting property taxes while underfunding state schools and health care, denouncing federal spending while balancing the state budget with federal dollars, promoting corporate giveaways and ‘tort deform’ over all other state priorities, fighting environmental protection all over the state, and outstripping his predecessor in maintaining the Texas capital punishment death train. The Chronicle has reported Perry’s rise and regime from the beginning, and we’ve collected much of that coverage in ‘The Perry Trap’ — a reader’s handy anthology to the ins and outs, ups and downs, of the Wannabe President from Paint Creek.”

Visit The Perry Trap at www.austinchronicle.com/perry. And follow @ThePerryTrap on Twitter for links to dozens of individual stories, and more Perry-centric news as it breaks.

BOOKERS: Chronicle journalists who have covered Gov. Perry and the Texas Capitol for years are available for television and radio appearances. Contact The Austin Chronicle at 512-454-5766.

---

The Austin Chronicle celebrates 30 years as Austin’s independent news source, covering music, film, arts, and politics, with more than 194,800 readers a week in the greater Austin metropolitan area. The Chronicle is the eloquent and incisive voice of the city, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. The Austin Chronicle is available at over 1,900 locations every Thursday. For more information, go to www.austinchronicle.com.