If only navy Seals voted, Rick Perry would win the White House in a landslide.
On Saturday, in a hotel ballroom in an Iowa town not coincidentally named Perry, addressing a mix of conservatives and bikers, the former Texas governor touted his bona fides as an advocate for veterans. Perry, who declared his 2016 campaign this week, held his own charity bike ride to raise money to for an organisation that provides service dogs for wounded combat veterans, in conjunction with Iowa senator Joni Ernst’s “roast and ride”.
While Ernst and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker rode on Harleys together in Des Moines, Perry held a lower-key event without national press. Attendees were a mix of loyal Republican activists and bikers in leather vests who sported tattoos from an era before body modification was considered hip.
The result was a mixed crowd. Some, like Dwayne Harms of Anamosa, Iowa, who wore a leather jacket over overalls and a hat stating he was a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, hadn’t realized the event had any political affiliations. An independent fed up with politics, he said he wouldn’t have come had he known so.
Harms simply thought the cause was important. Because of his disabilities, he wasn’t riding – he didn’t feel comfortable riding his “trike” all day, he said. Instead, he brought his pickup truck and tool kit to support fellow riders. Others of his ilk simply skipped out on the events and stood outside by their bikes, smoking and swapping stories.
The event had plenty of politicos, though. Tea Party activist Ken Crow raved to the Guardian that Perry was the only conservative candidate who could unite the party and win a general election. Perry’s newly minted Iowa state chair, long-time conservative activist Sam Clovis, spoke to the crowd. But the politics was always understated and the event was frequently interrupted by service dogs barking and the low rumble of revving engines outside.
Perry took time to recognize each member of traveling troupe of veterans – even the singing opening act was a former Seal named Pete Scobell, of whom Perry joked: “If any of you have watched [the Tom Hanks film] about Captain Phillips in Somalia, he was a little involved at that, let’s just leave at that.”
Perry introduced Scobell alongside a variety of other former veterans, many of whom were ex-Seals including Marcus Luttrell of Lone Survivor fame and a Medal of Honor winner who wore his award on stage. The veterans seemed visibly moved and far more invested in his candidacy than the kind of human props candidates usually put on the stage.
The Texan insisted that if elected, his first priority would be those who served in the armed forces. Perry told the crowd: “If you elect me your president every day, every day, I will go to that Oval Office and I’ll ask chief of staff and the secretary of the veterans administration, ‘Are you getting everything done that you’re supposed to do for the veterans of this country?’”
Perry was not the only Republican candidate in Iowa this weekend to make a veterans-oriented pitch to potential caucus-goers. South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, an air force veteran himself, is doing the same.
But Perry seemed to be making more inroads – the former Texas governor’s appeal seemed far more focused to the rank and file. At a Graham event in West Des Moines on Friday, colonels and generals were amply represented.
The question is whether Perry’s patriotism-laden appeal will have success with a broader demographic. He will definitely do well among those voters for whom ex-navy Seals are celebrities. But in a crowded Republican field and after stumbling in 2012, he needs to cast a much broader net to win the nomination.
