Summary
We’re going to wrap up our live blog coverage of the day in Texas politics, which turned out to be the day in national politics. Here’s a bit of what happened:
- In a speech in Houston, Hillary Clinton accused Republicans of mounting a “crusade” against voting rights and called for mandatory voter registration and early voting.
- In an air hangar in Dallas, Rick Perry, the former governor, announced a 2016 presidential run after years of intensive training in obscurity following his failed 2012 bid. (Actually he was governor for most of that time and rather transparent about his meetings with policy advisers and other campaign preparations.)
You can read our news story about the Perry campaign announcement here:
Speaking from an airplane hangar outside of Dallas, Perry positioned himself as a humbled man whose experience would best that of his likely primary opponents – namely anyone who goes by the title “Senator”.
“Leadership is not a speech on the Senate floor. It’s not what you say. It’s what you have done,” Perry said, a thinly veiled jab he has used in recent months to question whether a trio of first-term senators also running for the GOP nomination are ready to serve in the nation’s highest office.
Houston, Texas pic.twitter.com/cEzwXW8uFC
— Tom Dart (@Tom_Dart) June 4, 2015
And here’s our full coverage of Clinton’s speech:
Hillary Clinton attacked potential Republican presidential rivals for backing restrictive election ID laws and called for automatic voter registration in a combative speech in Houston on Thursday.
Setting a tone that had not previously been seen in her campaign for the Democratic nomination, Clinton lambasted former Texas governor Rick Perry – who announced his bid for the White House in Dallas earlier in the day – for signing what is widely viewed as the nation’s most restrictive voter ID law.
Updated
Sounds not particularly good
WASHINGTON (AP) — US officials say government assessing massive breach of federal personnel data
— Josh Lederman (@joshledermanAP) June 4, 2015
Update: it looks like the Office of Personnel Management, the huge human resources hub for the federal government.
Offc of Personnel Mgmt sez it will notify 4 million current/former fed employees their personal info may have been breached in April hack
— Julie Davis (@juliehdavis) June 4, 2015
Updated
I’ve transcribed Clinton’s full comments attacking her potential Republican rivals over voting rights. “What part of democracy are they afraid of?” she asked:
Update: video:
Unfortunately today, there are people who offer themselves to be leaders whose actions have undercut this fundamental American principle.
Here in Texas, former governor Rick Perry signed a law that a federal court said was actually written with the purpose of discriminating against minority voters. He applauded when the Voting Rights Act was gutted, and said the lost protections were outdated and unnecessary.
But governor Perry is hardly alone in his crusade against voting rights. In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker cut back early voting, and signed legislation that would make it harder for college students to vote. In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie vetoed legislation to extend early voting.
And in Florida, when Jeb Bush was governor, state authorities conducted a deeply flawed purge of voters before the presidential election in 2000. Thankfully in 2004, a plan to purge even more voters was headed off.
So, today Republicans are systematically and deliberately trying to stop millions of American citizens from voting. What part of democracy are they afraid of?
Updated
Tom Dart, in the arena at Texas Southern, registers a very enthusiastic crowd response.
Three standing ovations for Hillary so far. Crowd loving her voting rights proposals. Also, smattering of boos when she mentioned Rick Perry.
Clinton wraps speech
“We refuse to allow our country and this generation of leaders to slow or reverse our long march toward a more perfect union,” Clinton says.
Clinton brings down the house. Big applause.
Clinton: “We need a Supreme Court that cares more about the right to vote of a person than the right to buy an election of a corporation.”
Clinton calls for automatic voter registration
Clinton calls for automatic voter registration when people turn 18. She also calls for a 20-day early voting period.
“The system we have is a relic from an earlier age that rely on a blizzard of paper,” she says.
“When you move, your registration should move with you.”
Clinton attacks Republican rivals
In her first direct attack on Republican rivals in the 2016 presidential race, Hillary Clinton called on GOP candidates needed to stop pretending there is an “epidemic of election fraud and start explaining why they’re so scared of letting citizens have their say.”
“Here in Texas, former Governor Rick Perry... he applauded when the voting rights act was gutted,” Clinton said. “In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker cut back early voting. In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie vetoed legislation to extend early voting.
“And in Florida, when Jeb Bush was governor, state officials undertook a deeply flawed purge of voters before the presidential election in 2000.”
The pointed attacks on her potential rivals followed sharp criticism by Clinton of a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that retired a core section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, allowing states to change their voting laws that previously had been required to undergo review. The court ruling had “eviscerated a key provision of the voting rights act,” Clinton said. “Its heart has been ripped out.”
“What is happening is a sweeping effort to disenfranchise people of color, poor people and young people from one end of the country to the other,” Clinton said.
“This kind of disparity does not happen by accident,” Clinton says.
She quotes her husband in what she calls “an old Arkansas saying.”
You find a turtle on a fencepost, you did not get there on its own. Well all of these problems with voting just did not happen by accident.
It’s wrong. It’s wrong to try to hinder, prevent, inhibit Americans’ rights to vote.
Clinton warns that hundreds of thousands of voters in Texas could be disenfranchised, but many of the worst abuses “happen under the radar,” “like when authorities scrap poll locations or election dates.”
“Minority voters are more likely than white voters to wait in long lines at polling places. They are also more likely to vote at polling places with insufficient voting machines,” Clinton says.
Clinton: Voting rights act 'heart has been ripped out'
Clinton says the Supreme Court “eviscerated a key provision of the voting rights act” in 2013 and ‘its heart has been ripped out.’
What is happening is a sweeping effort to disenfranchise people of color, poor people and young people from one end of the country to the other.
Clinton says she is speaking up for “the student who waits hours, the grandmother whose driver’s licensed has expired, the father who has paid his debt” to society but who still can’t vote.
Clinton says Jordan, the award’s namesake, was a staunch advocate of the Voting Rights act, which had enabled her election as an African-American representative from Texas.
Like every woman who has run for national office in the last four decades, I stand her on the shoulders of Barbara Jordan and so does the entire country.
Here’s Clinton. The medallion is draped over her neck. She says she is honored to be at Texas Southern and calls it a “great treat.”
“This institution is the living legacy of... the long struggle for civil rights,” she says.
Clinton says Jackson Lee is a tireless champion of her constituents.
“She neglected to tell you the most important news coming out of the Congress. She is finally a member of the grandmothers’ club.”
Clinton says she has been a member herself for about eight months.
Representative Jackson Lee, who has been named “meanest member” by Congressional staffers, explains that the Barbara Jordan medallion honors someone “whose achievements are an inspiration” around the world. “We hope it will inspire women and girls in developing nations,” Jackson Lee says.
She says the first pick of an honoree was simple.
Clinton will be awarded the first annual Barbara Jordan gold medallion, to honor the congresswoman and civil rights leader from Texas. Jordan’s sister, Rosemary McGowan, is sitting next to Clinton onstage, as is Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas.
.@HillaryClinton on Voting Rights @TexasSouthern – LIVE on C-SPAN http://t.co/Z4rn383ero pic.twitter.com/7QQMEJAN2w
— CSPAN (@cspan) June 4, 2015
Updated
The singer is nailing the national anthem. Clinton is smiling widely. O’er the land of the free--hee! The crowd likes it. Applause.
Clinton event begins
There’s the candidate, wearing bold Republican red.
“The VIP section is tightly packed,” Tom Dart writes, “but up in the stand there are plenty of empty seats. Perhaps a thousand are in attendance.”
Here goes the national anthem.
Tom Dart, from inside the basketball arena at Texas Southern University, notes that the Clinton event is lagging by about 15 minutes. The live band has apparently run out of hits – they’ve switched over to prerecorded blues.
Rick Santorum, the Republican presidential candidate, is heading to Texas tomorrow. He is scheduled to receive a “key to the city” in Roanoke, Texas, according to his press office.
Roanoke is just north of Ft Worth and only 30 miles from Dallas. Handy place to have a key to.
As we wait for Clinton, you can read Ed Pilkington’s coverage of how Texas’ voter ID laws disenfranchised one lifelong Texan:
Eric Kennie is a Texan. He is as Texan as the yucca plants growing outside his house. So Texan that he has never, in his 45 years, travelled outside the state. In fact, he has never even left his native city of Austin. “No sir, not one day. I was born and raised here, only place I know is Austin.”
You might think that more than qualifies Kennie as a citizen of the Lone Star state, entitling him to its most basic rights such as the ability to vote. Not so, according to the state of Texas and its Republican political leadership. On 4 November, when America goes to the polls in the midterm elections, for the first time in his adult life Eric Kennie will not be allowed to participate.
Read the full piece here.
Clinton to call for 20-day early voting period
Clinton plans to call for a blanket 20-day early voting period, the Washington Post reported:
Clinton will call for that standard in remarks Thursday in Texas about voting rights, her campaign said. She will also criticize what her campaign calls deliberate restrictions on voting in several states, including Texas. [...]
“This is, I think, a moment when we should be expanding the franchise,” Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said in an interview. “What we see in state after state is this effort by conservatives to restrict the right to vote.”
Read the full piece here.
The Hillary Clinton event is starting. That ensemble band Tom Dart took a picture of earlier is good. Sounds like Sousa.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio seems not to share Rick Perry’s clarity on the question of what the right thing would have been to do in Iraq. Perry said withdrawal was a disaster.
Last month Jeb Bush struggled and backtracked on the question of whether he would have invaded Iraq in 2003 “knowing what we know now,” and Rubio gave a difficult to parse answer to the same question.
Rubio seemed to stumble again Thursday, in an appearance on Fox News caught by Hunter Walker of Business Insider:
It’s not nation-building. We are assisting them in building their nation,” Rubio said of his vision for Iraq.
Tom Dart is in Houston, getting ready to watch Hillary Clinton talk about voting rights.
“The Waltrip High School band is already warming up for Clinton’s appearance in an hour,” Tom reports, “with some jaunty oompah music as the basketball arena at Texas Southern University slowly fills up”:
Perry: Iraq withdrawal did grave harm
Asserting that “America had won the war” in Iraq until President Barack Obama squandered victory, presidential hopeful Rick Perry said Thursday that the failure of the White House to secure an agreement that would have left a substantial number of US troops in the country after 2011 was the most harmful decision US policymakers had made in the region – more harmful even than the decision to invade in 2003.
“No decision, no decision has done more harm than the president’s withdrawal of American troops from Iraq,” Perry said at an event to announce his presidential bid. “Let no one be mistaken, leaders of both parties have made grave mistakes in Iraq. But in January of 2009, when Barack Obama became commander in chief, Iraq had been largely pacified – America had won the war. But our president failed to secure the peace.”
The Iraqi parliament rejected an attempt by prime minister Nouri al-Maliki and the United States to secure a status of forces agreement on a US troop presence in the country after 2011. Close observers of the conflict including Colin Kahl, a former US deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, have argued that, absent such an agreement, it was practically impossible to leave US troops in place.
“Unfortunately, Iraqi domestic politics made it impossible to reach a deal,” Kahl wrote last year.
Perry, who spoke with dozens of combat veterans standing behind him on a stage, called Obama’s policy a “national disgrace” and accused the Obama administration of “political gamesmanship and dishonesty.”
“How callous it seems now, as cities once secured with American blood are now being taken by America’s enemies, all because of a campaign slogan,” Perry said.
Violence in Iraq fell sharply from 2007–2009, after Sunni militants began to coordinate more closely with the US military and the US added troops in the 2007 “surge.” The American public was evenly split in 2008 on the question of whether to keep troops in Iraq, according to Pew Research.
Updated
Perry has switched to interview mode.
From prez announcement to interview with @seanhannity, #RickPerry pic.twitter.com/h05NeVt38B
— Rick Jervis (@MrRJervis) June 4, 2015
Clinton to call for more early voting
Hillary Clinton is scheduled to speak in Houston in about two hours. Tom Dart will be there for the Guardian.
The Clinton campaign is encouraging supporters to read up on her speech, which will address threats on voting rights and voter disenfranchisement.
Prep for Hillary's speech this afternoon. Read and share this preview: http://t.co/DLW13rlMUA pic.twitter.com/U2F5n4lq80
— The Briefing (@TheBriefing2016) June 4, 2015
That AP story begins:
Hillary Rodham Clinton is calling for an expansion of early voting and pushing back against Republican-led efforts to restrict voting access, laying down a marker on voting rights at the start of her presidential campaign.
The Democratic presidential candidate is using a speech Thursday at historically black Texas Southern University to denounce voting restrictions in North Carolina, Texas, Florida and Wisconsin and to encourage states to adopt a new national standard of no fewer than 20 days of early in-person voting, including weekend and evening voting.
Clinton is plunging into a partisan debate in many statehouses, which have pitted Democrats who contend restricting voter registration aims to suppress turnout among minority and low-income voters against Republicans who say the steps are needed to prevent voter fraud. The issue is closely watched by black voters, who supported President Barack Obama in large numbers and will be an important constituency as Clinton seeks to rebuild Obama’s coalition.
Sanders ramps up in Iowa
Bernie Sanders, the Democratic candidate and progressive standard-bearer, is ramping up in Iowa, the Des Moines register reports:
“People are out ahead and we’re trying to play catch-up organizationally to give these people a vehicle to participate in the campaign,” Sanders’ campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, told The Des Moines Register on Thursday morning.
SCOOP: Bernie Sanders is scrambling to hire more staff in Iowa and open an Iowa office to keep up with popular demand http://t.co/8eVjZEWTNm
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) June 4, 2015
Perry backstage footage
Backstage before my big announcement. #Perry2016 pic.twitter.com/dMyaRbu5zM
— Rick Perry (@GovernorPerry) June 4, 2015
Here’s influential Republican political consultant Rick Wilson just now on Rick Perry. Wilson has elsewhere written off, for example, Chris Christie.
Not so Rick Perry, despite Perry’s miserable outing last time:
Five thoughts about @GovernorPerry: 1. Stellar economic record. Stellar. Best narrative, hands down on job creation as executive.
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 4, 2015
2/ He’s been putting work in since the 2012 effort. Tighter and sharper on policy, has clearly done the reading. This matters.
3/ Walks the walk on being a good guy. cf his quiet work with vets out of the spotlight. Has real compassion, not the “Spend moar!” variety.
4/ Lots of post hoc 2012 giggling by press, but he’s clearly learned lessons and focused. High hill? Sure. Serious guy? Yep.
5/ Likable. Connects with people. It matters. Other than Marco, lots of the GOP field is...prickly.
That’s going to be a pretty busy first day in the White House for Perry. He’s going to roll back all carbon caps, approve the Keystone pipeline and “rescind” any Iran nuclear deal.
Perry wraps speech
Perry says God Bless America. And it’s back to the Colt Ford remix.
The event highlighted a commitment to the military, opposition to the president’s foreign policy, Perry’s executive experience, a promise to roll back regulations and decrease taxes, and a promise to reinvent the economy for the middle class.
“We’re just a few good decisions away from unleashing growth and reviving the American dream,” Perry said.
Perry says that if anyone wonders whether there are any selfless heroes left in America, his answer is yes. He’s surrounded by them. The veterans onstage behind him.
Perry: 'show me, don't tell me'
Perry doesn’t talk about his support for immigration reform but he does say, “If you elect me your president, I will secure that border.”
“Homeland Security begins with border security. The most basic compact between a president and the people is to keep a country safe,” Perry says.
Then he pivots to Iran. If elected, Perry says, his first act would be to “rescind any agreement with Iran that legitimizes their quest to get a nuclear weapon.”
We have seen what happens when we elect a president based on media acclaim instead of accomplishment...
This will be a show me, don’t tell me election.
We will ask every candidate this: when have you led? Leadership is not a speech on the Senate floor. It is not what you say, it is what you’ve done.
I’ve been tested. I’ve led the most successful state in the country.
Perry is sweating like a bikram yogi – his face is glistening – but he’s not otherwise showing any discomfort with the apparently stifling heat in that airplane hangar. The guy behind him is chugging water and looks ready to fall over though.
There’s nothing wrong with America that a hundred bucks and “a few good decisions” can’t fix, Perry says (he didn’t say the hundred bucks part):
We’re just a few good decisions away from unleashing growth and reviving the American dream.”
Then Perry gets a big cheer. He says on his first day in office, he will sign an order rolling back Obama White House regulations.
Then he will “sign an executive order approving the construction of the Keystone Pipeline.”
Perry says he will tame the national debt.
“I want to speak to the millennials just a moment,” he says. “This massive debt, it’s passed from our generation to yours. It’s breaking the social compact. You deserve better.”
Perry: 'I am running'
“Today I am running for the presidency of the United States of America.”
Earlier, Perry said the president’s “tax and regulatory policies have slammed the door shut” for the average American. Now he says millions of middle class families have given up hope.
“Yeah, it’s time for a reset,” he says. “Time to reset the relationship between government and citizen.”
Perry accuses Obama of squandering Iraq victory
Perry runs through a list of objections to White House foreign policy and then says that “no decision has done as much harm” as president Barack Obama’s decision to withdraw from Iraq instead of leaving a combat force in place.
He’s referring to the rejection by the Iraqi government of a status of forces agreement in 2009.
“Leaders of both parties have made grave mistakes in Iraq,” but the country, he says, was “pacified” in 2009.
He’s not without hope:
“We even made it through Jimmy Carter, we will make it through the Obama years.”
Anita Perry mentioned it was hot in the airplane hangar. The many people behind Perry are visibly sweating. And now you can see the sweat glistening on his forehead. That’s 4 June in Texas.
Perry is describing growing up on a cotton farm.
“There is no person more optimistic on earth than a dry land cotton farmer,” he says. It’s always going to rain tomorrow.
“The values learned on my family’s cotton farm are timeless,” Perry says. He mentions work, honesty, community.
I’ve seen American life. I’ve seen it from the red dirt of a cotton field, from a campus at College Station, from the elevated view of a C-130 cockpit. And from the governor’s office of the Texas capitol.
“I know that America has experienced great change, but what it means to be an American has never changed.”
Perry took the stage to an adapted version of Colt Ford’s “Answer to No One.” The version was adapted to include his name.
I won’t back up, I don’t back down
I’ve been raised up to stand my ground
Take my job but not my guns
Tax my check till I ain’t got none
Except for the good Lord up above
I answer to no one
I answer to no one
Updated
Rick Perry takes stage
“We need a president now perhaps more than ever who puts the American people first!” Anita Perry says. “Who puts every one of these veterans behind us first!”
And I think I might know a man who has all the right qualifications to make America great again!
Anita Perry, the candidate’s wife, takes the stage. She’s funny:
We’ve been on quite a journey, this man that I’m married to. 55 years ago, I sat by him at a piano recital. Six years after that he invited me on our first date. To his football game... 16 years later, with the blessing of my father – finally – I decided to marry him and say yes.”
Now the campaign rollout video. We’ll find a copy of that for you. Meanwhile here’s the video posted by the Perry campaign yesterday, “Where I Come From.”
How do you rate it?
'Rick Perry is true to veterans'
The introducer is describing Perry’s devotion to the military and his family’s work to help military veterans. He describes the military service of veterans in the audience.
I was immediately struck that this is a man who cares deeply about our nation’s men and women in uniform... so now imagine a president in the White House who won’t cover up the VA waiting list scandal... who has worn the uniform of our nation, who knows what it’s like to serve, and knows the cost born by families of those who do serve.
Rick Perry is true to veterans, and true to their families. That’s why so many are here.”
The introducer also says when Perry married his wife Anita, she helped him with many things in his life “not least of which was his love life [laughter]. Each one of us has been touched by them.”
Piper Perry! With Rick’s wife Anita.
Before we hit the stage, meet my beautiful granddaughter Piper. pic.twitter.com/EgxK37MOiZ
— Anita Perry (@AnitaPerryTX) June 4, 2015
Team Perry is on stage at a small airport in Addison, Texas, outside Dallas. No appearance yet by the governor. He’s being introduced by a Navy Seal. Watch a live stream here.
If you missed former Rhode Island governor and senator Lincoln Chafee’s big announcement yesterday afternoon, you’ll want to know that Chafee called on the United States to adopt the metric system:
Metric system was one line in Chafee's speech but will be the top line. Lesson is if you give the press a centimeter, they take a kilometer
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) June 3, 2015
Read Ben Jacobs’ report from the scene for more:
Lincoln Chafee’s presidential announcement was weird, held at a half-empty college auditorium at George Mason University in suburban northern Virginia.
This is the room 15 minutes before Lincoln Chafee is scheduled to announce pic.twitter.com/Y9uToJ24ok
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) June 3, 2015
Buuuuuuurn
Sabrina Siddiqui catches Florida Senator and presidential hopeful Marco Rubio on Fox:
Rubio on Clinton's age: "I don't think it has anything to do with a person's age. I think it has to do with the age of their ideas."
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) June 4, 2015
Also from Rubio:
Rubio tells @OutnumberedFNC his question to Clinton would be: “How do you answer for [Obama administration’s] abysmal foreign policy”?
Rubio declines to say Clinton is corrupt re: emails: “Voters are going to have to decide after we have all the information.”
While we wait for Perry we’re going to round up some politics tidbits you may have missed. For example a reporter on Amtrak this morning showed Martin O’Malley, who declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination on Saturday, the Caitlyn Jenner Vanity Fair cover, which O’Malley had not seen.
Caitlyn Jenner was formerly Bruce Jenner, the 1976 gold medalist in the decathlon.
“Wow,” O’Malley said, according to the IJReview. It was unclear whether O’Malley was reacting to the radical change in Jenner’s appearance or to Jenner’s disclosure that she is a Republican.
Then O’Malley noted he was the first candidate for the White House ever to use the word “transgender” in his announcement speech. He said:
All of us are included. Women and men. Black and white people. Irish Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, Native Americans. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Americans. Young and old. Rich and poor. Workers and Business owners. Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and straight Americans.
Every person is important, each of us is needed.
We’re waiting for Perry to come on in about a half hour. Last night as-yet-undeclared presidential candidate Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, played in a charity softball game in Yankee Stadium to benefit a fund for the spouses and children of police officers who fall in the line of duty.
Like politics? Like Texas? Happy Thursday!
Rick Perry, the longest-serving governor in Texas history and a dependable source of unpredictable good fun, is set to make a midday speech near Dallas about his big announcement this morning: he’s running for president.
Close politics watchers will note that Perry also ran for president in 2012, and that his candidacy went over like a lead zeppelin, encased in concrete. What’s changed? That’s what we’ll be listening for him to explain. Reports have him spending whole days in cramming sessions with policy advisers.
Then this afternoon Hillary Clinton is scheduled to pop up in Houston and deliver a speech about voting rights. A strict Texas voter ID law that opponents warned could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of people was upheld by the supreme court last year.
We’ll take in a lot more politics news today, with Ben Jacobs in Iowa, Sabrina Siddiqui in Washington, Tom Dart in Texas and Tom McCarthy here in New York. Read on ...
