Austin Barbour, a senior adviser to Rick Perry's super PACs, said Tuesday that his groups have been planning "for several weeks" to take over some operations from Perry's presidential campaign amidst news the former Texas governor has frozen pay for his campaign staff nationwide....

"We saw several weeks ago when the campaign finance reports first came out that this was probably going to happen with the campaign, that they were going to have to go to a lean and mean operation that focused more on the governor's travel, doing events in the states…and the first three debates," Barbour told NBC News in an interview. ...

Barbour noted the super PAC's efforts to pick up slack for the campaign are not unprecedented, pointing to the groups backing Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina — both of which are expected to take over key operations for the campaigns — as examples. Super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited sums of money, are barred by law from coordinating with the campaign.

Asked how he decided, without input from the campaign, that the super PACs would need to pick up their slack, Barbour acknowledged "it's a great question."