Rick Perry's Brain Trust

Texas Observer 8/1/11
The Outsider
Can a camera-shy Dave Carney put Rick Perry in the White

BEFORE MOST PEOPLE HAD EVER HEARD OF KARL ROVE, a heavyset, disheveled wunderkind from New Hampshire named Dave Carney was the Republican Party's top young political consultant.

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After Dole’s 1996 defeat, Carney left Washington, D.C., and vanished from the national political scene. He retreated to Hancock, New Hampshire, the tiny town where he’d grown up. He focused on building his own consulting firm, flitting around the country between minor local and state races. He remained in the game, but no longer in the major leagues. No more national campaigns. No more magazine profiles. In 1998 he showed up in Texas, where a second Bush was preparing a presidential run. But that wasn’t what brought Carney to the state. The consultant who’d once helped oversee two presidential campaigns had arrived in Austin on a far less glamorous mission: to help a young Texas agriculture commissioner in his first race for lieutenant governor.

Rick Perry’s 1998 run for lieutenant governor wasn’t a high point, at least for the man who would later become Texas’ longest-serving governor. There was tremendous pressure, with then-Gov. George W. Bush eyeing the White House and Republicans desperate to have one of their own ready to step in as governor. Perry faced a formidable opponent in Democratic Comptroller John Sharp. Even with the overwhelmingly popular Gov. Bush winning a landslide reelection at the top of the ticket, Perry, with Carney’s help, barely squeaked by.