Former Texas Governor Rick Perry served 5,144 days in office, adding up to a 14-year-and-one-month tenure, and resulting in the number 10 spot on the list of longest-serving American governors by the time he exited office and passed the torch to newly inaugurated Governor Greg Abbott.
When he was sworn in on Dec. 21, 2000, Perry embarked on a political career that included as much criticism as it did praise in a red state led by a Democrat-turned-Republican assuming leadership from former governor and president George W. Bush.
"Rick Perry elevated the office of governor in Texas."
Dennis Patterson, chair of the Department of Political Science at Texas Tech, said Perry was a practical leader, pushing ideas he thought were beneficial to the state, whatever critiques they might draw from fellow lawmakers.
"He was a pragmatist," Patterson said. "He floated ideas, they didn’t all work, some he got beat up a little bit for, others went through, and a lot of people praised him for it. This is a person that one, floated ideas, had an impact, thought about problems, but at the same time, he was a pragmatist. He wasn’t an ideologue, he was a real pragmatist."
While Perry's 14 years in office included some luck and circumstance, Patterson said it nonetheless reflected well on Perry.
"But yeah, he kind of put everything together here," Patterson said. "Is there luck? Of course. But he presided over it, and so it doesn’t matter. Politically, you take credit for it. I mean, this is what you do."
The new state leadership, including newly inaugurated governor and lieutenant governor Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick, respectively, will likely reflect a change from Perry's more practical style of leading and more of a ideological view, with some of Perry's laws - like the DREAM Act passed in 2001 - a goal for repeal by Patrick. But Perry managed to touch nearly every corner of the public sector, appointing approximately 8,000 people to state agencies and leaving his prints on many parts of the state since 2000.
"The 14 years [impact] is that Rick Perry will have had an impact on Texas from top to bottom, period, end of story," Patterson said. "I mean, he will have appointees [in] all the commissions, all the agencies, every single thing in Texas that has to do with the public sector, Rick Perry will have his imprint on."
"He was kept in power by a very narrow base that turned out at higher rates."
Perry, along with a veritable bumper crop of Republicans, has caused wild speculation of a 2016 run, and his success in Texas politics will certainly be scrutinized during a campaign, Patterson said.
"That’s the challenge he’s going to face, he’s got to reinvent himself, in that sense," he said. "We’ve been very successful in the state of Texas, there’s no doubt about it. The question is, is that going to be the image of Texas in 2016?"
Perry, a unique leader for the last 14 years, and an undetermined one for the next two, made significant changes in Texas during his tenure, including the position of governor itself.
"Because the lieutenant governor presides over the legislature, that’s really where the power center has been, Patterson said. "He really elevated the visibility and probably the importance of the office of governor in the state of Texas in terms of [actual] governing."
