Campaign flubs hurt Perry’s image in Texas

AUSTIN, Texas – Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s White House bid tarnished his image enough that he’s about as popular in his solidly Republican home state as President Barack Obama, a poll published Thursday shows.

Perry’s approval rating after his failed presidential bid has fallen to 40 percent, a 10-point drop from a year ago and slightly less than Obama’s 43 percent statewide approval rating, according to the poll. More than half of the people who responded to a statewide survey don’t want Perry, the longest-serving governor in Texas history, to run for another term in 2014.

Perry’s campaign for president – during which he made a series of public gaffes and debate flubs that turned him into a national punch line – embarrassed some Texans. Forty-five percent of those polled said the campaign actually hurt the state’s image.

“He should have never been in the race,” said Traci Humphrey, a 33-year-old Republican from Dallas, who wasn’t a poll respondent. “I think it made us look like idiots, how he conducted himself. His overall image is not good for Texas.”

It wasn’t long ago that Perry led even presidential public opinion polls. He became an almost overnight front-runner when he strode into the race for the GOP nomination in August.

But that was before a series of verbal mistakes that included forgetting the voting age; forgetting the name of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and then mixing up how many judges are on the court; or mistakenly saying U.S. ally Turkey was run by Islamic extremists.

Then there was his infamous “oops” debate moment, when Perry said that as president he’d eliminate three federal agencies but could remember only two of them.

“I think it’s pretty clear that people even in Texas don’t think that the presidential campaign went very well,” said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics project at the University of Texas.