Texas Governor Rick Perry plans to travel to New York and Connecticut and to spend $1 million on a TV campaign to lure businesses to the Lone Star State. This, after a radio campaign in February featured Perry aiming to convince California companies to move to Texas over the new round of taxes, among other things. It has sparked a tête-à-tête between Perry and California Governor Jerry Brown.
The 30-second radio ad had this to say: “Building a business is tough, but I hear building a business in California is next to impossible,” Perry says in the ad, which was paid for by a public-private marketing partnership called TexasOne. “There are plenty of reasons Texas has been named the best state for doing business for eight years running.”
Gov. Brown called the radio ads just “a few tricks from a politician” and will not have any substantive effect. Brown also called the effort “barely a fart.”
In the new effort, emphasizes Texas’s low taxes, limited regulations and court reforms in his business recruitment efforts. Ads featuring Texans praising their home, sponsored by a public-private organization controlled by the governor, will run on ESPN, CNN and other channels in New York and Connecticut for a week, according to a statement today from Perry’s office.
“If you are the legislators or the governor or the mayor who are the reason for those regulations or taxes or lawsuits, then I’m suspecting there’s probably going to be a little push back,” Perry said.
Indeed, Andrew Doba, a spokesman for Connecticut’s Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy, told Bloomberg that Perry’s efforts are “lame publicity stunts.”
