From POLITICO:
Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s humble origins and down home straight talk are central to his political identity, but for years Perry has enjoyed lavish perks and travel – mostly funded by a group of deep-pocketed supporters – that are allowed under his state’s lax ethics and campaign rules.
Some of the same Texas donors who have funded Perry’s political rise also have footed the bills for Perry and his family to jet around the world, stay in luxury hotels and resorts, vacation in tony Colorado ski towns, attend all manner of sporting events and concerts, and to maintain, entertain – and even pay the cable bill – at the 4,600-square-foot mansion with a heated pool that taxpayers are renting him at a cost of about $10,000 a month…
Perry, who has held elected office since 1985, earns a state salary of $150,000 a year, and lives in a five-bedroom, seven-bath mansion in West Austin that the state has rented for him since 2007, when he moved out of the governor’s mansion, so it could undergo repairs…
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