Rick Perry’s Security Force Costs Texas Taxpayers $5Million; Highest of All Republicans

Rick Perry Eating Corndog on Campaign Trail

Excluding President Barack Obama’s campaign for president in 2012, the largest and most expensive security personnel assigned to a running candidate is Texas Governor Rick Perry, and it appears to be funded by taxpayers.

Perry explained the funding by the Texas Department of Public Safety for his campaign as a joint benefit to the state weeks before announcing his presidential run in August.

“I’m going to be promoting Texas,” the Tea Party Republican said in July while trying to reason the spending that burdens the Texan taxpayers $400,000 a month according to the Texas Tribune.

“I’m going to be traveling to places where the Texas story needs to be told, and we will tell it,” Perry said.

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“If he’s promoting Texas, he’s been an embarrassment,” State Rep. Jessica Farrar, a Houston Democrat, responded to the Tribune.

“He could have paid for this out of campaign funds, especially given that he’s asked the Texas taxpayers to tighten their belts,” Farrar said.

Currently, Perry has raised an estimated $17,168,589 toward his White House run according to OpenSecrets.org.

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Of that amount, $2,090,174 has been reported as spent.

While visiting San Francisco, Perry’s security guards cost more than $32,000 according to records acquired by the Tribune.

On dining around the Ronald Reagan Library and Museum in Simi Valley, CA, the former cheerleader spent $4,400.

Airplane tickets to San Diego took another $6,400.

Nearly all of the major Republican candidates running for President the Tribune was able to contact said that their security personnel were not paid through state taxes.

Jon Huntsman of Utah and Pennsylvania’s Rick Santorum did not respond to the Tribune’s questioning.

Perry is not the first politician to be scrutinized for over-spending, notably in the state of Texas.

According to the Tribune’s reporting, the state spent at least $400,000 a month in the former Governor George W. Bush’s first quarter of his running for president in 2000.

That number was four times more than the entire year’s spending in 1999.

Of those expenses, $3.9 million of it was paid through state tax payers between January of 1999 to March of 2000.

The time following that March was covered by the Secret Service, according to the public safety department to the Tribune.