How Rick Perry Got Rich
Back in 1993, there was a piece of ground that computer billionaire Michael Dell needed to connect his new house near Austin to city water mains. Dell neglected to appreciate the land’s importance. But Perry did discern it. He bought the land for less than $120,000 – then sold it to Dell two years later for a $343,000 profit. Uncanny. True, some detractors have wondered whether the sale was entirely on the level:
Texas Democrats have repeatedly questioned the sale over the years, in part because Mike Toomey – an influential lobbyist who would later become Perry’s chief of staff – closed the deal for Perry while Perry was out of town. Perry has always maintained he didn’t know that the land would be so valuable to Dell when he purchased the property.
Perry repeated similarly shrewd investments again and again in the years ahead.
Look at this transaction from the 2000s. A Texas real estate developer sells land to a Texas state senator – the senator who happened to represent the development’s district. The state senator sold the land to Gov. Perry. Gov. Perry then sold then land – back to the real estate developer’s business partner. Perry scored a profit of $823,000. Tidy. And how remarkable that Perry and his state senator friend could see a value proposition that the two professional real estate developers overlooked.
So it goes through investments in stock, load, and energy properties. Perry just kept seeing things that other people apparently didn’t.
Even more impressive: how Perry managed to find the time. There he was, governor of the second biggest state in the country, creating jobs from morning to night. Yet somehow he also was able to scour the vast landscape of Texas for under-appreciated little parcels of land with the potential to triple or quadruple in value in just a few months.
Geraghty is right. Not “dumb.” Another word, perhaps.
I’m updating this page, as I just noticed my subtitle failed. The beginning of Duncan Hunter’s downfall was the San Diego Union Tribune finding out his purchase of a 900K Del Mar home for 300K. They won the Pulitzer. But this was a long time ago and Perry seems teflony.