Rick Perry is discussed across three episodes of The Bob Zadek Show, never as a guest. He enters the program as a Republican officeholder whose record the host and guests use to illustrate tensions inside the party over taxes, regulation and market competition.
The 2011 California straw poll
Perry first appears in the September 17, 2011 episode on free speech on college campuses, in Bob Zadek’s opening libertarian news segment. Zadek reports that in the California Republican straw poll, Ron Paul was the victor, and that the libertarian Paul substantially trounced Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and others, winning by almost acclamation. Zadek treats the result as a possible sign of libertarian momentum heading into 2012, asking whether that could be the moment when libertarians can walk in the sunshine. The reference is passing: Perry is named only as the establishment rival Paul defeated, and the episode’s substantive discussion, with Harvey Silverglate, concerns harassment codes and free speech zones on campus rather than Perry’s record Is Your Alma Mater a Soviet Gulag? (2011).
Tax competition and the poaching of California
Perry returns in the March 23, 2013 episode, in a segment on the Laffer Curve and marginal tax rates. Zadek notes that states commonly set up offices and commercial missions abroad to attract business, and says that Governor Perry has been marketing in California, running ads urging businesses to move to Texas. Zadek calls the competition down and dirty and says Perry understands his state will be better off the more high earners he brings from California and other vulnerable states. Because Texas is driven by a somewhat higher property tax than California, Zadek argues, Perry profits every time he poaches a California taxpayer who will buy a more expensive house and pay higher property taxes Where is Everyone Going? (2013).
Guest Travis Brown agrees that every state wants the high-income entrepreneur and the investor taking bold risk, and says that is why Perry is so aggressive. Brown adds a caution about the taxpayers left behind: those without the mobility Zadek describes as his own luxury tax face more dire consequences if state and local revenue proves insufficient, because when the people who can leave do leave, the state is left taxing only the tax base of people who cannot leave, burdening the most vulnerable.
Tesla, franchise laws and cronyism
The most detailed treatment comes in the August 3, 2014 episode with Derek Khanna on innovation. Khanna raises Perry while discussing cronyist policies and the 2016 cycle, saying that Governor Rick Perry, if he runs for office, has some explaining to do because Texas banned Tesla from selling cars to consumers. Khanna acknowledges that Tesla had government subsidies and handouts and that he gets those criticisms, but notes that in Texas it is illegal for Tesla to sell cars to the consumer through a Tesla dealership, and that the company cannot even tell a customer how much the car costs Derek Khanna - What’s Stifling Innovation? (2014).
Zadek underscores the party affiliation, observing that this is a Republican governor, and adds that Chris Christie, whom he calls a classic RINO governor, was also unsympathetic to Tesla and therefore sympathetic to Big Auto because he was protecting the franchise network. Zadek says he had devoted an entire show to Tesla’s fight against archaic franchise laws protecting automobile franchisees. He frames the lesson as broader than any one company: Republicans should support innovation rather than Tesla per se, and if the party embraced technology and innovation and opposed any policy that protects the old and stifles innovation, it would attract young voters.
Khanna supplies the economic argument. He cites the economist Joseph Schumpeter’s term creative destruction, under which new companies force incumbent firms to innovate or die, and warns that when old companies cannot compete they open lobbying offices in Washington and seek laws or regulations to protect their market model. He notes that Tesla and Uber are both technology-driven, that Uber is banned in a number of jurisdictions including cities where Republicans have struggled, and that studies say these types of rules add about 12% to the cost of buying a car — a cost he characterizes as a tax paid not to government but to crony capitalists. He measures innovation partly by how many new market participants an industry has, and argues the automobile sector has seen almost none.
Across episodes
The excerpts show no development in the treatment of Perry; he is a stable reference point across all three appearances. In 2011 Zadek cites him as the establishment candidate Ron Paul defeated in a straw poll; in 2013 Zadek and Brown cite him as an aggressive recruiter of California taxpayers; in 2014 Khanna and Zadek cite him as the governor whose state barred Tesla from direct sales. The question of whether Republican officeholders actually govern on free-market principles is raised in the 2013 and 2014 episodes, with Zadek advancing the tax-competition framing and Khanna advancing the cronyism and innovation framing, but the excerpts do not show the later episode responding to the earlier one.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts contain no interview with Perry, no statement from him, and no discussion of his biography, offices held, or career beyond the governorship of Texas. They do not describe the California straw poll’s date, sponsor or margin, nor the terms of the Texas franchise law beyond Khanna’s account. Perry’s positions on free speech, the subject of the 2011 episode, are never mentioned.