Rick Perry
James Richard "Rick" Perry (b. 1950) has served as the Republican Governor of Texas from December 2000, when he succeeded then-Governor George W. Bush, to a term scheduled to last until 2010. He was elected to a full term in 2002, which he served, and then reelected to another full term in 2006 with only 39 percent of the vote. His background is as a college graduate with a degree in animal science.
He was much criticized concerning his attempt in early 2007 to mandate by executive order the HPV vaccine for young girls as a condition of entering school. Defiant, Perry then felt he had no choice but to sign a bill overriding his mandate because it had been passed by a huge majority in both houses of the legislature.
He was criticized by the Dallas Morning News for traveling to Turkey in early June 2007 to give a speech to a "secret forum" on the topic of federalism, which is not even a topic on which Perry has any established expertise.[1]
On June 15, 2007, Perry vetoed nearly 50 bills in one day.[2].