Perry's announcement Saturday stepped on Bachmann's triumph in the Ames straw poll, the biggest moment yet in her presidential campaign and a further sign of her appeal in this early-voting state.
"It's your victory! You did it!" Bachmann told supporters crowded outside her bus on the Iowa State University campus, the scene of the daylong GOP event.
Perry and Bachmann will make competing appearances Sunday in Waterloo, her Iowa birthplace. Her popularity is on the rise in the Hawkeye State, but she and the Texas governor will be drawing from the same pool of religious and social conservatives expected to dominate next winter's caucuses.
In the straw poll, the Minnesota congresswoman edged Rep. Ron Paul by 152 votes, or less than a percentage point. "Our message is spreading, our support is surging, and people are taking notice," said Paul campaign chairman Jesse Benton.
Tim Pawlenty was a distant third, a potentially fatal blow to his presidential hopes. The former governor of neighboring Minnesota had been counting on Iowa to boost his long-shot candidacy, but his expensive straw-vote campaign yielded fewer than half the votes Bachmann received.
"I don't know that there's a path forward for him in this race," said Gentry Collins, a former political director of the Republican National Committee, who ran Mitt Romney's Iowa campaign in 2008 but is unaligned this time.
More than 16,800 activists took part in the poll, a jump from four years ago and fresh evidence that Republicans are energized heading into next year's election.
The straw poll and Rick Perry's campaign launch, coming less than six months before Iowa's nominating contest, promised to reshuffle the Republican field fighting for the nomination to challenge Obama, a Democrat, in 2012.
Mr Perry, a staunch social conservative with a strong job creation record in Texas, is expected to immediately vault into the top tier of contenders along with front-runner Mitt Romney. Mr Perry visits Iowa Sunday.
In the straw poll, Mrs Bachmann won with 29 per cent of the vote. Mr Paul, a US representative from Texas, was a close second with 28 per cent and Mr Pawlenty had 14 per cent.
Mrs Bachmann's win adds to her recent momentum and cements her standing in the top tier of contenders. She had shot to the top of opinion polls in Iowa this summer with the support of social conservatives and the fiscal conservative Tea Party movement.
Mr Pawlenty's showing raised questions about his ability to continue in the race after spending $1 million in Iowa. He has been mired in the low single digits in polls in the state and nationally.
Mr Perry finished sixth with 3.6 percent of the vote even though he was not on the ballot. That was more than Mr Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who was on the ballot but did not participate in the poll. He finished seventh.
Six Republicans had paid to erect tents and speak at the event, pleading for support from voters who rolled into the site in dozens of buses and jammed candidate tents for music and free barbecue.
The 16,892 votes was the second biggest straw poll turnout behind the nearly 24,000 cast in 1999, when then-Governor George W. Bush of Texas won on his way to the White House.
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