Girls would be exempt from the order only if a parent or guardian signed an affidavit claiming a "conscientious objection." The order, signed by the Governor on February 2, 2007, became the subject of sharp and widespread criticism and the Legislature promptly passed a law revoking it. According to the ABC News blog, "The Note," Perry was asked about the controversial order during a backyard reception for the candidate at the home of state Rep. Pamela Tucker in Greenland, New Hampshire.
"I signed an executive order that allowed for an opt-out, but the fact of the matter is that I didn't do my research well enough to understand that we needed to have a substantial conversation with our citizenry," Perry said. "When you get too far out in front of the parade, they will let you know, and that's exactly what our Legislature did, and I saluted it and I said, 'Roger that, I hear you loud and clear.' And they didn't want to do it and we don't, so enough said."
But if Perry was saluting the Legislature at the time, he was probably not using all five fingers. His response was not a "Roger that," but a grudging acceptance of the inevitable. The vote in the Legislature was overwhelmingly in favor of revoking the order, and Perry knew he didn't have enough votes to sustain a veto. So he let the legislation become law without his signature. According to the Texas Tribune, he has always defended his executive order and Saturday's acknowledgement that he "didn't do my research well enough" and "got too far out in front of the parade" was his first public admission that the order was a mistake. He said so explicitly in a listener call-in talk show Monday radio station WHO.
The episode illustrates the difficulties Perry could face in navigating competing Republican interest groups, and it resurrects allegations of cronyism that have dogged the Texas executive throughout his political career.
“At the time that he did this, it just had everybody scratching their heads,” said Andrew Wheat, research director at Texans for Public Justice, an Austin-based watchdog group that has frequently locked horns with Perry. “He wasn’t known as a crusader for women’s health. There’s no explanation that seems to make sense other than that Toomey’s got his ear and he got Perry to do this favor for him.”
Perry campaign spokesman Mark Miner dismissed the criticism. “Governor Perry has always stood on the side of protecting life, and that is what this issue was about,” he said Tuesday. “These allegations are false and have no merit.”
The vaccine in question, Merck’s Gardasil, protects against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, the most common sexually transmitted infection. HPV causes genital warts and can lead to cervical cancer, a disease that strikes about 10,000 American women a year and kills about 3,700.
The federal government approved Gardasil in June 2006, and medical authorities began recommending that all girls get the shots at ages 11 and 12, before they are likely to be sexually active. Boys have since been added to the recommendations as well.
Merck launched a multimillion-dollar lobbying and marketing effort to encourage that the vaccine — priced at about $360 for an entire treatment — be made mandatory for schoolgirls. But anti-vaccination groups and many religious conservatives pushed back, citing health and morality concerns, while Merck came under fire for its aggressive tactics.
In the end, only Virginia and the District of Columbia made the vaccine mandatory, according to Alexandra Stewart, an assistant professor of health policy at George Washington University. “Social conservatives really objected to it, and it has gotten caught up in all these other issues,” said Stewart, who supports use of the vaccine.
In Texas, one of Merck’s lobbyists in 2007 was Toomey, who is also co-founder of the Make Us Great Again super PAC, formed this month to collect and spend unlimited money in support of Perry’s campaign. Merck and Toomey did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Merck gave Perry a $6,000 contribution when the issue was being discussed in the governor’s mansion, and it supported a women’s legislators group that pushed for the vaccine as well, according to Texas news reports.
Democrats and some Republicans have frequently criticized Perry’s role in the controversy. Former U.S. senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) singled out the issue as an example of “cronyism in Austin” during her unsuccessful primary challenge in the 2010 governor’s race.
“Why did the governor mandate vaccines for our young daughters?” Hutchison said in one speech. “It was because there were lobbyists that were first, not the people of Texas.”
Until this past week, Perry has staunchly defended the vaccine decision, casting it as a “pro-life” attempt to protect women’s health and disparaging objections from social conservatives. At a defiant news conference in May 2007, Perry chastised legislators for overturning the order; he was flanked by several women who had contracted the virus, including one who had been raped.
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