Rick Perry faces a rare electoral letdown

A pumped-up Rick Perry, launching a final Iowa campaign swing Monday in pep-rally style, is confronting what will almost certainly be the first electoral defeat of a long life in politics. The question is what happens next.

The Texas governor, wearing a blue fleece “Perry/President” zip-up and an open-collar white shirt, was in full yell-leader mode, bouncing on his toes and punching the air as he began a three-stop bus tour with a rally at a Sioux City hotel.

“Every day that goes by, we’re going to get stronger,” he told about 100 supporters in the faux-rustic lobby of the Stoney Creek Inn, a stuffed bull moose head above him and a gas flame in the stone fireplace warming his surgically repaired back.

Perry compared the Republican presidential campaign to a 26-mile grind that was just ending the first mile — an often misleading checkpoint in a long-distance race. He predicted that other candidates would “hit the wall” and that he would “finish this marathon,” just as he did the actual one he once ran.

The final entrant into the 2012 contest, Perry, 61, shot to the top of polls nationally on the strength of a dimly understood record as Texas’ longest-serving governor. A series of embarrassingly bad debate performances swiftly reversed his fortunes and shook the confidence of Texas supporters who know the candidate as an undefeated campaigner in a career that dates from the 1980s.

With a series of early-state voter tests about to start, there are serious doubts about his ability to survive a poor Iowa finish — and not only among Republican veterans. Party activists, eager for a nominee who can defeat Barack Obama, are watching and wondering.

At the first of three stops, one supporter prefaced a question to Perry by noting bluntly that he was “down in the polls.” Those surveys show him in a fight with Newt Gingrich for fourth place, with a bottom-tier caucus finish almost assured.

Perry plans to skip most of the campaign action over the next week in New Hampshire, the first primary state, where his prospects are poor. Instead, he’ll concentrate on South Carolina, where the Jan. 21 primary could be his last chance to become the formidable challenger to Mitt Romney many thought he would be.

In putting his presidential chances on the line in the first Southern primary, he’ll be following a path blazed by another handsome three-term Texas governor who entered the Republican presidential campaign with great promise: John B. Connally, like Perry a conservative Democrat-turned-Republican with appeal to big-money donors. In 1980, a South Carolina defeat turned out to be trail’s end for Big John, whose career never recovered from an $11-million candidacy that yielded just one delegate vote.

A fourth-place finish in Iowa would make it difficult for Perry to raise the money he needs to replenish his depleted campaign account, particularly if Romney won. “You’ve got to make those calls,” an aide said, referring to the possibility that Iowa could be the end for Perry, particularly if he were to finish fifth.

paul.west@latimes.com