Rick Perry pushes forward with appeal to South Carolina vets

Texas Gov. Rick Perry continued his push to woo South Carolina veterans, proposing a five-year income tax exemption for wounded service members and assembling a team of well-known veterans to campaign on his behalf.

Perry raised the tax holiday idea during a Tuesday morning appearance at a local Veterans of Foreign Wars post, just moments after he blasted President Obama for failing to hold a parade to commemorate the end of the Iraq war.

“I want to offer up for this country to consider a wounded-warrior tax exemption,” Perry said. “If you have been wounded, if the [Department of Defense] has designated you as an individual who has been wounded while on service to the United States, you get a five-year exemption from paying any personal income tax in this country. That’s sending the message that will last longer than a parade.”

Perry has struggled to gain footing in his quest for the presidency. Conventional wisdom is that without a win or near-win here on Saturday, when the state holds the third nominating contest of the GOP presidential primary, his campaign essentially will be over.

South Carolina’s economy and culture are deeply tied to the military -- one-quarter of voters in the 2008 Republican primary here said they had served. So it’s no wonder that Perry has been running up and down the state promoting himself as the “commander in chief” candidate -- a reference to his oversight of the Texas National Guard.

Perry praised South Carolina as a place that “knows how to grow patriots and heroes,” and made frequent references to James Butler Bonham and William Barret Travis, South Carolinians who fought in the 1836 Battle of the Alamo.

He was accompanied by Mike Thornton, a Medal of Honor recipient who was born in South Carolina. He is up with an ad here that features prominent vets, including Dakota Meyer, who was awarded the Medal of Honor last September. And he will have Marcus Luttrell, a former Navy SEAL and author of the book “Lone Survivor,” with him on the campaign trail later this week.

The crowd of about 30 attendees seemed satisfied with his pro-military pitch, but pressed Perry on domestic issues. In each case, he defended his positions as promoting state’s rights.

A man who objects to proposals to open South Carolina’s Grand Strand to offshore drilling asked Perry to “please tell these people how much potential oil there is in Texas, Colorado, North Dakota and all these other places.”

Perry, a strong advocate for tapping America’s energy resources, said “it ought to be South Carolina’s call” to decide whether to allow drilling off its coast.

Another voter said he liked everything he’d heard from Perry, but had one “small problem”: Perry’s support for a Texas law to grant in-state tuition rates to some children of illegal immigrants.

Perry blamed the federal government for failing to secure the border and forcing the states to deal with illegal immigrants, but cast the Texas law as a state-specific solution to the problem.

“The people of the state of Texas asked, ‘How are we going to deal with this?’ ” he said. “Are we going to have tax wasters and people who are going to be on the welfare rolls and what have you, or are we going to have taxpayers?”

The Texas Legislature voted “overwhelmingly...to require these young people to get in the line to become citizens of the United States and pay full in-state tuition to get educated in the state of Texas so they’re not tax wasters,” he said. “That was Texas’ call.”

David Gleaton, a landscaper who attended the event, said he was leaning toward supporting Perry because he’s “trying to stop job-killing regulations and all of that.”

Gleaton, 51, said that as a business owner, he has had to cut employees because of economic strain.

“I’m not going to hire anybody because I have no idea what’s going to come next,” he said, referencing the healthcare law that was passed by Democrats in 2010. “The government needs to get out of the way.”

Gleaton supported Mitt Romney in the 2008 GOP primary, but said he was looking elsewhere this year to find a candidate who could beat President Obama.

“It’s kind of like what Newt said: Obama beat McCain, McCain beat Romney,” he said. “If you do the calculus, then that means Obama’s going to beat Romney.”

Jim Witzigman, 59, a semi-retired mechanical engineer who is still undecided, said he too was focused on choosing “the best candidate who can win.”

“I like Ron Paul’s fiscal conservatism,” he said. “I like Rick Perry’s support for the military. I like Newt Gingrich for his debate capabilities and his experience. And I like Mitt Romney for having to work with an 85% Democratic Legislature and having achieved what he did.”

kim.geiger@latimes.com