Excerpt
The following is from the September 22m 2011, edition of The Texas Tribune. SMU Political Science Professor Cal Jillson provided expertise for this story.
September 24, 2011
By Brandi Grissom
Gov. Rick Perry's go-to problem solver, Jay Kimbrough, could have chosen a more inconvenient time to take out his pocket knife in response to his firing from the Texas A&M University System, whose flagship university is Perry's alma mater. But maybe not much more.
"There's a lot of scrutiny on Perry right now, obviously, so any story related to him — whether it's his blind trust showing up blind and dumb or whether it's Kimbrough getting separated from the university — is seen through the lens of, 'What does this mean about Rick Perry?" says Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.
The day before Perry takes the stage for his third nationally televised debate as a front-runner in the fight for the GOP presidential nomination, Kimbrough — the governor’s former chief of staff, director of homeland security, and chief criminal justice adviser — made headlines with his termination and subsequent display of his pocketknife.
Read the full story.
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