{"id":37360,"date":"2014-06-17T11:10:43","date_gmt":"2014-06-17T16:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=37360"},"modified":"2014-06-17T11:10:43","modified_gmt":"2014-06-17T16:10:43","slug":"why-rick-perrys-remarks-on-gays-could-sour-tesla-on-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/06\/17\/why-rick-perrys-remarks-on-gays-could-sour-tesla-on-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Rick Perry&#8217;s Remarks on Gays Could Sour Tesla on Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_37363\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"RIck Perry gives GOP delegates at the state convention a thumbs up in June 2014.\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/06\/Perry_thumbs_Up.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-37363\" alt=\"RIck Perry gives GOP delegates at the state convention a thumbs up in June 2014.\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/06\/Perry_thumbs_Up-300x199.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/06\/Perry_thumbs_Up-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/06\/Perry_thumbs_Up-620x412.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/06\/Perry_thumbs_Up.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Ben Philpott\/KUT<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">RIck Perry gives GOP delegates at the state convention a thumbs up in June 2014.<\/p><\/div>\n<h4><em><a href=\"http:\/\/kut.org\/post\/texas-republican-platform-bad-business\">From KUT News:\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/h4>\n<p>Texas Gov. Rick Perry has made a career out of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/kut.org\/post\/gov-perrys-war-blue-states\">visiting, recruiting, and relocating businesses<\/a>\u00a0from California to Texas. But as the state&#8217;s GOP continues to push further and further to the right of the political spectrum, could the state&#8217;s ultra-conservative stance hurt recruitment from a progressive state?<\/p>\n<p>First came the Texas Republican Party platform that said homosexuality is a choice and\u00a0endorsed therapy\u00a0aimed at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/kut.org\/post\/mental-health-group-says-reparative-therapy-stigmatises-texas-lgbt-community\">&#8220;curing&#8221; people of being gay<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 a therapy banned in California.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/154762349&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_artwork=true&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\" height=\"166\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Then, while on a company recruitment trip \u2013 one specifically aimed at enticing California based car maker Tesla to\u00a0build a factory in Texas \u2013 Gov. Perry told a group of businesspeople that homosexuality was like alcoholism: whether or not you feel compelled to do something, you have the ability not to act on your urges.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I may have the genetic coding that I&#8217;m inclined to be an alcoholic. But I have the desire not to do that. And\u00a0I look at homosexual issue\u00a0as the same way,&#8221; Perry said. (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=C6E5eY3Z6h0&amp;list=PL156324B83F13D79C\">Watch a video of Perry&#8217;s response<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>Reporters in the room for the event say people in the crowd gasped after hearing Perry&#8217;s statement. The governor took plenty of criticism over the weekend for his comparison,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/video.cnbc.com\/gallery\/?video=3000284844&amp;play=1\">leading up to a testy exchange<\/a>\u00a0with\u00a0CNBC \u201cSquawk Box\u201d\u00a0co-anchor Joe\u00a0Kernen\u00a0Monday morning.<\/p>\n<p>But do Perry&#8217;s remarks, or the Texas GOP platform, affect the recruitment of businesses to Texas?\u00a0Peter\u00a0Cowen, a professor at University of California-Anderson and managing director of Clear Capital Advisors, says sure \u2013 politics play a role. But a state&#8217;s tax and regulatory policies and real estate costs play the largest part.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The one area that I think bodes in Texas&#8217;s favor is it&#8217;s known as a state that has lower regulations,&#8221; Cowen\u00a0says. &#8220;So lower regulations translate to lower costs and more predictability to companies.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not to say that as politics in general becomes more and more controlled from the fringes, state politics couldn&#8217;t hurt business. Hispanic business leaders\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/kut.org\/post\/immigration-rhetoric-lt-gov-race-disappoints-some-hispanic-republicans\">have also taken offense<\/a>\u00a0at the tone of Lt. Gov. candidate Dan Patrick&#8217;s campaign.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think the issue is, if you move to a state, are you asking employees to move to a state that may be not as gay friendly \u2013\u00a0and they&#8217;re gay and they&#8217;re in California?&#8221;\u00a0Cowen\u00a0asks. &#8220;I&#8217;m sure that would be one factor that comes in to play, especially if they&#8217;re already settled in California.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But Cowen points out that much of the movement to Texas,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2014\/03\/18\/regs-could-harm-texas-bid-tesla-battery-plant\/\">like Tesla&#8217;s possible interest<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/kut.org\/post\/texas-california-sriracha-brawl-now-taiwanese-cartoon\">attempts to lure Sriracha<\/a>, are expansions, not complete relocations.\u00a0So a new factory might bring some old employees \u2013 but the vast majority of the workers would be either from Texas, or from around the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From KUT News:\u00a0 Texas Gov. Rick Perry has made a career out of\u00a0visiting, recruiting, and relocating businesses\u00a0from California to Texas. But as the state&#8217;s GOP continues to push further and further to the right of the political spectrum, could the state&#8217;s ultra-conservative stance hurt recruitment from a progressive state? First came the Texas Republican Party [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[303,298],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37360"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37360"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37367,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37360\/revisions\/37367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}