Sioux City, Iowa (CNN) – Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign will increase its Iowa staff in the coming weeks, according to a senior campaign adviser, who told CNN the new staffers would be coming from their Florida, South Carolina and Texas offices.
Rather than a major strategic decision, the adviser portrayed the move as a way to satisfy eager staffers who specifically asked what more could be done in the run up to the Iowa caucuses.
The Iowa caucuses are the nation's first challenge in the race for the Republican nomination and will be held on Jan. 3.
The adviser said that with the Florida primary nearly two months away, staff coming to Iowa would have plenty of time to get back to Florida to keep working on Perry's behalf.
Stressing the importance of Iowa, the adviser said that if other campaigns weren’t doing the same thing, they were making a mistake.
Iowa has become a focus for Perry, who has been on a 44 stop, statewide bus tour since Dec. 14.
On top of the staffing decision, the Perry campaign released an ad on Thursday that is scheduled run statewide in Iowa. In it, Perry paints Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, both frontrunners in the Republican primary race, as insiders and non-conservatives who voted to raise taxes and ignored soaring federal debt.
Most political analysts and pundits say that Perry needs a strong finish in Iowa to keep his bid for the GOP nomination alive.
"Perry paints Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney...as insiders and non-conservatives who voted to raise taxes and ignored soaring federal debt." ALL the republicans ignored the soaring debt-created by Bush's war based on lies-in Afghanistan; they kept it off the books as an emergency measure and never funded the trillion dollars it cost. THERE"S the cause of your deficit.
Is it just me? This guy looks scary....
Why?
Give up Rick, it's over.
Suspect this may be a case of too little too late. If you want to win in Iowa, you have to build that ground team early and work it hard. Iowa cannot be won with a Hail Mary pass. It takes a hard, slogging ground game.
It took Perry a little longer than the others to increase staff in Iowa. It wasn't just a matter of 'where is Iowa'. It was also a crash course on 'what is Iowa'.