Texas: Hutchison Hires 2010 Campaign Manager
Republican sources confirmed Monday that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has hired Rick Wiley to serve as the campaign manager for her 2010 Texas gubernatorial bid.
Wiley is a former Wisconsin GOP executive director who last year went to work for former New York Mayor Rudy Giulianis presidential primary campaign. A formal announcement of his addition to Hutchisons campaign team is expected in the next two weeks.
Hutchison, who held a strategy meeting in Austin on Saturday with about 300 supporters, said over the weekend that a formal announcement on the gubernatorial race will come sometime this summer. But the Senator has already transferred millions into her exploratory campaign committee, and at Saturdays meeting she released a list of nearly 900 statewide supporters.
Hutchisons gubernatorial bid sets up a potentially ugly primary against two-term Gov. Rick Perry, who first assumed office in December 2000 after then-Gov. George W. Bush was elected president. Since Hutchison is not up for re-election to the Senate until 2012, she does not have to give up her seat to run for governor next year.
Perry was also in Austin on Saturday addressing anti-abortion activists at a rally at the state Capitol.