The Texas drawl rang out across the airwaves from San Diego to Sacramento: “I hear building a business in California is next to impossible. This is Texas Governor Rick Perry and I have a message for California businesses: come check out Texas.”
Broadcast in February 2013, the radio advert was Perry’s boldest stunt in a campaign to lure companies from the west coast to Texas. Although it was dismissed as “barely a fart” by Jerry Brown, Perry’s Californian counterpart, the following year carmaker Toyota announced it would move its US headquarters from Torrance, California to Plano, Texas.
“That was one of those clarion moments when it’s like: this has worked,” Perry tells the Financial Times. “This is a major world-known entity that is moving out of California, and moving to Texas.”