Presidential hopeful Perry at private C’ville fundraiser

• Reprints

Texas Governor and GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry (right) tries to dodge the press Thursday morning following a $1,000-a-plate breakfast fundraiser at OTTO Engineering in Carpentersville. October 13, 2011 | Michael Smart~Sun-Times Media

Updated: January 23, 2012 4:07AM

CARPENTERSVILLE — Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry ducked into OTTO Engineering here Thursday morning for a $1,000-a-plate breakfast fundraiser.

Perry spoke to the invitation-only crowd of 100 people for about 25 minutes, said Jack Roeser, OTTO chairman and founder and president of Family Taxpayers Foundation. Roeser also operates the conservative website www.championnews.net.

Perry was in Carpentersville for about 1½ hours, said Chip Gerdes, Roeser’s assistant. Perry walked quickly into and out of the building and did not stop to speak to the media or for a photo op.

Roeser co-hosted the event at the OTTO Engineering Complex on Carpentersville’s Main Street with Illinois House Minority Leader Tom Cross, R-Oswego.

While the media was not invited to the event, Roeser spoke with The Courier-News via phone after the event. “I am very pleased with the way Perry is acting and talking,” Roeser said.

“We are trying to get things done,” Roeser said of his decision to invite Perry to the Fox Valley. “We are interested in Illinois as well as the president thing. We want to increase (the number of Republicans in) the House and Senate in Illinois by six people each and get rid of the people who have given us the debt in Illinois.”
Perry spoke “about what he had done in Texas, how the problems (here) are similar, and what he would do for the problems in our country,” Roeser said.

He said Perry “has workable solutions, not crazy stuff,” adding that he had interviewed other presidential candidates, including Herman Cain, the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO. “I found him highly arrogant and easily upset. I asked him about the (999 tax plan) … that is an embarrassment. He is unrealistic and it made him mad,” when he told Cain so, Roeser said. Cain has suggested ending the current tax code and replace it with a 9 percent flat tax on income, a 9 percent flat corporate tax and a 9 percent national sales tax.

“Perry has proactive solutions for taxes, how you organize to end problems,” Roeser said.

Perry, he said, also has experience as a three-term Texas governor. “He is an experienced guy, easy to talk to. He talked to the help that happened to be near him or whatever,” Roeser said of the breakfast event.

Although details of the speech were not made available, Roeser said Perry did speak on one of the issues that concerns him — regulation.

“He picked up on something I said to him ... the taxes, the taxes, the taxes,” Roeser said. “You don’t get to pay taxes until you make a profit. What is in the way of making a profit is all of the regulations. We are paying our taxes to a bunch of regulators. We are paying the salaries of people who are torturing us … a guy who doesn’t know about what you are doing has regulations that he will slap on you.

“It is murder of the free market — socialism by a thousand cuts,” Roeser said.

In addition to the breakfast, those in attendance could have their picture taken with Perry for $2,500 — the legal limit for individual contributions to a campaign, Roeser’s assistant Gerdes explained. That is not unique and is a standard practice in political campaigns, he said.

What residents should focus on, Gerdes said, is not the photo ops but the chance of having a presidential candidate in Carpentersville.

“The governor wanted to come here, to OTTO, mainly because every one of these (presidential candidates) comes to downtown Chicago, urban areas,” Gerdes said.

After discussing what Roeser has done for Carpentersville, the choice was made to visit here, he said. “Those people who have never been here came here because of OTTO and Jack.”