I’ve been noticing this “concern” about Rick Perry on several sites referencing him as a former Democrat and thereby he should be disqualified from conservative consideration.  The position seems silly to me; after all Ron Reagan was a Democrat, and so were many current Conservatives prior to the Marxist Obama taking charge and the severe hard left turn that took place.   But anyhow, here is an article that discusses Rick Perry as a Democrat.  Not sure why folks consider it such a toxic issue.   Personally I am not concerned about his party affiliation 22 years ago.    (Texas Tribune) Gov. Rick Perry, a no-apologies conservative known for slashing government spending and opposing all tax increases, is about as Republican as you can get. But that was not always the case.
Mr. Perry spent his first six years in politics as a Democrat, in a somewhat forgotten history that is sure to be revived and scrutinized by Republican opponents if he decides to run for president.
A raging liberal he was not. Elected to represent a slice of rural West Texas in the State House in 1984, Mr. Perry, a young rancher and former Air Force pilot from Paint Creek, about 60 miles north of Abilene, gained an early reputation as a fiscal conservative. He was one of a handful of freshman “pit bulls,” so named because they sat in the lower pit of the House Appropriations Committee, where they fought to keep spending low.
But Mr. Perry cast some votes and took a few stands that seem to be at odds with his fiscal conservatism today. The most vivid example is his support of the $5.7 billion tax hike in 1987, signed by Gov. Bill Clements, a Republican, opposed by most Republican members. The bill passed the House by a 78-70 vote.
Even without adjusting for inflation, the legislation triggered the largest tax increase ever passed in modern Texas, said Dale Craymer, president of the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association. Today, taking inflation into account, it would be worth more than $11 billion.
Mr. Craymer said the new taxes were used to plug a huge budget shortfall, with the money representing about 20 percent of the general revenue raised during that two-year budget period.
Almost a quarter-century later, Mr. Perry, as governor, was faced with a similar budget shortfall. But he took a markedly different tack this session, opposing any new taxes and signing a budget that made the first reduction in overall spending on public education since at least 1949.
Mark Miner, Mr. Perry’s spokesman, said votes cast decades ago do not undermine the governor’s overall record, which he said included the largest property-tax cut in state history, enacted in 2006.  “You can pull votes from the 1980s, but the overall track record is one of fiscal responsibility and conservatism,” Mr. Miner said.

As a House Democrat, Mr. Perry was also the co-author of legislation aimed at tripling the amount of money state legislators are paid, House records show. In a 1989 interview with The Abilene Reporter-News, Mr. Perry cited the financial hardships Texas legislators faced trying to make a living back home while making a yearly salary of only $7,200 as part-time lawmakers. Voters rejected the proposal in a statewide referendum.
Mr. Miner said Mr. Perry no longer favored giving legislators a pay increase.
Another political move Mr. Perry made back then: he was a top Texas supporter and organizer in 1988 for Al Gore, who ran as a Southern conservative rather than the populist reformer he eventually became as the 2000 Democratic presidential nominee.
“I came to my senses,” Mr. Perry likes to say when asked about his Gore days.
In 1984, fellow Democrats recruited Mr. Perry to run for a State House seat vacated by Representative Joe C. Hanna, according to interviews and news articles. John Sharp, a Democrat and the former state comptroller who was a college friend of Mr. Perry’s, recalls getting a call from Clyde H. Wells, then the chairman of the Texas A&M System Board of Regents. Mr. Wells wondered who might make a good replacement for Mr. Hanna.
“I said: ‘Yeah, there was a guy in my outfit who’s from Haskell. Let’s find out if he’s still in the Air Force,’ ” Mr. Sharp recalled saying of Mr. Perry. “Three weeks later, he was in the race.”   Mr. Perry easily won and quickly became known as a rising star in the Texas House.
Gib Lewis, Democrat of Fort Worth, then the Speaker, decided to appoint several freshman lawmakers to the House Appropriations Committee — members he knew he could count on to keep spending low.
“All of them were very conservative guys and had a good head on their shoulders, and that’s how I picked ’em,” Mr. Lewis said. “When he first came to the Legislature it was predominantly white, Democratic, conservative. He was one of them, and I was, too.”
No matter the label beside his name, the news coverage of Mr. Perry’s early years reveals the same ambition and enthusiasm for public office that the governor has brought to the national stage as a potential presidential candidate.
In one of the first lengthy newspaper profiles of Mr. Perry, in The Abilene Reporter-News, his fellow Representative Cliff Johnson, now a lobbyist and longtime friend, said of him: “He’s one of the top two or three (representatives) of the freshman class. I think the sky is the limit.”
At the beginning of his six years in the State House, Mr. Perry shot down the notion that he might switch parties, despite the conservative leanings that put him at odds with his party leaders.
After former United States Representative Kent Hance of Lubbock defected to the Republican Party in 1985, Mr. Perry told the Abilene paper he was “disappointed,” saying he planned to change his party rather than defect to the other side.
The gap was obvious by 1989, his last year in the Legislature, when Mr. Perry carried a workers’ compensation insurance bill that angered Texas trial lawyers, then a powerful force in state politics. That same year, The Dallas Morning News named Mr. Perry one of the state’s 10 best legislators, but he was criticized by another publication.
The liberal Texas Observer called Mr. Perry the “Benedict Arnold of the Democratic Party” for siding too often with Mr. Clements.
“If The Texas Observer ever says anything good about me, then I’ve been hit on the head and they can send me back home,” Mr. Perry said.
Rumors that Mr. Perry would defect to the Republican Party — and run against Jim Hightower, the populist Democratic agriculture commissioner — picked up steam by late 1989. On Sept. 29, Mr. Perry made it official at a Capitol news conference. At his side were Fred Meyer, chairman of the Texas Republican Party, and Senator Phil Gramm, a former Democrat, who was aggressively courting would-be converts.
Mr. Perry’s timing, now legendary, could not have been better. He was one of only two Republicans elected to nonjudicial statewide office in 1990. Eight years later, Republicans swept every one of them.
“Perry has been a risk taker,” said Mr. Hance, the party switcher who became the chancellor of Texas Tech University. “And if you look at Perry’s timing in every race, he’s been the golden guy.”  (article)