What's Rick Perry waiting for?

Rick Perry sure looks like a presidential candidate.

The Texas governor and his top advisers are feeling out early-state Republican activists on the phone. He met for lunch in Austin Tuesday with former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Next week, he’ll join a group of top national Republican donors for dinner in the state capital, POLITICO has learned.

GOP governors and members of Congress, in not-for-attribution comments, and leading strategists like Karl Rove all say the same thing: Perry’s in.

So what’s the hold up?

Those close to Perry say despite the strong hints that both he and his high command are dropping in conversations with senior Republicans — hints that have left party elites in Texas and beyond convinced that Perry will enter the race — the country’s longest-serving governor has not yet made up his mind. Questions about money and infrastructure remain. Not only that, he isn’t in a rush to decide.

Dave Carney, Perry’s chief strategist, said they had no “hard deadline,” but called Labor Day the outer end of when Perry will have to make up his mind.

“I have always expected him to make a decision by the end of the summer,” the strategist said.

Perry’s carefully weighing the difficulties inherent in trying to put together a presidential campaign from scratch after the contest has already begun.

“It’s a matter of doing what others have been doing over years in in a matter of few weeks,” Carney said.

As the will-he-or-won’t-he buzz moves from hum to roar, the usually-accessible governor isn’t offering any public clues. He’s done few interviews since first acknowledging he was considering a run and hasn’t yet made exploratory trips to Iowa or New Hampshire. His schedule this week includes only in-state trips to San Antonio and Denton — and he won’t go to the press-heavy National Governors Association meeting this weekend in Salt Lake City.

Behind the scenes, however, the Texan and his confidantes have stepped up their outreach efforts.

In addition to ringing up early-state Republicans, Perry has spent the last week calling some of his fellow GOP governors to discuss running, including Mississippi’s Haley Barbour, perhaps the most influential of the 29-member group.

While Barbour has said he’ll remain neutral in the presidential contest for the near-term, the nucleus of a Perry campaign could feature remnants from the organization the Mississippian put in place for his own abortive run.

Henry Barbour, the governor’s nephew and a well-connected Republican player, has been recruiting many of the operatives who had signed up with his uncle.

“Perry is the most natural fit for us,” said Barbour.

Some of Rudy Giuliani’s top moneymen are also being wooed by Perry, who endorsed and served as a top surrogate for the former New York City mayor in 2008.

Former Ambassador Peter Terpeluk, financier Roy Bailey and veteran lobbyist Dirk Van Dongen, each of whom raised cash for Giuliani in 2008, are all attending a meeting of major GOP donors next week in Austin and will attend a dinner with the governor. (They wouldn’t discuss Perry or meetings involving him, though.)

When Perry was in New York City last month he met privately with Giuliani and attended a luncheon with a group that included a well-known and longtime supporter of the ex-mayor, John Catsimatidis. Longtime New York political influentials Bill Plunkett and Charles “Trip” Dorkey were also on hand.

So, along with former Newt Gingrich aides like Carney and Rob Johnson as well as the many still-unaffiliated Republican operatives across the country, the bodies exist to staff and seed a Perry campaign.

They just need a candidate.

Perry doesn’t have a Mitch Daniels problem. The Texan’s wife, Anita, is enthusiastic about a run, according to multiple sources. If he were to opt out it would be more for reasons along the lines of why Barbour decided not to pull the trigger — a lack of total commitment and more practical concern about whether it’s feasible at this relatively late stage in the process.

“Is there the time available and is real money still available?” asked Carney, explaining their assessment. “It’s not very wise to just say, ‘Hey, lemme get in the race’ and just jump and not have an idea if there is the political support, the financial support. It’s a matter of trying to make a prudent decision.”

A central part of Perry’s challenge will be in trying to build a war chest. He’s raised tens of millions over his decade as governor and for the Republican Governors Association, but has never had to do so with a $2,300 per-person federal limit.

Still, he’s been getting exposure in situations where he could win favor with high rollers. For instance, he spoke last month at a conference of major conservative donors convened near Aspen, Colo., by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

And next week, Perry will join about a dozen of his fellow chief executives for a gathering of about 200 major donors for a two-day RGA retreat in Aspen.

The confab — one of a handful the Perry-led group holds each year — is an effort to woo new donors for the GOP governors’ association. But it comes at a key moment for Perry, as he tests his appeal to a swath of contributors who remain on the sidelines.

Several sources involved in New York fundraising said Perry has gotten mixed feedback about how many bundlers in the city that functions as the nation’s political ATM would embrace his candidacy. While there is a raft of Texas money that would almost certainly be available to him, it’s less clear how he would fare among the Wall Street and business elite of Manhattan.

Still, as one veteran fundraising source noted, “It may not matter.” As the sort of tea party-establishment hybrid candidate missing from the current field, Perry may have such appeal with tea party voters and grass-roots activists that he may be able to raise large sums of “energy-driven” money.

Perry associates, though, say it’s not just money or any one specific issue that will ultimately sway Perry.

“I don’t know if anything is holding him back, it’s just the process of making a decision and thinking about what a race entails,” said the governor’s pollster, Mike Baselice, noting that he has not yet taken a survey for Perry.

Another source familiar with Perry’s deliberations emphasized that the governor was still uncertain and predicted he’d ultimately go with his gut.

“I think he’s still weighing it,” said this Republican. “If he feels like he’s being called to do this then he’ll do it.”

A decision isn’t imminent. Two events in August — a day of prayer rally in Houston Perry is helping to organize and the Ames Straw Poll — may delay a decision. It may be difficult to participate in the former as a presidential candidate, and he likely wouldn’t be able to aggressively compete with such little time before the latter.

He may need to put together an infrastructure by the end of summer, but key Republicans say most primary voters still won’t have decided at that point.

“There is still a very significant vacuum, and people are still evaluating candidates,” said Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen. “My expectation is that that will go maybe into October, most definitely September. I don’t see any scenario where the electorate firms up before September.”

Paulsen said Perry called him last weekend but didn’t indicate whether he was going to run.

“He said he was coming to Iowa at some point and wanted to know if it would be ok to stop by and visit me,” Paulsen recalled.

For all the buzz among GOP insiders, though, Perry is still not a household name among the party’s rank-and-file.

“He’s relatively unknown here, unlike Rudy Giuliani who can walk in with a cache of name recognition,” said New Hampshire tea party favorite Ovide Lamontagne, who also talked to Perry over the weekend and found him to be seriously thinking about running, but still clearly in the “final stages” of an unfinished process.

Back in Texas, though, there’s little doubt as to his intentions.

“Absolutely, I think he will run,” said Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka, one of Austin’s most respected chroniclers. “He’s always been in the right place at the right time. It’s as if the fates have him as their favorite son. The Mitch Daniels’, the Huckabees and the Barbours have all dropped out. Everything has gone right.”

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