Perry stops paying South Carolina 2016 campaign staff

Staffers for former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign are working without pay, CBS News has learned. “We’ll be able to live off the land for a while”. His campaign announced in July that Perry had raised only around $1 million in about a month – though super PAC support pushed its total war chest to almost $18 million.

However, the two newspapers cited an anonymous source saying that the issue has spread to the former governor’s offices in Iowa and New Hampshire, as well as his campaign headquarters in Austin, Texas.

“Pay is only one reason people do this”, Katon Dawson, Perry’s South Carolina state director, told National Journal.

Dawson said core members of Team Perry, including himself, will continue to work, even if unpaid.

The lack of paid labor was initially thought to affect Perry staffers in South Carolina.

“Money is extremely tight”, Dawson said. Dawson said that move was unrelated to any “financial discomfort”.

He’s hoping to convince Republican primary voters that he’s humbler and better prepared than in 2012, when his first presidential bid opened to strong fundraising and a brief surge in the polls – but fizzled amid a series of public gaffes.

“Nothing has changed with South Carolina as far as the mission at hand of helping the governor become the nominee of the party”, Dawson insisted.

“As the campaign moves along, tough decisions have to be made in respect to both monetary and time-related resources”.

“Governor Perry stays dedicated to competing within the early states and can proceed to have a robust presence in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina”, Nashed stated in a press release.

Still, he expressed optimism about Perry’s prospects, particularly in South Carolina, where Perry is expected to go Thursday for a packed day of four campaign events.