U.S. Health Scare in Texas Also Sends Political Ripples By MANNY FERNANDEZOCT. 17, 2014 DALLAS — Along with dramas of disease transmission, treatment protocols and personal safety, one story line about the Ebola cases here has concerned the man who wasn’t there, sort of. Gov. Rick Perry. As national attention has obsessively focused on the three Ebola cases diagnosed here, Mr. Perry has been somewhat removed and, for a time, even absent, after he went ahead with a planned international trip as events were still playing out. Not surprisingly, Democrats have largely been critical and Republicans largely supportive. But with Mr. Perry on the verge of a potential presidential run, his low profile has been a subject of discussion in Texas and beyond. Mr. Perry’s backseat public role in the health scare is an unlikely position for an assertive, hands-on governor who has overseen border security missions on patrol boats on the Rio Grande wearing a backward baseball cap and flak vest. He left Texas and went to Europe on Sunday for a trip to burnish his foreign policy credentials as he lays the groundwork for a possible second run for president in 2016. He ended up canceling the final leg of the trip and returned to Texas on Thursday afternoon, after a nurse became the second health care worker to test positive early Wednesday. He resurfaced in the Ebola story Friday. Mr. Perry appeared to take a more aggressive approach, holding a news conference in Austin covered live by CNN and expressing support for the first time for a travel ban for people traveling from countries in West Africa that are the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak. He praised the state response and criticized aspects of the federal one, saying it was “indefensible” that affected hospital workers were allowed to fly or take a cruise. But throughout the ordeal, Mr. Perry has been in Dallas once, when he held a news conference at the hospital that treated the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States, Thomas Eric Duncan, on Oct. 1, the day after Mr. Duncan’s diagnosis. As Mr. Perry gave a speech in London at the Royal United Services Institute on Tuesday as part of his Europe trip, the first Dallas nurse infected with Ebola, Nina Pham, was recovering at the hospital, 48 Texans were being monitored by officials for possible Ebola symptoms and Mr. Duncan’s fiancée and three others he had contact with were under state-ordered quarantine. “I think that the fact that he left the state to travel around Europe shows that he’s going to put his personal priorities and politics above those of everyday Texans,” said Will Hailer, executive director of the Texas Democratic Party. “Cutting it short and going are two different things.” Mr. Perry and his spokesman dispute any suggestion that he or other state leaders have been anything less than fully engaged on every level of the situation. Mr. Perry said Friday that he spoke with President Obama on Thursday and asked him to put those who had contact with Mr. Duncan on a federal no-fly list. “Governor Perry has consistently demonstrated leadership in times of crisis, and this is no exception,” the spokesman, Felix Browne, said in a statement. “The governor assembled a world-class task force of public health and infectious disease experts to oversee response and preparedness efforts. He continues to be in close touch with officials across government to make sure every action possible is taken to protect the health and safety of Texans.” Others have taken a more nuanced view. They said the government’s response to Ebola in Dallas has been problematic at the local, state and federal level, with confusion and missteps among all agencies and officials. And they said Mr. Perry’s decision to leave for Europe came before the second nurse, Amber Joy Vinson, had gone to the emergency room feeling ill and the news about her air travel between Dallas and Cleveland spread alarm throughout Dallas and the country. “In retrospect, this has been a pretty rapidly evolving situation that’s gotten much more complicated than most people envisioned at the starting point,” said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “This is the kind of situation that the cliché ‘hindsight is 20/20’ was made for. If he knew then what he knows now he almost certainly wouldn’t have gone to Europe.” Ebola has arrived in Texas at a complicated time for Mr. Perry politically. His tenure as the longest-serving governor in the history of the state ends in January, 14 years after he first took office. His every move or remark is analyzed as he presents himself as a potential presidential contender. And he has been fighting a legal battle in court, after a Travis County grand jury indicted him in August on charges of abusing his official capacity and coercing a public servant, in a messy case involving his veto power as governor and Austin’s top prosecutor. After the Oct. 1 press conference, Mr. Perry played a largely hands-off role in Dallas itself in the immediate days that followed, apparently keeping in communication with state agency leaders but having limited direct contact with some of the local officials. Mr. Browne, the governor’s spokesman, said the list of officials the governor had spoken with included Mr. Obama; Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the secretary of health and human services; and Dr. David L. Lakey, the commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services. No city or county leaders were included in the list Mr. Browne provided. Although the first three cases of Ebola diagnosed in the United States have occurred in Texas in the span of two weeks, the main public faces of the government’s Ebola response have been local and federal but not state — Mike Rawlings, the mayor of Dallas; Clay Jenkins, Dallas County’s chief executive; and Dr. Frieden with the C.D.C. The state’s primary public figure in the Ebola drama has so far been not so much a face but a voice: Dr. Lakey, the state health commissioner, who appears with Dr. Frieden on the C.D.C.’s frequent news conferences via phone from Texas. Supporters say that before he left for Europe and after he returned, Mr. Perry has been active in coordinating state resources and personnel. He created a 15-member task force on infectious disease preparedness, made up of experts who are developing a comprehensive state plan and are holding their first hearing in Austin on Thursday. The task force has made initial recommendations, including establishing two Ebola treatment centers in Texas. And some say that if he could have been more active it reflects the uncertain course of the ordeal rather than any major misstep on Mr. Perry’s part. “Part of leadership is being present and being seen,” said Jerry Patterson, the state land commissioner, a former state senator and one of the few Republican elected officials in Texas who has been known to openly criticize Mr. Perry. “But I don’t fault him at all. The dynamic changed dramatically when the second diagnosis occurred. If I was in the governor’s shoes, I would have gone to Europe, and if I was in the governor’s shoes when the second diagnosis occurred, I would have returned from Europe just as he did.” David Montgomery contributed reporting. A version of this article appears in print on October 18, 2014, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Health Scare in Texas Also Sends Political Ripples. 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Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 05:16:26 +0000