RALEIGH — Former state Sen. Jim Perry (R-Lenoir) has been focusing on family since he departed the legislature on July 2.
Perry, who announced last December 2023 he wouldn’t run for reelection this year before resigning his seat early, has shifted his attention from public service to home, including helping his 22-year-old daughter Reagan, who had a leg amputated after dealing with tumors since she was 15.
“We have a lot going on between the issues that Reagan’s been facing, my mom’s memory issues, you know, I’ve got some health things I need to get taken care of and not put off any longer,” Perry said of his decision to leave the General Assembly. “And the timing’s right to do it, having finished up the short session and being able to cut down on those obligations is a good thing.”
Perry said he’s been able to spend time with Reagan while also educating himself about the challenges amputees face.
“I’ve been doing a lot of research and learning a lot about prosthetics and insurance coverage for amputees and how they’re treated,” he said. “And this been very, very eye-opening for me.”
Perry said he had a newfound passion for raising awareness about issues faced by amputees, particularly the medical and financial implications.
“There are some issues,” Perry said. “And there’s treatment of amputees, as an example. If you tear your ACL, the standard is to get you back up to your highest level of mobility. So if you could run before, your surgery is going to be covered to get you back up to where you were. And that’s not true with amputees.”
As for his time at the legislature, Perry said his most memorable and rewarding work was done in the areas of flood mitigation and hurricane relief.
“For my district, my area of the state, I think we did a really good job of raising awareness about our resiliency needs and flooding issues in the eastern part of the state,” Perry said. “And in talking to our fellow lawmakers, we were able to communicate the importance to them and got them to commit to over a billion dollars of funding since I’ve been in the General Assembly to address issues of that nature. I think that is something that’s huge.”
Perry, a native of Kinston, also underscored having a role in establishing a roadmap for how to spend the flood mitigation money on specific projects.
“We had to work on establishing that blueprint. … You don’t just want to spend money needlessly,” he said. “And the blueprint that we’re working on would kind of give us a pathway of the most efficient way to roll out those flood mitigation efforts.
“Because if you don’t connect the right way or if you don’t go in the proper sequence, you haven’t really moved any water. You moved it away from one town, but until you get that stuff out through the ocean, you haven’t really finished the job.”
He also said he was frustrated with the slow pace of hurricane relief efforts.
“We’ve had a terrible effort as a state when it comes to helping those hurricane victims, so that’s been a big issue for me, and I think we’ll continue to be for anyone moving forward who’s in the east,” Perry said.
“It’s 1,000% still ongoing. (We’ve) still got people out of their homes for six years,” Perry said. “And I will grant to them, it is incredibly complicated when you have that intersectionality of federal law dealing with the FEMA dollars and state law. So it is clearly complicated, however, anybody (who) thinks this is acceptable, I just can’t understand where they’re coming from to think that this is OK.”
His successor, Bob Brinson, is poised to take up the flood mitigation and hurricane relief mantle. Brinson was installed in a ceremony at the legislature on Aug. 2.
Perry had been popular with the voters in his district, winning the 2020 Republican primary with 66% of the vote before winning the general election with 86% of the vote in his home county of Lenoir.
Appointed to the state Senate in 2019 to replace Louis Pate, Perry served as majority whip for the 2021-22 biennium. He also held leadership positions, including co-chairman of the Senate finance committee and chairman of several other committees.
Perry considers tax reform and fiscal responsibility some of the key accomplishments during his tenure. He also stressed the importance of agriculture and the military industry for his district.
“Always proud of our tax reform,” said Perry. “I worked hard on that as a finance chair and got some additional tax cuts programmed in the future based upon revenue, and by raising the standard deduction, it gave everybody a tax break in the state who was paying taxes.”
In looking back over his service to his district, Perry was grateful for his time spent in the legislature with an emphasis on the importance of constituent services.
“I’m thankful to have had the opportunity to serve,” he said, “and I certainly learned a lot about what it takes to not only function at the General Assembly and pass legislation or amend legislation but what constituent services look like and how much time that takes.”
Perry said he did not expect to return to the legislature in the future, but he also didn’t completely close the door.
“I’m too old to say never because I think people always eat their words, but I can’t see that happening,” he said. “It’s so demanding, and I do think that we benefit from having new thoughts and new ideas up there and just a new mixture of people.”
