Gov. Rick Perry might like for people to believe he made more than $1 million while holding elective office in Texas through shrewd business decisions, but in almost every case he was steered to his investments.

From his father-in-law renting space in a building Perry owned back home in Haskell to a high school buddy from Future Farmers of America helping him make a million in a Horseshoe Bay land deal, Perry has been more than just lucky or shrewd. He has been a man with friends.

The question of whether Perry's real estate windfalls have been a result of friends helping friends or are evidence of some sort of corruption has been fodder for some of his past campaign opponents.

"From abusing his power over appointments to getting sweetheart real estate deals from supporters, he's a regular get-rich-quick icon," U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's campaign manager said of Perry before last year's gubernatorial primary.

During the general election campaign last year, Democratic opponent Bill White said of one deal, "Perry's investment was enhanced by a series of professional courtesies and personal favors."

Over the course of about 18 years , Perry and his wife, Anita, grew from struggling to make ends meet in Haskell County to having a comfortable retirement nest egg built primarily from real estate deals Perry made while he was a statewide elected official.

None of the land deals were quick flips. Perry owned most of the real estate for several years before selling it at an appreciated value.

Perry began dabbling in real estate in 1985, the year he entered the Legislature. Perry purchased the Duncan Building in Haskell, and one of his tenants was his father-in-law, Dr. Joe Thigpen.

Perry sold the building shortly before he switched parties to become a Republican and announce a run for agriculture commissioner in 1989. Perry's income tax returns indicate he sold the building for $45,000 and made a $22,233 profit on it.

During Perry's service in the Legislature, he and his wife had an adjusted gross income of about $45,000. That jumped to $116,300 after he started drawing the pay of a statewide elected official as agriculture commissioner.

The Perrys' first venture into Travis County real estate involved buying 29 acres near Lake Travis in an FDIC foreclosure for $55,000 in 1991 at a time when the Austin-area real estate market was depressed. They sold it in 1994 as the market bounced back at a profit of $69,800.

The Perrys owned two homes in Austin before he became governor. The first was purchased in 1992 for $172,000 and then sold for a $37,000 profit in 1997. The gain was rolled into their next house, which was purchased for $435,000 in 1997. The second house was sold in 2001 for $940,000, a $505,000 profit . The Perrys lived in both Austin homes.

Two things allowed the Perrys to buy the more expensive home: Anita Perry's outside income and the first of three controversial land deals.

Anita Perry had given up her job as a nursing administrator in Haskell when the family moved to Austin after Perry was elected as agriculture commissioner in 1990. The family lived off of Perry's salary until she took another outside job in 1995, working for a public-relations lobbying firm for $50,000 a year. In 1998, she switched employers and went to work at $66,000 a year for economist Ray Perryman, who represented clients before the Legislature. Anita Perry quit that job when Perry became governor. She has worked as a fund-raiser for the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault since 2003, earning $60,000 a year, and most of the money she has raised has come from the governor's political donors.

The first of the land deals occurred in 1993, when Perry purchased 9.3 acres in West Austin on property adjacent to a home that computer magnate Michael Dell was building.

Perry was steered to the property by Austin developer Tim Timmerman, who like Perry was a Texas A&M graduate. In 1995, Perry was a special adviser to an insurance company owned by Citizens Inc. Timmerman was on the board of directors, as was former Perry Texas House colleague Randall Riley, whose father was chairman of the board. Years later, in 2008, Perry appointed Timmerman to the Lower Colorado River Authority Board, at a time when the agency was determining the route of electric transmission lines near a Timmerman development.

Perry told the Dallas Morning News in 2002 that he bought the West Austin real estate to build a home, but the newspaper reported the land was poorly suited for construction because it lacked a road and was on a craggy hillside. But the property was needed by Dell for a water line to a mansion he was building.

Two years after buying the property for $122,000, Perry sold it for $465,000, a profit of $343,000 .

Perry's designated power of attorney at the closing was lobbyist Mike Toomey, a friend from his days in the Texas House. Toomey had left the House to become chief of staff to Republican Gov. Bill Clements before he became a lobbyist. Toomey later would serve as one of Perry's gubernatorial chiefs of staff. After that, Toomey was a lobbyist for Merck pharmaceuticals, which manufactured a vaccine that Perry later tried to require teenage girls to obtain to protect against sexually transmitted human papillomavirus.

After selling the West Austin property to Dell, Perry invested in another piece of land that he said Austin developer Gary Bradley pointed out to him. Perry purchased the land southwest of Austin in 1996 for $286,000 and then sold it for a $239,000 profit in 1999.

Bradley was an Austin-area real estate developer who curried favor with politicians and put together projects such as the Rob Roy and Circle C housing developments, but he was the bane of Hill Country environmentalists, and his failed finances left him owing the U.S. taxpayers $100 million.

Tony Sanchez, Perry's Democratic challenger in 2002, questioned the deal because Perry moved the property into his blind trust shortly before the sale. Sanchez also claimed that legislation passed in 1999 — when Perry was lieutenant governor and presided over the Texas Senate — enhanced the value of that property as well as land that Bradley owned in the area. The legislation allowed development density to be grandfathered in prior to any changes in city ordinances.

Although the law applied statewide, Bradley used language in the bill to try to force the City of Austin to allow him to build on his property at a greater density than was allowed under the more restrictive Save Our Springs ordinance enacted by the Austin City Council. Bradley filed for bankruptcy before the issue was settled.

The Perry tract was never developed. It was bought by a couple who lived on a 179-acre adjacent tract. Geoffrey Weisbart and his wife, Diane Senterfitt, later sold the city a development easement on the Perry property for $258,000, preventing it from being used for home or office construction.

The final controversial land purchase occurred in 2001 when Perry bought 0.56 acres at Horseshoe Bay for $300,000 through his high school friend, Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay. Fraser bought the land from Horseshoe Bay developer and San Antonio financier Doug Jaffe and then resold it to Perry. In 2007, Perry sold the lot to one of Jaffe's business associates for $1.15 million, according to a report in the Dallas Morning News.

In the meantime, the Texas Observer reported that Perry used a Corpus Christi lawyer whom he had appointed to the Texas Public Safety Commission to dispute his property tax appraisal to get it lowered by $100,000 to match his purchase price. The reappraisal saved Perry at least $14,000 in Burnet County property taxes.

In 2006, an aircraft manufacturing company owned by Jaffe and Taiwanese investors sought an incentive grant of $10 million from the Texas Enterprise Fund managed by Perry's office to build a plant in San Antonio.

At first the grant was rejected, but then a $2.5 million grant was approved at the urging of then-San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff and the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and then-House Speaker Tom Craddick signed off on the deal. Perry attended a June 2006 ceremony announcing the grant.

Perry sold his Horseshoe Bay lot in February 2007 to Alan Moffatt, a business partner with Jaffe in other aviation ventures.

The enterprise fund money was never delivered to Jaffe's company, and the contract was canceled in August 2007 because the aircraft company had layoffs, did not meet job creation requirements and could not pull its financing together.

Perry last year told the Houston Chronicle that the Horseshoe Bay deal was an honest investment.

"Here's what I think most Texans would say: 'If you bought a piece of property in Central Texas, particularly at Lake LBJ in 2001, and you didn't make money on it six years later, we might not want you to be governor. You'd be a pretty rotten business person,'" Perry said.

Perry put his profits from the Horseshoe Bay deal into his blind trust. In the stock market crash of 2008, the trust lost $566,000 of its value. Perry aides told the Houston Chronicle that the value of the trust at the end of 2009 was $903,501. Perry has not yet filed his tax returns for 2010; he filed for an extension, as is his custom.

The land deals were the most profitable, but they were not the only controversial Perry investments.

On Jan. 24, 1996, Perry spoke at a luncheon hosted by a policy foundation founded by San Antonio businessman James Leininger. That same day, Perry's stockbroker purchased 2,800 shares of stock in Leininger's company, Kinetic Concepts. Also on that day, a pair of San Francisco investors bought 2.2 million shares of Kinetic Concepts stock. Both Perry and Leininger have denied discussing the stock deal. Perry sold his stock a month later for a $38,000 profit.

Leininger was a major donor to Perry's political campaigns between 1998 and 2006 , and he was a driving force behind the private school voucher movement in Texas.

Perry also has been criticized for investing in stock of Movie Gallery, which was subject to protests by the American Family Association because many of its stores had a section for X-rated rentals. However, Perry's tax returns show he owned the Movie Gallery stock for only 16 days in 1995 and sold it for a profit of $990. The protests against Movie Gallery did not begin until 1999.

Perry also has had profits from two books he wrote: "On My Honor" about the Boy Scouts and "Fed Up!" about problems he sees with the federal government. Earnings from the first book were donated to the Boy Scouts of America, while those from the second went to the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Perry is not allowed to keep the proceeds of his books. Under the Texas Constitution, a governor is prohibited from receiving a salary or compensation for any outside work.

rgratcliffe@statesman.com