Gov. Rick Perry was shaking hands and talking with a politician-packed crowd outside George’s Restaurant on Wednesday, with a NASCAR car he’s sponsoring as a backdrop.

The car will be covered in the governor’s re-election campaign ads as Bobby Labonte, a Corpus Christi native now living in North Carolina, drives it at the Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday.

In the lead-up to the race, Perry sent the car to Waxahachie and Corsicana on Wednesday morning. He was joined by the car for the afternoon stop in Waco.

Perry played up the economic boost NASCAR brings to Texas every year.

“The economics of NASCAR are just so powerful,” he said. “Every state in the union, I guess, that’s got an NFL team, they work double overtime to try and get a Super Bowl into their state, partly because of the economic impact. It’s close to $100 million.”

By comparison, he said, it’s “$90 million for a NASCAR race, and we have two of those a year up in that Dallas-Fort Worth area.”

Perry is facing Democrat and former Houston mayor Bill White in November’s general election, though Perry didn’t mention his opponent at the event.

The governor did, however, make a point of praising the Tea Party movement. Several Tea Party members attended the campaign stop bearing shirts predicting a “backlash” at November’s election.

“I’m such a strong proponent of the Tea Party and what they talk about and getting back to our constitutional roots and understanding what the 10th Amendment means,” Perry said.

He added that he interprets that amendment to give broader rights to states and limited authority to the federal government.

The governor also gave a shout-out to Waco Tea Party president Toby Marie Walker, whom he called “my favorite Tea Party person.”

mshapiro@wacotrib.com

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