Perry Eyes June 1 Date to Announce Presidential Plans

Former Gov. Rick Perry is putting a date on it — or at least an approximate one.

In an interview published Friday evening, Perry said he will announce "around the first of June" whether he will run for president in 2016, the most specific timeline he has given yet. He has been indicating for months he will disclose in late May or early June whether he will launch a second bid for the White House.

"I’ll make an announcement of my intentions around the first of June, so we’re about 30 days out from allowing that to be public, what we're going to do," Perry told a TV station in South Carolina.

Since his 2012 presidential campaign ended in embarrassment, Perry has been working hard to prepare more for the 2016 race, boning up on policy and spending more time in the early-voting states than many other potential candidates. Yet he has been stuck in the low single digits in early polling, and he remains under indictment on abuse-of-power charges in Travis County.

Perry was in Columbia on Friday evening to speak at the South Carolina GOP's Silver Elephant Dinner. He is on the lineup for the state party's annual convention Saturday morning, also in Columbia.