Rick Perry is in the Race for President

Perry will face off against a significant Republican pool which includes Mitt Romney -- the current frontrunner -- Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann.

For weeks, Perry has been calling party activists and Republican officials in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, trying to build support for his candidacy, The New York Times reported. He has also been working to build a fundraising operation.

Henry Barbour, a member of the Republican National Committee from Mississippi, has been among the party leaders visiting Austin in recent works to urge Perry to run.

"Governor Perry is authentic, a truth-teller and a job-creating machine in Texas," said Barbour, whose uncle is Mississippi's Republican governor, Haley Barbour. "And it sure helps to come from a big donor state like Texas, if you are going to run for president. He will be able to raise the money to compete with Romney."

Perry is speaking at the annual RedState conference in Charleston, South Carolina on Saturday afternoon, where he is expected to reveal his intentions to run.

"I think Perry will shoot to the top of the polls right away, and be neck and neck with Romney," Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Texas, told Reuters.

"A fifth generation Texan, Governor Rick Perry has taken an extraordinary Texas journey, from a tenant farm in the rolling West Texas plains to the governor's office of our nation's second largest state," it says on the Texas governor's website. He considers himself a Washington outsider, and his conservative and religious ideals may steal votes from Michele Bachmann's Teaparty base.