AUSTIN — As a Republican presidential candidate, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry spent months lambasting competitor Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, the man whose campaign Perry criticized as a “barking carnival act” and a “cancer on conservatism” chose him to become the nation’s energy secretary.

State Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, who is no relation to the former governor, served in the Legislature for three terms while his fellow West Texan occupied the governor’s mansion.

“Every governor has a legacy,” Sen. Perry said. “Gov. Perry put his words into action when he stood up and said Texas is open for business.”

Some observers say the former governor’s record-setting, 14-year tenure saw him transform the office, but Perry’s critics say an open-for-business attitude toward economic development undercut any of his accomplishments.

“His one big highlight was his support for transmission lines to get renewable energy from windy West Texas to our cities,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of the Texas office of Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group.

Smith said a $7 billion investment spawned more than 25,000 jobs in the renewable energy industry and should be “a model for for the nation.”

But Perry, who is a board member of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, the company that is building the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline as well as the Trans-Pecos pipeline in West Texas, is far too cozy with the oil-and-gas industries, Smith said.

The Houston Chronicle reported that Perry last year received $365,000 for serving on the boards of directors of two companies owned by GOP donor Kelcy Warren, one of which is Energy Transfer Partners.

A billionaire, Warren reportedly gave $6 million to a political committee that backed Perry’s 2015 presidential bid, the Washington Post reported.

The Trans-Pecos project has sparked heated protest over plans to send more nearly 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas daily from a site near Fort Stockton into Mexico. Opponents say the pipeline is potentially dangerous, and accuse its developers of strong-arming property owners who don’t want the project cutting through their ranches.

Smith said lowlights of Perry’s administration included permitting a low-level radioactive waste site in West Texas over the objection of the eight staff members of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

He cited Perry’s executive order to fast-track 11 coal-fired power plant permits in 2006, and the former governor’s fight against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over air pollution rules. Also, he said Perry ignored the impact of pollution from natural-gas drilling on air and water quality.

Yet, in a state such as Texas, which has the nation’s second-largest economy — $1.5 trillion in gross state product, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce — it’s no surprise to find its chief executive doing big business.

Perry traveled from California to Connecticut to China to promote the state and lure companies here.

Perry, who became governor in 2000, said in a 2010 TV spot, “We’ve created more than 850,000 jobs, more than all the other states combined.” He didn’t take personal credit for the growth, which included 35,700 new jobs in state government.

“He’s a perfect fit for President-elect Trump,” said Steve Munisteri, a former chairman of the state Republican Party who is now senior adviser to Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee’s chairman. Trump has tapped Priebus to be his White House chief of staff.

“It had to be impressive that he was the longest-serving governor of the of the second-largest state during a time when there was an economic boom,” said Munisteri. “He administered a state the size of many countries.”

Mark Jones, a Rice University political science professor, said Perry was uniquely influential as governor because he was in office long enough to appoint the heads of the state’s agencies and boards.

“By and large, his major contribution was like a physician: He did not harm, and at the same time, he improved it at the margins,” Jones said. “If people grade him as a governor, they would give him a B-plus.”

After folding his own presidential campaign in 2015, Perry became a “tireless” campaigner for Trump, said Munisteri, despite earlier attacks on the New York real estate developer.

“It does help that the person he attacked was Donald Trump, because Trump doesn’t mean a lot of what he says,” Jones said.

Perry’s experience running a large state bureaucracy, and the fact that Texas is an oil-and-gas powerhouse, were likely factors in Trump’s decision to tap him for the energy secretary’s job.

And, of course, Perry like Trump has been a TV personality, having competed on “Dancing with the Stars” before making a second stab at being president.

“He can walk into a room and own it,” said Lubbock’s Sen. Perry. “It’s a gift.”

John Austin covers the Texas Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at jaustin@cnhi.com.