Texas governor Rick Perry will make his presidential campaign announcement on Saturday, his spokesman Mark Miner confirmed to POLITICO, marking the first time a Perry aide has said for the record that Perry is officially going to be a candidate.

“He’ll make his intentions very clear on Saturday,” Miner said, adding, “it’s true” that he will say he is running for president.

POLITICO first reported Monday that Perry would use a speech in South Carolina, at a bloggers’ conference run by RedState, to remove any question about whether he would be seeking the presidency in the 2012 cycle. He will then fly to New Hampshire, to attend a house party in the Portsmouth area at the home of a state lawmaker.

It’s a distinction that’s not entirely without a difference, and it means the race will be officially joined before the voting closes at Ames.

Perry’s announcement will fall just as voters are arriving at Ames to take part in the famous Iowa straw poll, a decision that has rankled some Republicans. Nonetheless, Perry will visit the Hawkeye State the next day, attending a local GOP fundraising dinner where another Tea Party presidential favorite, Michele Bachmann, will also appear.

Perry’s advisers had made clear throughout his decision-making process that if he ran, he would skip the exploratory phase and go right to running.

Shifting to an announcement on Saturday announcement makes clear that at a minimum Perry will distract some of the attention from the top finishers in the straw poll. But the move also serves as an acknowledgment that Perry has some groundwork to make up as he campaigns for president in a field where many contenders have been meeting voters and raising money for months.

It also helps suck the oxygen out of the Sarah Palin bus tour resuming in — of all places! — Iowa on the eve of the straw poll. Not that that’s the intention, of course.

(Source: Politico)