Skinny

It isn’t often you see a California politician drop from a race and then bid adieu to California, but that’s exactly what happened with former Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, a conservative Republican, who pulled out of the O.C. supervisors’ race and packed his bags for Texas. DeVore’s political chances clearly weren’t good. He faced the bare-knuckled and irrepressible Todd Spitzer in the primary and he lost last year in the GOP U.S. Senate primary to former HP chief Carly Fiorina. DeVore said in an email blast that he was departing because of California’s terrible business climate and high taxes, which made it difficult for him to support his wife and children and meet other family responsibilities. He’ll be working for the Texas Public Policy Foundation to write a book on how great a place Texas is, a veritable “jobs-generating dynamo.” Chuck, don’t let the door hit you on the way out …  Capitol staffer Ray Sotero, a former reporter and car-racing buff from way back – he covered the Indy 500 for years – was on hand in Las Vegas for the fatal IndyCar crash that killed 33-year-old ace Dan Wheldon in a fiery, 15-car pileup. It was a tough time for racing aficionados, but Ray came through, helping others in the media and even filing a first-rate tale that tracked the complex chain of events from the first nanosecond. Actually, we liked it better than those press releases…