Former Orange County Republican politician Chuck DeVore–who mounted an energetic if unsuccessful, 2010 bid to topple U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer in California–said today from his out-of-state home that he will not return and run for her seat following the Democrat’s recent decision not to seek re-election in 2016.
“I’m a Texan now,” DeVore, 52, told OC Weekly.
An accomplished conservative known for ideological consistency, intellectual depth and notable speaking skills even among political foes, the former Irvine resident moved to the Austin area–Dripping Springs, to be exact–in 2011.
After raising nearly $3 million but finishing third in a GOP primary field of five against Boxer, DeVore joined the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a private think tank that touts “liberty, personal responsibility and free enterprise,” originally as a visiting scholar and within about a year became vice president of the organization.
We told him we’ll now expect to see him seated in the stadium suite with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, but he joked there would be “no room” left for him in the space with notoriously overweight and obnoxious New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, being a frequent–oddly cuddly–Jones guest in the owner’s box.
DeVore has enjoyed an impressive career. Prior to his current post and his state Assembly job, he served as a special assistant for Foreign Affairs in the Department of Defense, a congressional aide to Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), U.S. Army officer and as an executive for an aerospace company. He’s even been a novelist and a non-fiction author as well as one of the nation’s leading advocates that Texas’s public policies produce more positive results than ones enacted by California’s politicians.
Indeed, Texas Gov. Rick Perry–a potential 2016 presidential candidate–has made an effort to lure California businesses to his state in recent years.
A spokeswoman for Loretta Sanchez (D-Anaheim) told the Weekly last week that the Orange County Democratic congresswoman, known for years to eye higher office and maintains a friendship with Hillary Clinton, hasn’t decided if she will run to replace Boxer.
Other potential candidates for the heavily-favored Democrat seat include California Attorney General Kamala Harris, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, billionaire businessman Tom Steyer, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Irvine businessman Neel Kashkari, Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin and perhaps the most dangerous long shot: state treasurer John Chiang, who won widespread, electoral support in his last race.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.