This AP article is quite interesting in that Texas Governor Rick Perry has been one of California's harshest critics. Yet, now he is considering a move to the state after his term as Texas governor ends. That is, unless he decides to run for president again.
From The Washington Post (and AP):
Could Texas Gov. Rick Perry be California dreamin’?
The Republican has made convincing top employers around the country to move to Texas a centerpiece of his administration, even leading a series of job-poaching missions in Democratically controlled states. And California has been a prime target, with Perry bashing what he calls the Golden State’s high-tax, over-regulated ways.
But a New York Times Magazine story released Tuesday says Perry told the reporter he’s so enamored with California that he could soon move there.
“Perry told me that he loves California, vacations in San Diego annually, visits the state about six times a year and might even move here in January when he’s done with his 14-year stint running Texas,” writer Mark Leibovich says in the article published Tuesday based on comments the governor made while visiting Los Angeles.
It goes on to say, though, “That is, if he does not somehow decide to run for president. Perry’s standard answer about 2016 is a simple ‘I dunno.’”
In April, he scored a major political victory when Toyota announced it was moving its U.S. headquarters from California to Texas.
Asked if Perry himself could make the opposite move, his office did not immediately return calls and emails Tuesday.
Such a move would be ironic since Perry is one of California’s harshest — and highest-profile — political critics. Since last year, he has visited New York, Illinois and other states with Democratic governors in hopes of wooing top job creators. But his first such trip was to California and he even appeared in radio ads proclaiming “I hear building a business in California is next to impossible.”
Still, for a place he has claimed not to like much, Perry does find himself in California a lot.
He was in the state just last week, driving to the state Capitol in a Tesla Model S electric car as part of his effort to convince the company to build a battery factory in Texas. At a subsequent appearance in San Francisco, Perry made national headlines by saying he believed homosexuality was a disorder like alcoholism.