Rick Perry

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is on a hunting trip in California. And the prey is Golden State businesses - and jobs. Perry kicked off his in-your-face campaign to woo companies to the Lone Star State this month with radio ads declaring that "building a business in California is next to impossible. " Now the governor is on a whirlwind trip through the state courting companies in person. "You fish where the fish are," Perry said Tuesday during an interview in Beverly Hills, his slow drawl emphasizing each point.

AUSTIN, Texas - For nearly 30 years, Rick Perry enjoyed an unbroken record of campaign success, winning 10 straight elections. Then, in 2012, the Texas governor waged a spectacularly unsuccessful bid for president. It was not just that Perry fell short of the Republican nomination; more than half a dozen contestants, of varying plausibility, waged equally unavailing efforts. Rather, it was the nature of Perry's free fall that did the real damage. In just a few months, he went from national front-runner to the brain-frozen bumbler who couldn't remember all three points in his own government-reduction plan, an episode that turned a sheepish "oops!"

Rick Perry made no mention of Mitt Romney, the current delegate leader in the GOP nomination fight, in his remarks to CPAC attendees Thursday afternoon. Nor did he express further support for the man he endorsed for president after ending his own bid -- Newt Gingrich. But the Texas governor did give voice to the conservative activists who have yet to coalesce around a single candidate by imploring like-minded Republicans not to "settle" in the presidential race. "We do the American people no great service if we replace the current embodiment of big government with a lukewarm version of the same," Perry said.

There are three things Rick Perry would like to do to the great public universities of Texas, but he can only remember two of them. That's a joke. You may remember that during a 2012 presidential debate, he started to list three departments of government he'd eliminate, and wound up forgetting one of them. But he remembered that he wanted to shut down the federal Education Department, and there are folks in Texas who suspect that some of his ideas for higher education in the Lone Star State may wind up accomplishing much the same thing to higher education there.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who parachuted into the 2012 Republican presidential contest on a surge of upbeat expectations, is expected to exit the contest Thursday, two days before a South Carolina primary in which he was trailing far behind the leaders. Perry will hold a press conference in North Charleston at 11 a.m. ET, when he'll suspend his candidacy. Perry almost quit the race after a weak fifth-place finish in Iowa's leadoff caucuses.  But urged on by his wife and supporters, he decided to press ahead, skipping the New Hampshire primary and putting all of his emphasis on South Carolina.

As we reported this morning , Rick Perry's ability to raise money from Wall Street for his presidential bid could be hampered because of new Securities and Exchange Commission rules that limit donations from financial services employees to sitting governors. So where is Perry turning to for cash? California, not surprisingly, is a major target. The Texas governor plans a busy swing through the state on Sept. 8 and 9, packing in six fundraising functions from San Diego to East Palo Alto, according to an invitation being distributed to donors.

Gov. Rick Perry is the kind of politician many Texans seem to like: straight-talking, rigidly Christian, a bedrock conservative. His Lone Star State popularity apparently deluded him into believing he'd have a shot at national glory, yet when the rest of the country got a close look at him during his run for the GOP presidential nomination, it became clear that all wasn't quite right with the leather-faced former cotton farmer. It wasn't just his frequent gaffes and memory lapses; it was that at key times he didn't seem quite all there mentally, such as during a debate in Orlando, Fla., when his speech was so slurred that pundits questioned whether he had suffered a stroke or had been drinking beforehand.

Not every Texan is cheering on Rick Perry as he travels to California in hopes of bringing tax-weary businesses back to his home state. The Lone Star Project, a Democratic organization, aired its own radio advertisement in Sacramento on Tuesday calling the Texan governor's trip a publicity stunt. "Hello, California, this is Texas," drawled a narrator. "Well, it looks like Rick Perry got out again. " The advertisement praises Texas but criticizes Perry, whose image took a hit following a gaffe-filled presidential campaign.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is frequently compared to George W. Bush, a fellow Republican Texas governor who went on to serve two undistinguished terms as president of the United States. But that's a grave insult to Bush. Perry, who dropped out of the GOP presidential race Thursday, is far more divisive, inarticulate, insular and insensitive than Bush ever was, which is why his departure from the national political scene is good news for everybody but late-night comedians. But it's better for one man than anybody else: Newt Gingrich.

WASHINGTON -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry, joining with several other Republican governors, said Monday that he would not expand Medicaid programs, taking advantage of one element of the Supreme Court's ruling last week that upheld the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate but also allowed states to opt out of the law's Medicaid expansion. “We in Texas have no intention to implement so-called state exchanges or to expand Medicaid under Obamacare,” Perry said in a statement.

WEST, Texas -- Authorities here said Friday that the death toll from the fertilizer plant explosion  Wednesday night  stood at at least 14 people, but they were optimistic that the number of those unaccounted for -- placed at about 60 earlier in the day -- would fall as people were tracked down. Gov. Rick Perry, who visited this small Texas community Friday, said the toll of the explosion was devastating, ravaging a large swath of the town. "It's pretty stunning from up above," the governor, who had flown over the area the day before, said Friday at a news conference.

WEST, Texas -- Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday called for the prayers of all Americans as he described “a nightmare scenario” in this small town where a fertilizer plant explosion injured about 160 and killed an unknown number in a blast so powerful houses were knocked from foundations. Earlier Thursday, officials estimated that between five and 15 people had been killed, including first responders. But Perry said he "was not comfortable" releasing the number of dead as search and rescue operations were underway.

Even as as President Obama pledged federal assistance to the devastated community, morning rainfall was hampering search and rescue efforts Thursday at the site of the West, Texas, fertilizer plant explosion, which killed as many as 15 people and injured 160. McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara said more than 200 law enforcement officers from throughout Texas are trying to recover bodies from the debris and rescue possible survivors. The explosion destroyed and damaged homes and leveled apartment buildings within a half-mile radius of the close-knit town, located about 20 miles north of Waco.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell were in California this week on a whirlwind tour to woo Golden State businesses to expand or relocate to their states. At the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel in Costa Mesa on Thursday, both state leaders took a breather to talk to The Times about why they were chatting with companies in Costa Mesa, Palo Alto and San Francisco. The governors, who cooked up this joint tour after discussing their mutual interest in job creation, took a much more amicable tack than Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

KAUFMAN, Texas - This North Texas community about 35 miles east of Dallas prepared early Thursday to mourn the sudden loss of Dist. Atty. Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia. McLelland, 63, and his wife, 65, were gunned down at their home in nearby Forney on Saturday, less than two months after another Kaufman County prosecutor, Mark Hasse, 57, was shot and killed outside the courthouse. So far, no arrests have been made in connection with either shooting, authorities said . The courthouse was scheduled to close at 11 a.m. so that staff could attend a public memorial for the McLellands at First Baptist Church in Sunnyvale, about 30 miles north.

KAUFMAN, Texas -- The state's governor denounced what he called "attacks on the rule of law," and vowed justice. Kaufman County's new district attorney mourned her fatherlike predecessor, fatally shot along with his wife in their home two months after another colleague was killed. And as other officials gathered to speak to reporters inside the Kaufman County courthouse Thursday -- where Assistant Dist. Atty. Mark Hasse was gunned down by an unknown assailant in the parking lot on Jan. 31 -- authorities begged the public for tips, still without a formal a suspect in either Hasse's or Mike and Cynthia McLelland's slayings.

There are three things Rick Perry would like to do to the great public universities of Texas, but he can only remember two of them. That's a joke. You may remember that during a 2012 presidential debate, he started to list three departments of government he'd eliminate, and wound up forgetting one of them. But he remembered that he wanted to shut down the federal Education Department, and there are folks in Texas who suspect that some of his ideas for higher education in the Lone Star State may wind up accomplishing much the same thing to higher education there.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, in his first visit to Iowa since announcing his presidential bid, said on Sunday that he felt compelled to run because no one in the Republican field had caught fire with the public. “This wasn't something I felt compelled to do six months ago or even three months ago,” Perry said. He was hopeful that “one of the people in our group would explode out and take off and everybody in American could get behind them. That hasn't happened. My wife basically said, 'Listen, our country is in trouble and you need to do your duty.' And that was a pretty clarion call for me.” Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.)

SUNNYVALE, Texas - Police helicopters hovered overhead, officers mingled with the crowd and snipers positioned themselves on the roof of the church where mourners gathered Thursday to honor a local district attorney who was gunned down with his wife last Saturday. More than 2,000 people filled Sunnyvale First Baptist Church for the memorial honoring Kaufman County Dist. Atty. Mike McLelland, 63, and his wife, Cynthia, 65. No one has been arrested in connection with the slayings.

KAUFMAN, Texas - The fatal shooting of a north Texas district attorney and his wife, just two months after an assistant district attorney was gunned down near the local courthouse, could have a chilling effect on recruiting future prosecutors, officials said. "I've always reassured them you really don't have to fear retaliation," Heath Harris, first assistant district attorney in Dallas, said of new recruits. But now, he said, "I definitely think people will think twice about becoming a prosecutor.