The best piece of news to come out of the filing season is this: Assemblyman Chad Christensen is finally hanging up his sorry excuse for a career. Why, he says? More time with the family, of course.

Surely, it has nothing to do with the fact that the registration in his district has changed, to the point where Democrats are now slightly favored. Doubtless, it cannot possibly have anything to do with the fact that Christensen is known for abandoning his legislative post at critical times, either to attend to business or personal concerns. It couldn’t have a thing to do with his vote to allow legally concealable political donations, right? Or the fact that he’s benefited from lax disclosure laws personally? And people must have forgotten by now Christensen’s record-breaking violation of state campaign finance laws. So that couldn’t have anything to do with it.

Could it have been his propensity for saying stupid things? Or the fact that he was so weaselly, even as a self-described conservative Republican, he never could seem to score the endorsement of the Review-Journal, even against more liberal Democratic opponents? (Full disclosure: We sat in on editorial interviews for endorsements with Christensen. He was pretty weaselly.)

Whatever the real reason, there won’t be too many tears shed for Christensen. And we can’t wait to find out who his “handpicked successor” is. Oh, how exciting the last day of filing is!

UPDATE: An alert reader pointed out to us that Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith had referred to Christensen as a “promising” assemblyman in today’s column. How does that square with what we’ve written here, proving that Christensen is anything but promising? Easy: Smith is wrong.