States that prioritize lower taxes, deregulation and less-restrictive pandemic measures flourished while states with higher taxes, more regulation and pandemic lockdowns run by people like Gavin Newsom bled residents.

Tweet

Boldness be my friend!
Arm me, Audacity, from head to foot.
– William Shakespeare, “Cymbeline” (1611)

It’s unlikely that California Governor Gavin Newsom, still reeling from a humiliating voter recall and rolling disintegration of the state he governs, had those words of the deceptive character Iachimo from Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline” when he starred in a cringeworthy commercial urging Floridians to relocate to California for its “freedom.”  

Which is unfortunate, since that would’ve at least provided a patina of artistry or intellect to his otherwise inexplicable provocation.  

After all, there’s a difference between bold audacity and foolish shamelessness, and Newsom planted himself firmly in the latter territory with his curious effort.  Newsom may have thought that he was trolling Florida Governor Ron DeSantis with the ad, but it merely backfired by exposing California’s dysfunction compared to Florida’s prosperity.  

Remember when it seemed like everyone aspired to live in California?  When was the last time you heard someone express a burning desire to move there, in the spirit of “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas and the Papas?  For that matter, when was the last time that you heard someone refer to California as “the Golden State” in a non-derisive manner?  

Whereas California under Newsom’s mismanagement actually lost a Congressional seat for the first time in its history following the last census, Florida under DeSantis flourishes economically and continues to draw millions of residents abandoning states like California and New York for its economic and cultural environment.  

Moreover, the Florida-California prosperity dichotomy isn’t an isolated disparity.  Rather, it represents a broader chasm between so-called “red” states and “blue” states.  

Don’t take it from us.  That’s the conclusion of the left-leaning Brookings Institution itself, as reported in The Wall Street Journal:  

By many measures, red states – those that lean Republican – have recovered faster economically than Democratic-leaning blue ones, with workers and employers moving from the coasts to the middle of the country and Florida.  

Since February 2020, the month before the pandemic began, the share of all U.S. jobs located in red states has grown by more than half a percentage point, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the Brookings Institution think tank.  Red states have added 341,000 jobs over that time, while blue states were still short 1.3 million jobs as of May.  

Nor is that disparity limited to economic metrics.  People vote with their feet, and the U.S. Census Bureau recently reported a mass population exodus in 2021 from major “blue” cities.  

Overall, according to the Census Bureau, the nine American cities with over 1 million residents lost 1.7% of their collective population, or 419,000 residents.  The two exceptions?  Phoenix and San Antonio.  

New York City, in contrast, lost 305,000 people, or 3.5% of its population.  Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest city notoriously dominated by radical leftist leaders, lost 41,000 residents (or 1% of its population), while the nation’s second-largest city of Chicago lost 45,000 residents (or 1.6% of its total population).  Then there’s San Francisco, once a mecca for out-of-state migrants.  In the most recent year measured, it lost fully 6.3% of its population (or 55,000).  

Shifting from the city level to state-level population changes, the Journal notes that “red” states gained the most while “blue” states lost the most, in what has been a particularly heavy period of intrastate migration:  

Forty-six million people moved to a different ZIP code in the year through February 2022, the most in any 12-month period in records going back to 2010, according to a Moody’s analysis of Equifax Inc. consumer-credit reports.  The states that gained the most, led by Florida, Texas and North Carolina, are almost all red, as defined by the Cook Political Report based on how states voted in the past two presidential elections.  The states that lost the most residents are almost all blue, led by California, New York and Illinois.  

Not even the most hardened leftists can deny the causal relationship.  

States that prioritize lower taxes, deregulation and less-restrictive pandemic measures flourished while states with higher taxes, more regulation and pandemic lockdowns run by people like Gavin Newsom bled residents.  Newsom might’ve been better off running his commercial in states like New York or Illinois, hoping to convince people already abandoning those states to give the once-golden state a try.  

Instead, Newsom bit off more than he can chew.  By targeting Florida, he only invited ridicule and positive publicity for his ideological opposite and looming arch-enemy Governor DeSantis.