Elon Musk has just announced that he will move the headquarters of both SpaceX and X from California to Texas, citing Governor Gavin Newsom’s signing of a new law banning parental notification by school districts of children’s gender identification changes. “The governor of California just signed a bill causing massive destruction of parental rights and putting children at risk for permanent damage,” Musk wrote on X. “If you’re a normal family living in California, get out before it’s too late,” wrote one commenter. Many state residents seem to be coming to a similar conclusion.
Californians are concerned for many reasons beyond their governor’s latest concession to the far Left. The state faces a deep budget deficit, tepid job growth, and massive net outmigration. Far from being the egalitarian paradise celebrated by Governor Newsom, it has the nation’s highest unemployment and poverty rates while being home to the most billionaires. It recently ranked last among the 50 states in terms of taxpayers’ return on investment.
Residents have lost confidence. Only 40 percent approve of the activities of state legislators. Some 62 percent told pollsters the state was headed in the wrong direction, up from 37 percent in 2020. Four in ten are considering an exit.
Governor Newsom finds himself increasingly unpopular with state voters. But are Californians ready for radical change? Are they even ready for reform?
So far, what should have been a political firestorm has been more like a series of isolated campfires. True, Republicans have rallied modestly from their 2018 nadir, picking up five House seats in the last two rounds of federal elections. But the GOP’s 12-representative total is a paltry fraction of the available 52. The next governor and future legislatures are likely to remain progressive, as three-fifths of Californians plan to vote for Democrats for Congress, and a hefty majority back President Biden’s reelection. As former GOP State Senate leader Jim Brulte once told me, “things have to get a lot worse before they can get better.”
Right now, “there’s some movement politically but not much,” says Shawn Steel, GOP national committeeman for California and husband of Representative Michelle Steel (R-CA). “People are stuck on an ideology and it’s hard to move them.”
One critical factor in California’s progressive dominance, notes Steel, has been changes in migration patterns. In the past, those who flocked to the Golden State brought diverse political views. This led the state to oscillate between progressive and conservative governance. In recent decades, however, population movement has created ideal conditions for one-party rule. Between 2000 and 2023, per census data, California has lost about 3.8 million residents in net domestic migration—a loss roughly the population of Los Angeles. Many of those leaving, according to an analysis of IRS data that I coauthored, are middle-income people in their childbearing years, a Republican-leaning cohort. And as another study showed, conservatives are three times more likely to consider leaving the state than are liberals. “Texas is taking away my voters,” laments the GOP’s Steele.
Read the rest of this piece at City Journal.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
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