Go South, Young Man, Go South!

It has been 159 years since newspaper editor Horace Greeley urged enterprising young men to head west in search of their fortune and America’s “manifest destiny.” In the July 13, 1865, edition of the New York Daily Tribune, Greeley wrote…

“Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting, and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country.”

Well, it seems like not only men, but also women and children are heeding Greeley’s sage advice these days. The only difference is that they aren’t heading west, like Greeley suggested, but south.

As in from blue states to red ones.

When our family moved from New Jersey to Florida in 2011, it seemed like we were part of a relative trickle of transients. However, over the past 3-5 years, the migration floodgates have opened wide… and people are flocking to the Sunshine State from all over the Northeast and Midwest.

And contrary to common belief, they aren’t all coming here because of the weather.

The winter before we left New Jersey, we experienced more snow than Buffalo, New York including a record-breaking 24” in a single day. That was enough for Deanna and me to want to bid the Garden State farewell. However, just like the thousands of other New Jerseyans who have followed I-95 south, the warmer temperatures were just one reason we decided to make the change.

We uprooted our family because of New Jersey’s exorbitantly high taxes – including the highest property taxes in the country, twice the national average – as well as the growing congestion and liberal politics. In New Jersey, my 11-mile commute to work usually took 40 minutes and the property taxes on our 3-bedroom Cape Cod were $3,600 per year. Once in Florida, my daily commute time dropped to zero (I work from a home office) and our property taxes fell by almost 85%. Even if I had chosen to work elsewhere, it usually takes us 10 minutes or less to travel five miles here in Vero Beach.

As for New Jersey’s liberal politics, let me just say that when I ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008 against a 9-term Democrat incumbent who was called a “bald-faced liar” by the Philadelphia Inquirer, I still only managed to win 26% of the vote. Two years later, when my same opponent was caught dipping into his campaign funds to pay for lavish family vacations to Scotland, Beverly Hills, and Ocean City, 63% of the voters still cast their ballots for him.

Since we became Floridians 13 years ago, we have seen a lot of changes in our adopted home state. At first, those changes were gradual as snowbird season – which once was January through March – became October through April. Now, with more snowbirds deciding to become permanent residents, traffic is growing and housing prices are soaring. I can’t say I blame them because we made the same “quality of life” move in 2011, but I wish Vero Beach would have remained more of a hidden secret.

Thankfully, our greatest fear – that the refugees from New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania would bring their liberal politics with them – hasn’t been realized. “Don’t New York (or California) my Florida” t-shirts and bumper stickers are fairly common down here, but the fact of the matter is that it seems like the people escaping the Northeast are mostly conservatives.

The proof is in the pudding. When Gov. DeSantis took office in 2019, Democrats held a 300,000 lead in voter registration in Florida. Today, just five years later, Republicans hold a 600,000 edge. Sure, some of that 900,000-person swing can be attributed to DeSantis’ popularity and the way that he handled both the pandemic and the recession. However, it also means that the vast majority of the 1,200 people that move to Florida EVERY DAY are politically conservative.

That’s right, folks. According to The FloridaAgents.com, almost 320,000 people moved to Florida from within the United States between mid-2021 and mid-2022… and another 125,000 people relocated here from international destinations. That is why Florida passed New York State as America’s third most populous state… and also why we picked up an extra congressional seat while New York and Pennsylvania both lost one. Look for a far greater congressional reapportionment after the 2030 census.

And it’s not just Florida that refugees from the Northeast are flocking to. Tennessee, North and South Carolina, and Georgia are bursting at the seams, too. Not since the Great Migration from 1910 to 1970 when more than 6,000,000 Black Americans moved from the deep South to the Northeast and Midwest to escape Jim Crow laws and pursue better economic conditions has America seen such a population dispersion. My guess is that it is only going to get worse – or better, depending on your perspective – as high tax states raise their rates even higher to make up for the lost income caused by fleeing citizens.

The bottom line is that the South is turning a deeper shade of red and the northeast is becoming all-the-more blue. These days, people are voting with their U-Hauls.