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McKinney, Texas, is ground zero for the migration of voters from California to Texas over the past several years. On Election Day, it is these newcomers who may well tip the balance not just in the Senate and governor’s races.
They may also decide whether the once ruby red Lone Star State will continue to grow bluer.
I met Oren at The Celt on the picture-postcard town square, where we played a friendly game of pool. He moved from California about a year ago “because it’s a lot cheaper to live” but is voting for Democrats because he believes that Texas needs “more social services and public transit” and more support for transgender kids.
When I gently tried to press Oren on the apparent illogic of moving away from a high-tax, big-government blue state for reasons of cost only to vote to make his new home a high-tax, big-government state, he was unmoved, almost arguing that real California progressivism has never been tried.
Blue state residents are fleeing places like California for red states. (iStock)
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It turns out that Oren was not as much of an outlier as I had expected because, not long after, I met Daniel, who works at a local restaurant and moved to McKinney a few years ago with his best friend and girlfriend to start a business. He has also proudly brought his politics with him.
“It’s in the Constitution,” Daniel told Fox News Digital. “We can go anywhere we want. It’s meant to be that way.”
When I asked him if he could understand why so many people born and raised in Texas are worried about transplants changing its politics, he shrugged and said, “Things change.”
California is facing an ongoing exodus of residents, taxpayers and businesses to lower-cost states such as Texas. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
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In the space of about five hours, I met two more refugees from California prepared to keep voting for Democrats. Like Oren and Daniel, they really did not see any irony in the fact that they may be recreating in Texas exactly the conditions they escaped in California.
The natives, however, do see the problem with the Californication of Texas. Terry, a longtime local in her 60s, told me, “I love to see the growth, and there’s a lot of it, but if they bring Democratic politics with them, then we stand to lose the whole thing bringing people here.”
Clint, who was in town from his home just on the other side of the Oklahoma border, is worried not just about Texas turning blue through domestic migration, but even about the Sooner State eventually turning blue.
California businesses and taxpayers are increasingly looking elsewhere as high costs fuel an ongoing exodus from the Golden State. (AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
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“I cannot comprehend why someone would move from a state because there’s high taxes and then come down here and vote for high taxes. I just can’t comprehend it,” Clint told Fox News Digital. “And I’ve asked them to explain it to me, but they just cuss me out.”
Thankfully, nobody cussed out this columnist for asking, but Clint is correct that the liberal transplants see no problem with transforming the red states they arrive in into blue states, and it’s not just Texas.
Arizona and even Montana have seen influxes of liberal California voters. West Virginians have similar fears regarding their neighbors to the south in Northern Virginia, who are also attracted by the low taxes and cost of living.
Lower taxes, cheaper housing and affordability concerns have helped fuel population growth across many Southern and Sun Belt states, Census Bureau estimates show. (Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Corbis/Getty Images)
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In Texas, there is a kind of double-pincer political invasion because, along with the Cali converts, unchecked immigration — illegal and otherwise — over decades has also pushed the needle left in the state. This is, in a nutshell, the new Democratic Party coalition: wealthy, college-educated Whites and immigrants.
The bottom line for Republicans — not just in Texas but in many red states — is that Americans are moving at stunning rates to cheaper states, which almost always means Republican states. The good news is that red states stand to gain in the Electoral College and in Congress after the next census, but that won’t matter if Democrats take them over.
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Between now and then, and especially on Tuesday, “Don’t you turn my red state blue” has to be the mantra of the GOP. If Texas falls this time, then anywhere can, and that is exactly what the Democrats moving to red states are hoping for and creating.
