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“Blue blight” is spreading across northeastern and west coast America, with scattered outbreaks in the interior of the country like Illinois and Colorado. It is up to voters to stop its spread.
“Blue blight” isn’t a term-of-art yet. But, it will be.
Consider that Dutch Elm Disease wasn’t a term familiar to Americans in the 1920s either. The devastating fungus arrived in the United States in the early 1930s and notably impacted a handful of Elm trees in Cleveland, Ohio. By the end of the 1970s, the Elms that had defined the Courthouse Square of my hometown of Warren as well as my own street, and, indeed, all of northeast Ohio were almost all gone. The fungus spread far and wide beyond Ohio, leaving a trail of felled tree stumps in its wake. To this day, it remains a threat to the remaining Elm population in the United States, even after it killed three out of four Elms across the country, and almost all of them in some places like northeastern Ohio.
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The impacts of “blue blight” are becoming as visible as that of Dutch Elm Disease. Those impacts are most noticeable, to cite just two examples, in decreases in the quality of public education and declines in manufacturing jobs, even as state and local taxes rise. The second order impacts are now being felt across universities and colleges in states that are considered “blue.”
Kudos to The Wall Street Journal’s Douglas Belkin and Roshan Fernandez for their August 29 article titled “Why Syracuse Can’t Attract the Students It Needs to Pay the Bills.”
Kudos as well to Mary Katharine Ham and Vic Matus of the “Getting Hammered” podcast for some interesting speculation, prompted by the work of Belkin and Fernandez, on how the smaller number of college students — just the demographics of the decade ahead — are going to be looking beyond their choice of college to the job market and cost-of-living in the area surrounding their future campus and factoring those variables into their enrollment decision. Ham and Matus commented that perhaps students are going to tilt south to states like Florida rather than north to New York if they are looking at life choices ahead.
Life choices as in “here are the jobs” and “what’s it cost to live in that state long term?”
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I checked the numbers that are available against their thesis and, indeed, the available stats back them up.
Using the data available from the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics for the years 2017-2022 (the latest available) “blue states” — those that voted for then Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 — experienced substantially faster enrollment decline in higher ed than red states.
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Of the six states that saw enrollments rise in their colleges and universities, five are “red”: Georgia, Kentucky, Arizona, Indiana and Utah. Some deep red states did poorly (Alaska and Iowa) but the overall trend is there.
Another factor to check on: manufacturing jobs.
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When I first moved to California in 1978, its population was about 22 million souls and the state was home to close to 2 million manufacturing jobs. The Golden State’s population is today a half million shy of 40 million, but its total of manufacturing jobs has not simply failed to keep up with the population growth; the number of manufacturing jobs has actually plummeted to 1.2 million.
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How does that happen? “Blue blight.”
Another data point. California had 23 refineries in 2000. It is home to 11 today. Over 40 years, the refining output in the state has dropped by a million barrels a day. California motorists are paying about far more per gallon than red state residents. The cost in Indiana is several dollars a gallon cheaper. “Blue blight” claims victims in many ways but nowhere more than among those who consume energy.
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Voters get the laws and regulations they vote for, and they can change or stay the course their home states are on. No doubt some citizens prefer the blue abyss ahead for high tax/high regulation states. But all voters get to choose. And they get to change their minds if the spread of “blue blight” alarms them.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show” heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
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