I might look like a born and bred Texan – with my cowboy hats and boots – but I only recently moved to the Lone Star state after raising my family in northern California.

I got tired of the constant nitpicking bureaucratic heavy-handedness, the taxes, and the insane environmental policies that put human beings second.  A new article in the L.A. Times shows that I was ahead of the curve – which I will take a moment to relish, because it happens so infrequently.

Molly Hennessey-Fiske writes about how Californians take limo tours of available housing north of Dallas – frequently unprepared for the cooler weather in their light clothes and flip flops.  They’re also thinking of getting out of California and are looking for more hospitable lands.  Thankfully, realtor and California refugee Marie Bailey, caters almost exclusively to those moving between the two states. She’s not lacking for business.

With her crown gems, cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, suffering from crumbling infrastructure and homelessness, California continues to bleed off its residents to other states… especially Texas.

Californians have been leaving the Golden State for decades in search of cheaper housing, lower taxes and a different way of life. According to a UC Berkeley poll conducted for the Los Angeles Times last year, more than half of California’s registered voters have considered leaving the state. For thousands, that search leads to Texas. California lost 1 million residents to other states from 2007 to 2016, about 2.5% of its total population, and Texas was the most popular destination, according to a 2018 report from the state Legislative Analyst’s Office. The main reasons Californians cited for wanting to leave: high housing costs (71%), taxes (58%) and the state’s political culture (46%).

Four years ago, Bailey started a Facebook page after she left California and it now has more than 15,000 followers. “She lures them with tales of how she and her husband, a tech executive, traded their 50-year-old, 1,500-square-foot California home for a Texas mansion. Bailey — a libertarian who supports abortion and LGBTQ rights — added rules to her Facebook page against discussing abortion, vaccinations, recalling Gov. Gavin Newsom and ‘drive-by’ postings of ‘Don’t California My Texas.’ (Dodgers/Astros posts were still allowed this week.)” according to the L.A. Times.

The people cited in the article say they are in search of more affordable housing, less crime, and more freedom.

That’s why we left, and we’re so pleased with our new home. 

When will California bureaucrats realize they’re driving their own citizens away? California, the once “Golden State,” continues to commit slow motion suicide.

Hat Tip: L.A. Times

Image Credit: Mark Moz on Flickr

About The Author

Mark was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and served as the national coordinator. He left the organization to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide. Mark appears regularly on television in outlets as diverse as MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business and the BBC. He’s highly sought after for the tea party perspective from print and electronic media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Examiner, Politico and the The Hill. Mark blogs at MarkMeckler.com, and his opinion editorials regularly run in many of the leading political newspapers both on and offline. Mark has a BA in English from San Diego State University and graduated with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1988. He practiced real estate and business law for almost a decade. For the last eleven years of his legal career he specialized in Internet advertising law. When not fighting for the future of our nation, Mark is an avid horseman, and lives in rural northern California with his wife Patty and two children.

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