California conservatives leaving the state for 'redder pastures'
The Volkswagen SUV whizzed past the Texas state line, a U-Haul trailer in tow, as it made its way toward Amarillo.
"Yay!" Judy Stark cried out to her husband, Richard, as they officially left California. The pair bobbed their heads to '50s music playing on the radio.
Like many other Republican and conservative voters in California, the retired couple have decided to leave the state. A major reason, Stark and her spouse say, is their disenchantment with deep-blue California's liberal political culture.
Despite spending most of their lives in the Golden State, they were fed up with high taxes, lukewarm support for local law enforcement, and policies they believe have thrown open the doors to illegal immigration.
Just over half of California's registered voters have considered leaving the state, according to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll conducted for the Los Angeles Times. Republicans and conservative voters were nearly three times as likely as their Democratic or liberal counterparts to seriously have considered moving - 40% compared with 14%, the poll found. Conservatives mentioned taxes and California's political culture as a reason for leaving more frequently than they cited the state's soaring housing costs.
Stark and her husband decided it was time to put their Modesto home up for sale about six months ago. After doing some research online, she came across the website Conservative Move, which, as its name suggests, helps conservatives in California relocate from liberal states to redder ones, such as Texas and Idaho.
Pulled over at a Pilot truck stop just outside Amarillo, Stark said she was excited to be hours from their final destination, Collin County, near Dallas. The pair purchased a newly constructed three-bedroom home in McKinney for about $300,000. In much of California, Stark said, a similar home would run about twice as much.
"We're moving to redder pastures," Stark, 71, said by phone. "We're getting with people who believe in the same political agenda that we do: America first, Americans first, law and order."
Between 2007 and 2016, California lost 1 million residents to domestic migration - about 2.5% of its total population, according to a 2018 report from the state Legislative Analyst's Office. Texas was the most popular destination. A 2019 relocation study by Texas Realtors found that 63,175 Californians moved to Texas in 2017, while California was the top destination for Texans to move - nearly 41,000 relocated here.
Despite overall out-migration from the state, California has been gaining people with higher incomes. The Bay Area has absorbed most of the influx of those residents.
Over the last decade, the Legislative Analyst's Office report said, the state added about 100,000 residents with household incomes of $120,000 or higher. About 85% of these higher-income earners moved to the Bay Area counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara.
But California's soaring real estate costs also have sent many residents fleeing to more affordable regions. The three-member Bailey family moved to Prosper, Texas, in 2017, seeking a reprieve from Southern California's high price tags. Marie Bailey and her husband, Scott, owned a home in Orange County and rented a place in El Segundo to be closer to Scott's workplace in Santa Monica.
"To buy a house there [El Segundo] is insane," Marie Bailey said. "It's like $1 million. Why are we working our butts off for a fixer-upper in El Segundo? We're just working, working, working - and for what?"
A realtor, Bailey launched a Facebook group for others who were struggling with the same problems and looking to make a change. Her "Move to Texas From California!" group now has more than 14,000 members. Most, Bailey said, lean to the right, as she does - though not all.
In California, Bailey said, she felt that she had to hide her political beliefs. To build a more inclusive online community, she has laid down a few ground rules, including "no insulting or going overboard with political conversations."
"I wouldn't be one to put up a Trump sign, even here," Bailey, 40, said. "But in your town Facebook, people would be like, 'We know who the Trump supporters are.' I had friends who voted for Trump and went to work the next day and pretended they didn't."
Bailey said she's helped about 40 families move to Texas in the last year.
"There are hundreds more who made the move who didn't use my real estate services but are in the group," she said. "Tons and tons of families are moving all the time. People are posting photos of their families waving goodbye."
Nicole Rivers and her husband put their Clovis home on the market in April, and hope to close escrow soon. They plan on flying to Texas to look for a place to rent in the eastern part of the state, near Tyler, coming back to California and then driving to their new home.
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