It was a Capitol Hill press spokesman job for a conservative Florida Congressman that got me to Washington, D.C. in 1982, where I contracted no Potomac Fever whatever. JFK was right when he described Washington as a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm — and I was there for the good years when the Gipper was dozing in the White House and it appeared the nation was returning to some semblance of sanity.
I’ve never seen so many people per square yard on the make as in that bloated company town. Self-importance is pandemic there. To those who asked about my D.C. experiences on my return to Planet Earth, I replied, “I’d like to buy those people up there for what they’re worth and sell them for what they think they’re worth.”
On my decision to return to Tampa and journalism in 1987, I was more than once heard to say, “At least I won’t have to worry about traffic and finding a place to park anymore.” (I believe the last available parking place in Washington, D.C. was filled in 1985. I’ve not heard of a sighting of one since.)
I enjoyed this luxury for a short while. But in due course, the longstanding inflow of retirees looking to enjoy warm golden years in Florida was larded by a large new cohort of leftugees from blue hells like California, New York, Illinois, and Taxachusetts. So now I idle in traffic like I did in Washington and count myself lucky if I can find a parking place. I’m surrounded by strange accents at my local supermarket. What’s rarer than a day in June? A resident of Tampa who was born here. That’s what.
When I tell one of these newbies that I was actually born in Tampa they look at me like I’d said I was from Mars. The population of Florida, fewer than five million when JFK was elected in 1960, has ballooned to more than 22 million. No wonder I can’t find a parking place. Those who say it’s easy to maneuver and park in downtown Tampa will lie about other things as well. Of course, Florida isn’t the only escape destination for those suffering from acute blue blues. Texas, Arizona, and a few Southern states also received large numbers of these ex-pats.
It’s no mystery why Americans in their millions are trading blue zip codes for red ones. They’re fleeing high crime, high taxes, and high cost of living as well as crackpot social policies. In an economical and savvy book, Roger L. Simon analyzes why these leftugees are fleeing, where they’re are going, and how most are prospering in their new homes. This tectonic shift in American demography is having far-ranging political and cultural effects on the last best hope of Earth. Simon sorts these to the third decimal place.
Our Bruce Bawer must have finished and appreciated the book about the same time I did. But he beat me to the review. That’s just as well. Bruce is a more elegant writer than I am, and his review is a fine introduction to this worthwhile book. He calls the book wise, witty, and winning. Those who take our advice and read the book will find that this is so. (Read Bruce’s Review: Those Who Move to a Different State)
Simon is a native of New York City who also logged years as a screenwriter in Tinsel Town, and until the scales fell from his eyes, he was an off-the-rack liberal. He lived and worked among people who would rather touch pitch than visit the South, let alone live there. The catastrophe of 9-11 caused Simon to rethink his view of the world. He became a larval conservative, and thus, at the hands of his lefty movie biz pals, came cross-wise with cancel culture before it was called cancel culture. Fully converted by 2018, his road to Damascus led him to Nashville, where he still lives.
Bluntly but accurately, Simon writes of his former home: “California was no longer the paradisal land of the Beach Boys it was when everybody I knew wanted to be in L.A. The state had evolved into a kind of madhouse of the woke, with people defecating in the streets, homeless encampments lining nearly every freeway underpass, and syringes littering once-magnificent beaches, making you loath to lie down in the sand or even take your shoes off.”
Charming.
Simon outlines the reasons he and other refugees have found better lives elsewhere and catalogs some of the frustrations they have encountered in their new homes. With extensive anecdotal evidence, he puts to rest the biggest fear the natives of the receiving states have: that the newbies from California and New York would bring their liberal views and voting habits with them, thereby helping elect politicians just like the ones that had made their original homes uninhabitable. Au the contraire, Simon says.
Simon found, like others have, that the biggest majority of the new Texans, Floridians, and Tennesseans know why they left their previous homes and are often more conservative than their new neighbors; many get involved in Republican politics. This has led to one of the chief frustrations of the rookie Southerners when they learn that their state’s elected Republicans tend to the don’t-rock-the-boat, go along to get alone, establishment types who talk a good conservative game at election time but then don’t even try to resist the left craziness when in office. (Lotta that going around, and not just in the South.)
Simon quickly became convinced that “…most of the politicians and the business community on the right were immune to solutions, as if they had an allergy to actually doing anything that might disturb the status quo and effectuate positive change.”
Political frustrations aside, Simon pronounces himself more than satisfied with his new Dixie home. He’s adapted to Southern ways and manners. I don’t know if he’s learned how to say “howdy” and blow gnats at the same time — very useful in the Southern summer — but he says he likes the greater civility found in the South, as well as the food. He even says he now likes country music. As my Alabama relations might say: “Well, bless his heart.”
An area that Simon doesn’t touch on much is the effect this large number of new residents has had on the states where they land. I’ve lamented the new traffic congestion and local authorities are now demanding more tax money to untangle the mess this causes. New apartment complexes and condos to house the rookie Floridians spring up almost overnight like mushrooms after spring rain. And of course, as cities grow, the cost of living invariably goes up. Growth is a mixed blessing.
Localities lose their unique identity when overrun by people from all points. Some of our new residents from New York City have turned out to be nice enough people once they’re out of that pressure cooker. But boy, they sure talk funny. There are patterns to the new arrivals in Florida. Midwesterners favor the western part of the peninsula. Tampa now could be described culturally as Peoria with palm trees. So many Northeasterners have set up shop in the southeastern counties of Broward and Palm Beach the area is known by some as Baja New Jersey.
There’s no indication that the demographic spigot will be turned off any time soon. Elected officials in blue states show no signs of backing away from the bat-guano-crazy policies they delight in enacting. So it appears I’ll have to continue to endure idling in traffic, and as I look at the endless sea of cars asking myself the same question Butch asked Sundance when they were being so efficiently and relentlessly pursued after a botched train robbery: “Who are those guys?”
