{"id":13218,"date":"2023-08-07T02:13:39","date_gmt":"2023-08-07T02:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13218"},"modified":"2023-08-07T02:13:40","modified_gmt":"2023-08-07T02:13:40","slug":"california-takes-revenge-on-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13218","title":{"rendered":"California Takes Revenge on Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

eople leaving the Golden State are changing the political makeup of the states they move to. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Timothy Egan<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

President\n Trump clearly hates the most populous state in the country he governs. \nWhile trashing California with his gutter mouth, the president has used \nhis office to physically trash the home to nearly one in eight Americans\n \u2014 seeking to make its air more polluted, its water less clean<\/a>, its forests more vulnerable to catastrophic fires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\n now the Golden State is poised to strike back. By moving its \npresidential primary from June to March 3, California will finally exert\n a political influence commensurate to its size. Almost 500 delegates, a\n fourth of the number needed to win the Democratic nomination, are at \nstake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps more consequential \u2014 or\n at least overlooked \u2014 is what\u2019s happening among the vast diaspora of \nmore than 7.3 million people who have left<\/em>\n California since 2007. They appear to be changing the political makeup \nof the states they\u2019ve moved to, perhaps enough to alter the Electoral \nCollege map in favor of Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With\n nearly 40 million people, California is still gaining population \u2014 \nbarely. But stratospheric home prices and unbearable rental costs have \ncreated a reverse \u201cGrapes of Wrath,\u201d forcing those who are not rich to \nflee to states with much lower costs of living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n question is: Are they bringing California values \u2014 fierce defense of \nthe environment, tolerance of immigrants and a multiracial society, \ninsistence on universal health care \u2014 with them? It could be just \ndemographic churn. But if you look at the changing politics of Nevada, \nColorado and Arizona, all fast-growing states packed with new arrivals \nfrom California, the answer is yes. Texas may not be far behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n most endangered species, California Republicans, make the most noise \nabout how awful the state is. They cite the many thousands sleeping on \nstreets, the failure to enforce basic standards of public behavior, and \nhigh taxes. San Francisco, the sad city by the bay, has become a \n\u201chostage to the homeless,\u201d as one respected state journal put it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than half of Californians<\/a>\n say they have considered leaving the state, and a large majority of \nthem are conservatives, as one survey found. But the evidence in the states taking in a majority of ex-Californians<\/a> \u2014 among those who actually leave rather than just whine about leaving \u2014 tells another story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Nevada<\/a>,\n which saw 500,000 Californians move there between 2008 and 2018, \nDemocrats won the governor\u2019s mansion and a second U.S. Senate seat in \n2018. There used to be more Republicans, by registration. But Democrats \nnow have a 70,000-voter advantage, and they prevailed there in the last \nthree presidential races.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colorado, \nanother favorite landing spot for those who can no longer afford \nCalifornia, is now reliably blue. Democrats won majorities there by more\n than 100,000 votes in the last two presidential elections. The state is\n likely to flip a Senate seat, bouncing the inept Republican Cory \nGardner for a popular former governor, John Hickenlooper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arizona\n could be the next to fall to Democrats. The state known for retirees \nand tax-averse whites is becoming more diverse and younger and is full \nof ex-Californians. Between 2001 and 2014, Arizona added about a \nquarter-million people from its neighboring state to the west.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\n won Arizona by 91,000 votes. But in 2018, the quirky Kyrsten Sinema \nbecame the first Democrat to win a Senate seat since 1988, with a \nvictory margin of about 56,000 votes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking at this year\u2019s electoral map, Arizona is a wild card<\/a>.\n I\u2019ve long believed that it\u2019s better to win back the 80,000 votes that \nproved to be the winning margin for Trump in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and\n Michigan than to grow another two million progressives on the coasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\n if the Dems were to win Arizona\u2019s 11 Electoral College votes, as polls \nshow they could, and lose Wisconsin\u2019s 10, while getting back \nPennsylvania and Michigan, that would be enough to remove the vile and \ncorrupt man occupying the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Texas, the top state for California exiles, will probably come up short for Democrats this year, though it\u2019s in play<\/a>. Democrats have a growing advantage in Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio<\/a>, all seeing heavy U-Haul traffic from California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polls in Texas show Trump failing to get above 48 percent in matchups with Democrats. And 45 percent of voters wanted to impeach and remove him<\/a> from office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bullying and berating California is good politics for Trump. The rest of the country has little sympathy for the \u201csunbaked barbarians,\u201d as an old friend in Seattle used to call them. As someone who grew up loathing the hordes who moved north to my native Pacific Northwest, I get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Trump treats these fellow citizens as\n aliens. He\u2019s going out of his way to gut the state\u2019s clean air \nstandards, to turn the Eden of its public lands over to industrial \npillagers and to cast its immigrant strivers as criminals. He has done \nnothing \u2014 rebuffing the state\u2019s plea for additional housing vouchers for\n the poor \u2014 to mitigate the homeless crisis. He\u2019d prefer a dystopia on \nthe Pacific, largely because he lost the Golden State by more than four \nmillion votes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet Californians, those who still proudly call it home and those who left their hearts there, could be the force that sends him packing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Timothy Egan (@nytegan) is a contributing opinion writer fro the NY Times who covers the environment, the American West and politics. He is a winner of the National Book Award and author, most recently, of \u201cA Pilgrimage to Eternity.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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eople leaving the Golden State are changing the political makeup of the states they move to. by Timothy Egan President Trump clearly hates the most populous state in the country he governs. While trashing California […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13219,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[83,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-13218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13220,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13218\/revisions\/13220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}