Last week I set to the task of debunking the myth that the migration of people from so-called blue states to so-called red states would lead to doom for the Democratic Party, both on the congressional and presidential levels. To refresh your memory, I noted that in a number of areas, particularly in the Mountain West but also parts of the South, the rapid population changes are actually increasing the number of voters open to voting Democratic, making these states less clearly Republican-leaning. As an example, I noted in the growth in the number of Hispanic voters in Texas and how that change has made the Lone Star State more amenable to Democrats.
One point that I failed to explicitly state, however, is that as more reliably Democratic voters leave solidly "blue" regions of the country for "redder" parts they are upending the political realities of their new communities. The influx of New Yorkers into South Florida in decades past is a prime example of this. So too is the "Californication" of the West, as The Economist describes it this week.
To sum up this and other affronts, westerners have used a verb. To "Californicate" a state means to turn it into an image of California, with inflated property prices, traffic jams and rampant crime. Occasionally, as in a recent leader in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, a local political shift (in that case, Nevada's vote to ban smoking in restaurants) is described as Californication. And Californians have indeed spread their politics to other states."I wouldn't be mayor without them," says Mr Anderson of Salt Lake City's immigrants. And it is true that a list of the mayor's activities in his office reads like a California Democrat's: setting a greenhouse-gas reduction target for the city, blocking a proposed highway and protesting against a visit by George Bush.
Californian immigrants have changed Colorado's politics not once but twice, according to John Hickenlooper, Denver's mayor. First, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, came conservative, often evangelical exiles from Orange County, south of Los Angeles. They brought a Californian enthusiasm for limited government. Ballot measures imposing term limits and restraining tax increases were soon approved by Colorado's voters, together with a fiercely anti-gay measure.
Then, beginning in the late 1990s, a wave of northern Californians arrived to take up jobs in Colorado's growing high-technology sector. Young, well-educated and liberal, they are a big reason Colorado has moved out of the Republican camp in the past few years, says Floyd Ciruli, a Denver pollster. Four years ago Colorado Republicans had the two US senators, five out of seven congressmen, the governor and control of both houses of the state legislature. They now have just one senator and three congressmen. And this week that senator, Wayne Allard, announced that he will stand down in 2008.
By no means is this population move a new trend. Almost 35 years ago Time magazine carried an article entitled "The Great Wild Californicated West" (though that article focused more closely on efforts of other Western states to avoid turning into endless suburbia, a la Southern California, rather than the migration of Californians to other Western states). Oregon's then-Governor, the liberal Republican Tom McCall, is quoted as telling tourists (notably those from California) to "Come visit us, but for heaven's sake don't come here to live."
But they did move to Oregon to live (much to the consternation of at least some natives of the Beaver State). And not only to Oregon. According to The Economist article, more than 5 million people born in California now live in other states, making it "America's second-biggest domestic diaspora, after New Yorkers, and the most noticeable." Their politics are indeed affecting other parts of the country. To take just one specific example, Pasadena-born Bill Richardson moved to New Mexico in the 1970s and not long after won a seat in Congress. Now he is the state's Governor and a potential candidate for President. On the micro level, too, Californians are having an impact on local races around the country, particularly in the Mountain West, as indicated in the quoted sections of the above article. And as more progressive-leaning Californians move to relatively more affordable regions one, two and three states over, the Democrats are going to have more and more success in elections in places like Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and even Utah. So much for the notion that population shifts to the "red states" spell doom for the Democratic Party!
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