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The most significant voting bloc in California's famous recall election isn't Hispanics or angry male Democrats but the people who were so eager to weigh in that they've already voted -- with their feet. According to a report out this month from the U.S. Census Bureau, an astounding 2,204,500 Californians threw in the towel from 1995 to 2000 and highballed it out of the "Golden State." The state's net migration figure for the period is -755,536, and would be worse if Latin American immigrants didn't still drop in for a look. This is the first time the net migration number for California has ever gone negative.
We in New York should be so lucky to have a chance to recall our profligate pols. The Census figures make those of us staying in the "Empire State" look like the nation's biggest saps: Some 1,600,725 shrewd subjects of Albany's empire saw in the late 1990s that the pols were blowing the revenue surge out the window and escaped ahead of the recent tax hikes passed to close the inevitable deficit. Because so many former New Yorkers understood the meaning of present-discounted non-value, the state took first place in net migration loss: -874,248. The bureau says New Yorkers fled to every state in the Union except Nebraska and the District of Columbia. Don't expect this datum to show up in the welcoming speeches by George Pataki and Mike Bloomberg when the GOP holds its weirdly inappropriate convention in Manhattan next year.
If you look down the Census Bureau's coming-and-going column nearby, the consistent breakdown of Democratic blue-state population losers and Republican red-state gainers is striking (there are exceptions; Oregon and Washington state gained, while Louisiana lost). This may leave the blue states bluer than ever, but not very pleasant places to live if their most industrious, motivated citizens are loading up one-way U-Hauls.
It's well known that Arizona and Nevada are growth states, but the numbers for places generally thought to be mostly desert are impressive: Arizona's net gain is 316,148; Nevada's is 233,934.
The economies of California, New York and Illinois have been supported for years by inflows of foreign-born immigrants, and they still come. But this census shows large net losses even of recent immigrants in these three blue states. Almost certainly these are the most motivated, successful new arrivers, who know a lot about maximizing their gains.
When the Los Angeles Times published a story on the outflow, it didn't have much trouble identifying the reason: The exodus is economic. In the world's stalest states, such as Germany or Japan, people faced with cost-of-living waters rising to choking levels turn numb and go nowhere. But here in the U.S. moving on is a tradition, and today we have Web sites to reveal a suitable refuge from state political cultures intent on keeping the spending and tax spigot open.
Monstermoving.com lets you discover relative buying power if you lived somewhere else. Let's type in L.A. and Tucson, just next door: "A salary of $30,000 in Los Angeles has the same buying power that a salary of $13,448 has in Tucson." For Las Vegas the figure is $13,241. If on top of this they elect a Gray Davis governor, why stay?
:Q
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