Will voters leaving California for Texas make this state unlivable, too?
Last person out of California, please turn out the lights.
Wait, don’t bother. They’ll go out soon enough.
We kid because we love. But there’s no question, the Golden State is awfully tarnished these days. And the influx of California refugees is steady enough that some Texans fear a day when there will be enough voters to usher in the very policies that make California increasingly unlivable.
The good news is, that’s not likely the case. Texas’ potential turn to purple is the result of many factors, but the California invasion probably isn’t determinative.
More on that in a minute. First, let’s consider what’s happening on the West Coast and why those of us between the Red and the Rio Grande should care.
RED AND BLUE
As the nation’s political polarization has settled in over the last couple of decades, California and Texas have been the tent poles, blue and red, that each side has used to prove its way is superior.
When Texas governors were running for president, liberals loved to point to the Lone Star State’s rankings on health insurance coverage, wages, education level, obesity, you name it. These were often fair criticisms.
Now that California is controlled not just by Democrats but by the far left, plenty of conservatives are nearly gleeful about the state’s ongoing struggles. California has the second-highest housing costs. of any state. The most poverty. The most expensive gas.
Homelessness is so unchecked that medieval diseases like typhus are making a comeback.
And yes, the state must repeatedly choose between keeping the lights on for millions or reducing wildfire risk.
Californians are voting with their feet. For seven years, the state has lost many more residents to other states than it has gained from them. And each year, about 86,000 come to Texas.
That’s led to a fear that Texas will suffer for its success — that the reasonable business regulations, booming economy and sane housing market drawing people from blue states will vanish when they vote the way they did back home. It’s even got its own slogan, favored by no less than Gov. Greg Abbott: “Don’t California my Texas.”
The good news is that the migrants alone probably can’t pull it off. An authority on these matters, former California state lawmaker Chuck DeVore, says there are too many mitigating factors at work.
In 2011, DeVore made the move to Texas himself, and he now studies these issues as vice president for national initiatives at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin. He estimates that even after years of U-Haul trucks headed east, ex-Californians make up no more than 5% of the Texas electorate.
Polling on these questions is imperfect, but he points to evidence that if anything, right-leaning Californians are making the move more than liberals.
Exit polls conducted in last year’s unusually competitive Senate race show that native-born Texans were most likely to vote for Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke, while transplants favored Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.
“Texas is a big jump” for Californians, DeVore said. “You’ve got to have some commitment to come here. It’s very different culturally. Self-selection occurs.”
STILL ROOM TO GROW
DeVore notes that most growing Texas urban areas still have land to build homes — and policies that, unlike California, don’t discourage construction. Developers who have worked in both states have told DeVore that “what takes 4 to 5 years to get permitted in California takes 4 to 5 months in Texas.”
Still, vigilance is required. Consider Austin, the most California-like part of the state, with its booming tech industry and skyrocketing home prices. The city has struggled with how to address homeless campsites popping up all over, prompting a public spat with the governor.
In California, county control of zoning has made developing unincorporated land difficult; in Texas, such land is unzoned, and the Legislature recently made it harder for cites to annex such areas without a vote.
“We’ll probably see more intervention by the Legislature, if they deem they have to, to prevent cities from overly regulating the market,” DeVore said.
That’s not to say we want our urban areas to just sprawl on forever. Cities like Fort Worth have to strike the right balance of encouraging denser development without making home ownership an option only for the super-wealthy, as in San Francisco.
It’s one of many policy lessons we can learn from California’s decline. But these are complicated issues that combine transit, job-creation incentives and environmental needs. They often defy single explanations or easy slogans.
But if you must have one, how about: Welcome, y’all. Don’t California our Texas.
This story was originally published November 25, 2019 at 5:03 AM.
