LOS ANGELES – Forget what you hear most pundits saying about last week’s recall election that failed to unseat California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Some Democrats think because Newsom ran on an anti-Trump platform that will bring the party success – or cause them less damage – in the next two elections.
They are wrong. The real story is the slow but gaining-in-speed exodus from California to states with lower or no state taxes. This mass exit likely reduced the number of people who might have voted to oust Newsom. Then there’s the rising cost of just about everything, including gasoline. At nearly $6 a gallon at some stations in the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles, California has the highest average price for gas in the nation.
There are also other forces at work.
Writing last week in The Wall Street Journal, James Freeman noted: “Californians suffer one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and the state holds the country’s largest unsheltered homeless population. Those who figure that Sacramento cannot get any more hostile to job creation should remember that the Tax Foundation ranks the Golden State as home to only the second worst tax climate in the country Newsom(‘s) victory gives California the chance to seize New Jersey’s crown.”
A Hoover Institution/Stanford University report found that people are leaving the state at an even faster pace than in recent years. Most critically, it said, California has lost 74 business headquarters in only the first six months of this year. This compares to 62 companies that had relocated in all of 2020.