Once he and his wife, Jennifer, moved to a Boise suburb last year, Tim Kohl was, despite everything, given a voice.
Kohl did what the couple had never dared to do in their previous outdoor home in Los Angeles: The newly retired Los Angeles police officer waved an American flag and a thin blue line banner representing outdoor law enforcement in his home.
“We were afraid to put it in its place,” Kohl said. But the Kohls knew they had moved into the place when neighbors congratulated him on the sign.
Leah Dean is on the opposite side of the political spectrum, but she knows how the Kohls feel. In Texas, Dean was afraid to wave a banner about abortion rights in front of his home. Idaho, she and her spouse found a booth in Denver, where their LGBTQ pride flag flies over the banner outside their home proclaiming “Access to abortion is a network responsibility. “
“One thing we’ve discovered is a position to feel comfortable being ourselves,” Dean said.
Americans are segregating themselves in their politics at a rapid pace, contributing to fueling the largest state divide in fashion history.
One party controls the entire legislature in all but two states. In 28 states, the ruling party has a qualified majority in at least one legislative chamber, meaning the majority party has so many lawmakers that it can override a governor’s veto. Maximum cases, since only 10 states have governors from parties other than the one controlled by the Legislature.
The split has pushed states to the political left or right, passing diametrically opposed laws on some of the issues of the day. In Idaho, abortion is illegal once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, as early as five or six weeks, and a new law passed this year makes it a crime to help a minor travel out of state to obtain one. In Colorado, state law prohibits any restrictions on abortion. from other states to access procedures.
Federalism, which allows the state to chart its own course within the limits set by Congress and the Constitution, is at the center of the American system. It allows states, in the words of former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, to be “laboratories of democracy. “. “
Now, some wonder if this is tearing Americans apart.
“Does it also work at a time when we’re so politically divided, or is it just an accelerator for other people who need to resegregate?” asked Rob Witwer, a former Colorado Republican lawmaker.
Colorado and Idaho constitute two poles of political homogenization at the state level. Both are fast-growing Rocky Mountain states that have been reshaped thanks to the influx of like-minded residents. Life in either state can be similar: conversations revolve around local ski areas, mountain bike trails, and how newcomers overfill things. But, politically, they increasingly occupy two separate worlds.
Witwer has noted that Colorado leaned to the left as other wealthy people with school degrees fled the coasts for their home state starting in the 1990s. For two decades, it was one of the fastest-developing states in the country, and during the Trump era. , turned sharply to the left. Democrats control every statewide office and hold the largest majorities in the legislature in history, adding a large majority in the House.
In contrast, Idaho has become one of the nation’s fastest-growing states over the past decade without wasting its reputation as a conservative paradise. It moved even further to the right in this era and has become a beacon for those, like the Kohls, fleeing blue states where they no longer feel welcome.
State fluctuations aren’t just due to transplants, of course. The growing grouping of like-minded Americans in like-minded enclaves, dubbed “The Big Sort,” has many reasons. Harvard professor Ryan Enos estimates that, at least before the pandemic, only 15% homogeneity due to the movement of people. Other reasons come with the polarization of political parties on hot-button issues that divide sharply along demographic lines, such as guns and abortion, and the electorate adopting the partisanship of its neighbors.
“A lot of this is due to ongoing classification,” Enos said.
When Americans move, politics is not the particular reason. But the life choices they make place them in communities governed by their favorite party.
“Democrats need places with an arts culture and craft breweries, and Republicans need to move to places where they can have a great yard,” said Ryan Strickler, a political scientist at Colorado State University-Pueblo.
But anything would possibly have replaced as the country has become even more polarized. Businesses targeting conservatives fleeing blue states have sprung up, such as Blue Line Moving, which serves families fleeing blue states to Florida. through a Dallas real estate agent, he is helping LGBTQ families flee the state’s increased restrictions on this population.
The move would likely have been reversed by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, which created a class of mobile employees who are no longer tied to the states where their companies were based. two maximum politically committed segments of the national population.
Mike McCarter, who led a quixotic crusade to turn eastern Oregon into a conservative part of Idaho, said most people didn’t pay much attention to state government until the pandemic.
“So it’s like, ‘Oh, they can close any church and they can close my kids’ school,'” McCarter said. If the government at the state level has so much power, you’d better make sure it reflects your values, not someone else’s values. that are imposed on you. “
The pandemic has helped push Aaron and Carrie Friesen to Idaho. When the pandemic hit, they learned they could move their marketing business away from their base near Hilton Head, South Carolina. They had planned to return to the West, but California, where Aaron, now 39, was born and raised, was disqualified because of his progressive positions and policies.
The Friesens and their 3 children settled in Boise. They enjoyed the great sky, the mountains that covered the city, the plethora of outdoor activities.
And they liked Idaho’s pandemic policies. When the Friesens visited, hardly anyone wore a mask, which they took as a sign: they were content to mask when sick, but found that constant masking was unnecessary.
“It’s a position that like-minded people had,” Carrie Friesen said.
The Friesens are pleased with the leadership of their new state and the abortion and transgender restrictions from last legislative session. But they don’t see themselves as part of what they call “the nutty right,” referring to families showing symptoms of Trump triage in the less politically combined Boise suburb. They like to live near downtown Boise, one of the most liberal neighborhoods in the state.
They try not to make too many policy decisions, to some extent.
“With the temperature of existing politics, if other people move somewhere, they will move into a position with other like-minded people,” Friesen said.
That happened in Idaho, said Mathew Hay, who oversees a normal survey of newcomers at Boise State University. Historically, transplants reflected the leanings of the conservative population, with about 45% describing themselves as “conservative” and the rest split similarly among liberals. and moderate.
But it all replaced last year: The percentage of newcomers who said they were living in Idaho for political reasons rose to nine percent, to five percent for the old. The percentage of people who describe themselves as “very conservative” has also increased.
When Melissa Wintrow rode her motorcycle across the United States in 1996, she captivated across Idaho.
“It’s this well-founded, sensible, moderate group,” Wintrow said. “Of course they were conservative, but they weren’t going to blatantly say racist and homophobic things. “
Now a Democratic state senator, Wintrow is horrified by how her state has often become more intransigent.
“The state just moved to a more excessive view,” he said. “It is a safe organization of other people who fear that their ‘way of life’ will diminish in the world. “
In Colorado, it can happen.
Bret Weinstein, a real estate company owner in Denver, said politics is the main factor in getting other people to buy a home.
“This came up in our early conversations,” Weinstein said. Three years ago, we had those conversations. “
Now, many entering the state tell you they’re looking for a way to escape their red status, and homeowners leaving Colorado say they’re tired of it turning blue. Even in Colorado, Weinstein said, homebuyers decide on the basis of policy, some avoiding conservative spaces where debates over mask mandates and the program have governed school board meetings.
One of the politically motivated migrants is Kathleen Rickerson, who works in human resources for Weinstein’s company. Rickerson, 35, lived in Minnesota for seven years, but with the pandemic, he grew tired of the blue state’s anti-masking and anti-vaccine voice. minority.
Rickerson’s parents and sister suggested he enroll in Texas, but that was out of the question. Ready for a change, Rickerson focused on Colorado. Se moved to a Denver suburb in December 2021.
Buoyed by the state’s difficult stance on abortion rights, Rickerson needs Colorado Democrats to make more progress.
“Colorado is so quick to take a stand on things, and I’d like to see that happen a little bit more,” he said.
It’s a sentiment shared by Colorado progressives, who were frustrated that their party failed to ban guns and other left-wing priorities in the last legislative session.
“There’s a point where we have to avoid acting like trying to get along with our enemies is going to maintain our institution,” progressive state Rep. Stephanie Vigil said late in the session, after the House Democratic leader said it was vital that Republicans feel they have a voice.
Growing political homogeneity between states makes both sides feel involved, said Thad Kousser, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego.
“It provides an opportunity to move a state forward when it does precisely what its electorate wants,” he said.
The formula works like a kind of escape valve, Kousser said, leaving most of the state feeling relevant no matter what happens in Washington, D. C. But the local minority is being harmed.
The Kohls felt aggrieved in California. They said they had noticed his original condition worsening before their eyes and that no one was willing to solve the problems. Garbage piled up in homeless encampments. Tax cash appeared to be passed on to immigrants who had entered the country illegally rather than to U. S. citizens. Jennifer’s mother was eligible for government assistance because of her low income, but she was on dozens of seven-year waiting lists. The Tim police station, in a former hippie colony in the mountains running through West Los Angeles was set on fire during the George Floyd protests in 2020.
The Kohls wanted to live in a Republican state, but Jennifer said they weren’t just party-line voters. A nurse, she has not registered with either party and has a wide diversity of beliefs, adding that abortion is necessary.
“I so many other things,” he said.
In general, they feel more in a more conservative place.
“Here, taxpayer money naturally goes to citizens, not immigrants,” said Kohl, who can sense why Idaho is developing so rapidly. “Most of the other people gathered here are from California. “
Dean discovered others who had fled the Red States. She and her partner, Cassidy Dean, discovered that their neighbors had fled Florida after the state’s harsh political shift to the right.
Leah Dean, a 19-year-old cosmetology student in San Antonio in 2008 when she had an abortion. She was irritated by the obstacles she faced: the state-imposed waiting era before the procedure, having to have an ultrasound before the procedure, and having to become a committed Democratic activist. She met her spouse at the Texas State Party Convention in 2016, and every year since, she’s felt that the legislature and the state’s Republican governor are making the state less and less hospitable to other people like her.
Now in Colorado, she and her spouse work from home, working remotely for their former jobs in Texas. They have limited social opportunities, but they’ve taken care of that by re-entering politics, with Leah Dean, vice president of the Denver Democrats.
“It’s also the way we meet people,” he said. “We don’t have another one to do it. “
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By NICHOLAS RICCARDI Associated Press
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