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JAN MOIR: Why Americans are fleeing the liberal cesspit of today's California for low tax, anti-woke, leave-your-doors unlocked booming Texas!
Located just around the corner from the historic battle ground of the Alamo, a shop called Paris Hatters has been on the same spot in downtown San Antonio, Texas, since 1917.
Here the Cortez family have been selling Stetsons to cowboys and fedora dress hats to oil barons and movie stars for more than 100 years. They supply hats to the Texas Rangers, to the local sheriff and his deputies. They still steam each one to custom fit and ring up every purchase on the old hand cranked till that has sat on the counter since 1930.
The Cortez family have seen everything and everyone come and go in this former colonial outpost, now known as the Texas Triangle. Today, they find themselves catering to a surprising new wave of incomers — Californians.
'I'll tell you what the Californians want,' says Alexandra Sledge, the granddaughter of the shop's original owner. 'They want to live in Texas because it is safer, cheaper and there's a better quality of life here.'
She points to the rows of beaver skin, felt and straw hats on the shelves. 'And what they want when they come in here is a classic Western style or The Open Road, the LBJ fedora,' she says, citing the style popularised by former president Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was born on a farm about 60 miles north of here.
Rising crime rates, drug problems and homelessness make life untenable for others in San Francisco
Texas has a low cost of living and low energy costs. It has no personal or corporate income tax
Is that worn to beat the summer heat, I ask, wilting in the high temperature and 70 per cent humidity of a typical July day in these parts. 'Yes, ma'am,' she nods.
The Californians who come to live in Texas are part of a modern migratory trend that finds politically and financially disenfranchised Americans moving from what they see as the chaos, chronic wokery and high prices of Democratic (Blue) states into the comforting embrace of the well organised and tax efficient, if sometimes rather more authoritarian, Republican (Red) states.
They are people like Yvonne Larson, a healer with a successful business called The Genius Muse, formerly located in Marina Del Rey in Los Angeles. After 23 years there she is moving to San Antonio, mostly for financial reasons.
Her rent rose from $3200 to $4000 a month ('I'm not getting any more apartment for that money') and groceries cost too much. 'Milk is like five dollars a carton. I would prefer to drink milk from unhappy cows at that price,' she says.
In Texas she won't have to pay state income tax, whereas California has the highest tax rates in the U.S., with a top rate of 13.3 per cent. Yet for Yvonne, 53, the real problem is the drift of homeless people and drug addicts who congregate around her Venice Boulevard consulting rooms and harass her clients. 'The police do nothing. I have sympathy for these people,' she says, 'but it is not good for business.'
Californians are sick of high taxes, high petrol prices, overpriced housing and extortionate cost of living in the Golden State, making life unaffordable for many.
Rising crime rates, drug problems and homelessness make life untenable for others, like Yvonne. Police arrest rates seem low, illegal immigration is out of control and the education system is in the grip of dispiriting levels of wokery, much of it driven by Left-wing Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom.
And the bad news just keeps on coming. Increased climate change mandates and taxes are set to raise California energy costs, which are already among the highest in the country, while a newly introduced $20-an-hour minimum wage for fast-food workers has led to a jump in restaurant prices.
By contrast, Texas has a low cost of living and low energy costs. It has no personal or corporate income tax and, for a record-breaking 20 years, it has topped surveys of the best states for business while California now languishes at the bottom, behind New York, Illinois and New Jersey.
For many Californians, the paradise of palm trees, sun and surf in a land of opportunity and easy living is now a paradise lost.
'The cost of living is out of control. Crime is absolutely out of control, schools have gone from some of the best in the country to some of the worst. And every year, just when you think California can't get any more crazy, Governor Gavin Newsom says: 'Hold my beer, I've got something else nutty coming down the pipeline.' '
So says Paul Chabot, a retired Navy commander and former California police officer. In 2019 he moved his wife and four children from Rancho Cucamonga in California to McKinney, a suburb of Dallas, Texas. They now live in a splendour that was previously unaffordable. In California, the Chabots rented a 3,500sqft home, whereas in Texas they bought a similar size house, with lakes, golf course and good schools nearby.
Chabot, 50, was so pleased with his move that he established the agency Conservativemove.com, whose motto is 'Helping Families and Businesses Move Right' ...geddit?
'We help people move from largely blue states to red states,' he says. 'And the people who are switching, are doing it because they have gotten to the end of their rope. It's like living in a bad romance. You have that relationship with California and once you get out of it, you go: 'Oh my God, how did I tolerate that abuse?' '
One recent example of Newsom's 'nutty' initiatives is the introduction of a law which means teachers and other staff cannot disclose a pupil's chosen gender identity or sexual orientation to any other person, including their parents, without the child's permission.
Proponents of the legislation say it will help protect LGBTQ+ pupils who live in unwelcoming households, but critics say it will hinder schools' ability to be more transparent with parents and ushers in an element of state interference in family relationships, undermining parental authority.
The river walk in San Antonio city in Texas
A homeless encampment in California where residents are sick of high taxes, high petrol prices, overpriced housing and extortionate cost of living
When Elon Musk heard the news, he said it was 'the last straw' and that he would be moving the headquarters of his companies X (formerly Twitter) and Space X to Texas forthwith.
Musk, who has offices in San Francisco, also announced he 'had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building'. He said: 'I did make it clear to Governor Newsom about a year ago that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children.'
In a marked contrast in attitudes, the Texas Supreme Court has just upheld the state's ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youths despite a legal challenge from a coalition of doctors and families. The 8-1 ruling from the all-Republican court leaves in place a 2023 law restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors under the age of 18.
It prevents them accessing hormone therapies, puberty blockers and transition surgeries. Texas Republican attorney general Ken Paxton vowed his office would use 'every tool at our disposal' to ensure that doctors and medical institutions follow the law.
All of this was music to Musk's ears. He has an estranged child, now aged 20, who identifies as a transgender woman. As a father, he said he felt 'tricked' into signing papers that enabled her medical transition in California and in the past has also accused the state of 'overregulation, overlitigation, over taxation'.
All of this was breezily dismissed by the LA Times this week, who opined that 'California-bashing has become a regular Right-wing talking point in recent years, and Musk often indulges in it.'
Yet the statistics speak for themselves. Although it is still the most populous state in America, California now leads the country in net domestic outmigration. Between 2019 and 2022 it lost nearly $80 billion in tax revenues as residents fled while Texas gained $31 billion — and Florida gained even more: $116 billion.
Married mum-of-three Heidi Curtis agrees with Musk. She now lives in Belton, about 140 miles from San Antonio. She is aghast at her former home becoming the first U.S. state to ban schools from requiring staff to notify parents of a child's gender identity change. 'The school is not the parent. California teachers overstep and it's not appropriate. Parents need to be 100 per cent involved in their children's lives,' she says.
She was born and raised in California's Bay Area and was a police officer before relocating here. Now she has a Facebook page called Californians Moving To Texas and describes it as a 'group for anyone looking to escape Commie-fornia and join us in Free America — aka Texas.'
She says: 'I know Texas isn't perfect, but we don't have homeless people. I can go to a park, even in the worst part of town, and it's just a park with no homeless encampments. I can leave my house unlocked. I don't see tweakers [meth addicts] and I don't smell marijuana everywhere I go.
Left-wing Californian Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom who is believed to be behind the out of control illegal immigration and the education system being in the grip of dispiriting levels of wokery
Elon Musk, who has offices in San Francisco, announced he 'had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building'
'I loved living in California, but it is ruined, a sinking ship. It could be turned around, but not without different leadership.'
Some feel the laws are too lax. To cut overcrowding in Californian prisons, many non-violent offences have been recategorised as misdemeanours rather than felonies or crimes. There is also a zero-bail policy for non-violent crimes such as burglary and shop lifting.
The theft of goods under $950 is not a felony. 'Criminals in California walk around houses and shops with a calculator, keeping their thefts to under $950.
That way, nothing happens to them,' says Paul Chabot, who was formerly a state parole board commissioner. He also worked in the prisons system, ran the Coalition for Drug-Free California and fought against marijuana legalisation. He despairs of what is happening.
'There's no accountability. The drug issue is nuts, with massive amounts of drugs flooding the streets. There is no consequence if you commit a crime,' he says. In addition, the woke left control the public school system in California and critics claim that their collective mania for social justice has had a devastating effect on educational standards.
A vigorous education has been replaced with a blizzard of initiatives including the incorporation of LGBTQ+ heroes into the curriculum from kindergarten age onwards.
There are also rules allowing pupils of any age to use bathrooms based on their chosen gender identity; there are no suspensions for 'wilful defiance'; and the provision of feminine hygiene products in both girl's and boy's bathrooms is mandatory.
A county sheriff cuts down cannabis plants during a raid on an illegal cannabis farm in California in March this year
A once robust and successful public school system now has questionable illiteracy levels.
According to a Public Policy Institute of California study, almost half of parents say they would send their child to a private school or a religious school if cost and location were not an issue.
However, it is an issue, and they are stuck. In California, you have your liberal, coastal elites; the Oprahs and the Harry and Meghans, the film stars and the Silicon Valley billionaires who are safe behind their high security fences and landscaped gardens. Then you have families who can barely afford to make ends meet.
'If you're the manager at a fast-food restaurant chain like a Chick-Fil-A or In-and-Out-Burger, for example, you're never going to be able to afford a house in Los Angeles. But you can come out here and own a lovely house in a lovely neighbourhood,' says Marie Bailey, who in 2017 moved with her family from LA to the town of Prosper, Texas — one of the fastest growing cities in America.
She has a following of 45,000 people on her Facebook page called Move to Texas from California and gets enquiries not just from California but from other U.S.states such as New York and Illinois — and even Canada.
'Politics played a big role in it for us. Los Angeles is extremely Democratic, and it didn't fit our ideals,' she says. 'But for us it was mostly because Texas is way less expensive. Our quality of life has gone up tremendously.
We were able to purchase a new 5,000sqft five-bed, seven-bathroom house with a games room and two home offices for about the same price as the teeny, tiny 1500sqft house we had in Los Angeles.'
Business in Texas is booming, now home to 55 Fortune 500 companies, the highest number of any state. They have taken full advantage of a shift in corporate America as more companies relocate from blue states to red states.
In addition, 465 companies have moved out of CA since 2018, with 219 of them relocating to Texas. San Francisco's office vacancy rate nearly doubled from 17 pc in March 2021 to 37 pc today — well ahead of the vacancy rates in similarly impacted cities such as LA (27 pc), Seattle (22 pc) and New York (18 pc).
In San Antonio, the economic success is the result of a steady rise in housing and an attraction of business and employers to the region, including big names such as Toyota, Victory Capital, Boeing and truck builder Navistar.
A surge in retail development has brought stores such as Zara, LEGO, Mango, Gucci and Marc Jacobs to town while according to the most recent 2020 Texas Census, the state population has swelled by more than four million residents in the last decade. 'Californians are welcome here,' a taxi driver tells me. 'So long as they don't try to California-up Texas.'
Back at Paris Hatters, Alexandra Sledge is explaining how her family business felt supported by the Texas government through the pandemic and appreciated how the state got firms up, open and running when California was still locked down. 'It made all the difference,' she says, scanning the shelves to pick out a hat for me.
For over a century, the Cortez family have prided themselves on their hatting skills and ability to size up a stranger and select the perfect hat for them.
Alexandra picks out a flamboyant Cattleman style, size 7 and a half, Bible-black, with a high crown. I check it out in the mirror. Holy coyote. It looks so fabulous I almost want to move to San Antonio myself. Yet is this Texas town, and others like it, really such a good fit for the new Californian influx?
'Life isn't perfect,' says Alexandra. 'We have crime, too. There are tornados, snakes and mosquitoes to contend with.' And, being a victim of its own success, has meant that property prices are going up here, too. With no state income tax, the Texas government relies on property taxes to run state services.
Yet, the American dream lives on, people can still be pioneers here. They can work hard and make a better life. And they can feel safe in a way that has long eluded many Californians.
If someone robs your home or your person, you can rest assured that a Texas Ranger or a San Antonio deputy will dispense some Texan justice. In one of the Cortez families' fabulous hats, of course.
Additional reporting: Barbara McMahon