New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has a Florida problem. Facing a ballooning budget deficit and an ever-narrowing lead in her reelection bid against Republican candidate Bruce Blakeman, Nassau County’s Trump-endorsed executive, the Sunshine State is draining cash from her coffers and has been for years. “I need people who are high-net worth to support the generous social programs that we want to have in our state,” she told a Politico interviewer last week, musing that “maybe the first step should be to go down to Palm Beach and see who we can bring back home because our tax base has been eroded.”
Hochul’s fanciful declaration got a big round of laughs from Palm Beach residents, many of whom moved here in recent years specifically to get away from the Democratic governor, her problematic state, its high taxes, and its social programs, which were evidently not “generous” – or successful – enough to dissuade them. Maybe her first step should be to start at home and ask – we often do – why she can’t find the money in New York, which already has the nation’s highest tax rates and, especially in Islamocommunist-governed New York City, is about to go higher.
Even before Hochul took over from New York’s disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2021, the exodus was well underway. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, over 1 million New York State residents have moved elsewhere since 2020, with Florida consistently rating as their number one destination. Florida’s population, meanwhile, rose by about 2 million in the same period, welcoming transplants seeking the good life not only from New York, but from adjacent and almost equally blue New Jersey, as well as California, Illinois, high-tax New England states, and other unfavorable jurisdictions.
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