The ‘Crime Rush’ Is Deepening the Nation’s Divisions

Progressive blue cities risk entering a spiral of decline as productive residents leave for safer,
more economically dynamic red states.

California enjoyed rapid population growth during the Gold Rush of the 1800s. Now, the Golden State is suffering the opposite: the Crime Rush of the 2000s. California represents a national trend in which people and businesses are fleeing states where governments punish achievement, encourage theft and violence, and erode the quality of life.

Red-state residents worry the exodus from blue states will turn their governments over to Democratic politicians who will impose the same policies that made California, New York, and Illinois unbearable. The more likely scenario is that this reshuffling of the population will make red states more powerful while increasing America’s political, economic, and cultural divisions.

In 1993, Republicans comprised about one-third of the electorate in Los Angeles; last year, they were barely 16 percent. Republicans are moving out.

That is equally true of other crime-plagued cities such as Chicago, New York City, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.— all of which are under Democratic control with no realistic prospect of political change.

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