DeSantis Fears Blue State Voters Could Begin Fleeing to Florida

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis holds press conference in The Villages and signs SB 7044 on April 19, 2022. Screenshot, The Florida Channel

Gov. Ron DeSantis said he’s worried that residents and companies from California are moving to Florida, which may impact the local politics of his state.

“There is cause for concern,” DeSantis said at an event on Monday about the phenomenon. “Texas would have all these companies moved from California over the years. So you‘d have companies move from San Francisco to Austin, and they’d bring hundreds of employees with them. And those employees would vote the exact same way they voted that turned San Francisco into the dumpster fire that it is.”

Should California voters move to Florida en masse, DeSantis said he is worried that they would not make a connection between “leftist” policies and some of the issues that, according to him, have been plaguing California.

“They will not draw the connection between their leftist ideology and the destruction that’s all around them,” the Florida Republican said. “It is a problem because I do think there’s a class of voters who would come to Florida, and they would continue to vote the same way.”

In recent years, some technology companies have moved from California’s Bay Area to Texas due to a variety of issues. One of the highest-profile movers was Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who moved from California to Texas in 2021. The company has yet to move to the state, although the electric car manufacturer has invested in a facility in Austin, the state capital.

Last week, DeSantis signed a bill into law that dissolved Disney’s special governing status on a sprawling, 25,000-acre parcel of land near Orlando amid a public policy spat over a parental rights bill backed by the governor that Disney weighed in on.

During the signing event, the governor criticized Disney after its CEO, Bob Chapek, criticized the parental rights bill—which prohibits teachers from instructing very young children on gender ideologies and sexual orientation—and said Disney would work to have it revoked. The company said the parental rights bill “should never have passed and should never have been signed into law,” and said it has a “goal” to have the law struck down.

DeSantis has expressed alarm at Disney getting actively involved in the state’s politics while noting the multinational media conglomerate has said nothing about the Chinese Communist Party, one of the most significant violators of human rights in the world, as it continues to operate theme parks and sell products in China. Disney’s 2020 live action remake of children’s film “Mulan” drew controversy because the movie was filmed, in part, in Xinjiang Autonomous Region in light of the Uyghur genocide and concentration camps across the area.