This morning, journalist Paul Mushine of the New Jersey Star Ledger laments Steve Lonegan’s defeat to Chris Christie in yesterday’s gubernatorial primaries. He is even thinking of voting with his feet:
“At the Lonegan headquarters last night I imagined some guy with a microphone running up to me to ask a question. “Now that Chris Christie has won the Republican nomination for governor, where are you going to go?”
I won’t say “Disney World.” I hate amusement parks.
“I’m going to North Carolina,” I’ll reply.
Seriously, I am. I’m taking next week off anyway and I was planning on visiting my brother in D.C. But I suddenly feel a need to start checking out the real estate down by Cape Hatteras. Business is fleeing the state and we residents may soon have to follow.
That might have changed if we had a tough, conservative pro-business governor like former Bogota mayor Steve Lonegan. But after Chris Christie’s win in the Republican gubernatorial primary last night, we now face the unpleasant truth that the governor of this state next year will be either a liberal politician who tells the truth about his tax-and-spend policies or a liberal politician who lies about his tax-and-spend policies.
He actually wouldn’t be the first one to move to North Carolina. This 2007 study looks at New Jersey migration patterns. It concludes that the number of people leaving the state is significant and increasing. It also shows that North Carolina is one of New Jersey’s expatriates’ favorite destinations. Between 2000 and 2005:
Seven of the top ten destination states of New Jersey out-migrants were in the South and West: Florida (188,704), California (55,431), North Carolina (50,913), Virginia (48,454), Georgia (38,581), Texas (33,895), and Maryland (31,449). These states accounted for 41 percent of all New Jersey out-migration during the period.
The whole thing here.