Prescott Valley, Ariz.; Salem, Va. — Lee Stauffacher and Pam McKinney love their home state of California — its paradisiacal climate, its sublime topography — but they had to leave. The state had been overrun, first by immigrants legal and illegal, their cultures and traditions in tow, and then by liberal politicians who seized control of the government by catering to these constituencies and turning their communities into Democratic garrisons. The state became majority-minority in 2001; whites are now 39 percent of its population and dwindling. In turn, the GOP is essentially extinct, representing conservative enclaves around California but irrelevant in statewide elections.
So Stauffacher and McKinney, a staunchly Republican couple in their 60s, moved last year to Kingman, an 82 percent–white town in Arizona’s ultraconservative northwest corner. They figured, given the state’s ideological reputation — owing to hawkish immigration policies championed by generations of GOP officeholders as well as Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio — it was the ideal regional antidote to California.
Comments