Nearly 65,000 New Yorkers traded in their state driver’s licenses for a Sunshine State equivalent in 2022, according to data from Florida’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
The number of New York arrivals, first reported by the New York Post, breaks a record set the previous year, when roughly 62,000 New Yorkers took the trip down I-95.
New York has joined a host of predominantly blue states, including California, New Jersey, and Illinois, that have lost tens of thousands of residents to Florida since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
New York’s Democratic governor Kathy Hochul tried to turn the exodus into a statement about true New Yorkers.
“And we are here to say that the era of Trump, and Zeldin and Molinaro, just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong, ok? Get out of town. Because you do not represent our values. You are not New Yorkers,” Hochul said during a press conference in 2022.
Under the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida has positioned itself as a state with a more relaxed approach to Covid and a more proactive approach to combatting the progressive capture of K-12 public education.
“Let’s just talk about the empty nesters from New York, or the empty nesters from New Jersey,” Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, Jimmy Patronis told Fox Business in May 2021. “They then decide to leave the tax hell that those states are in and move to the state of Florida.”
No longer tied to their New York offices, Florida’s favorable tax environment became a magnet for New York business leaders and financiers throughout the pandemic. Investment moguls such as Carl Icahn and Paul Singer as well as massive firms including Blackstone decided to decamp for Florida or expand their operations in the state over the last three years.
The exodus prompted James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, to harken back to New York City’s nadir to capture what was happening.
“We have been down this road before. In the 1960s and 1970s, such policies ultimately discouraged investment in New York City and led to a diminished tax base and fewer resources for the delivery of government services. The results were devastating – two decades of fiscal problems along with rising crime and unacceptable quality of life,” Whelan told the New York Post in 2021.