Democrats moving to Texas seek to ruin the state and kill the engines of the economy that brought them here

Joel Kotkin:

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Over the past two decades, Texas has enjoyed one of the greatest economic expansions in recent American history. In contrast to notions of a wide-open Texas defined by oil rigs and cattle, this expansion has been a profoundly urban one. Approximately 80% of all population growth since 2000 has been in the four large metropolitan areas: People may wear cowboy boots, drive pickups and attend the big Rodeo in Houston, but, they are, first and foremost, part of a great urban experiment.

Economic growth has driven this process. Since 1969, Texas has considerably out-performed California in terms of percentage job growth, as well as real personal income growth. Between 2000 and 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS, Austin expanded its employment by over 50 percent, while Houston, Dallas and San Antonio grew above 30 percent, more than twice the growth of New York and three time that of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

As cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles become too expensive for most millennials without trust funds to put down roots, young people are now flocking to Dallas or Houston. These new Texas urbanites are forging an increasingly vibrant design, arts and restaurant scene. They are also, on average, better educated than the average Texan, and they elevate the workforce, notes Dallas Morning News columnist Mitchell Schnurman. “If oil prices don’t go up,” he says, “Texas can always count on California—and New York, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey“ to export their talent.

Ironically, the arrival of these newcomers is changing the policy environment that created the conditions for this migration. Partly, this reflects a change in funding. Democrats of the old school, like Houston’s former Mayors Bob Lanier and Bill White, raised money from the real estate industry and other interests that also supported the GOP. The new Democratic crowd relies on massive funding from the post-industrial progressive gentry, much of it concentrated in traditional Republican-leaning areas: The fanciest areas around Dallas and Houston at election time sported many more Beto than Cruz signs. The big money, notes Shuvalov, now, as in the nation, goes to the Democrats.

O’Rourke helped drive this trend and benefited massively from it. Unlike many traditional Texas Democrats, O’Rourke ran as a standard-brand national progressive, earning him an almost embarrassing degree of adoration. The lanky El Paso Congressman is already being compared to Lincoln, counselled by President Obama and widely seen as a serious contender for the Presidency, despite what even The New York Times notes is “an absence of signature policy feats.”

At the local level, many new Democratic office-holders such as Hidalgo will likely adopt very much the national party agenda, with its emphasis on dense urbanization, climate change and racial “equity.” She has already announced that she will campaign against “sprawl,” which literally defines Houston, greater spending on trains, which have done very poorly in the area, and an agenda focused primarily on transfers to the poor. Add to that the Democratic Party’s climate-change mantra, including provisions to eliminate fossil fuels by 2030 and forbidding energy executives from serving in the White House, and you have a scenario that could devastate an economy still built largely on oil and gas.

The rest of America should care if Texas abandons its model. Without it, we will increasingly resemble European countries—like France—where all power and wealth is concentrated in the largest, densest and most established cities, while everyone else is on the outside looking in. And the country will have lost its premier safety valve for young people and families priced out of the coasts.

Unlike many New Yorkers or San Franciscans, most Texas city-dwellers are not forced to choose between having a family, with a middle-class lifestyle, and staying in a city they love. The large Texas cities, according to American Community Survey data, all rank above the national average in children per household, while New York and San Francisco sit near the bottom.

The new Texans might not like Ted Cruz (who does?) but one wonders if they would welcome a policy regime like that in California, where the middle and working classes are confronted with an ever more feudalized reality.

America can endure, and even thrive, with a New York or a California to service the rich and employ their servants. But it also needs a place for upward mobility and the chance to buy a house. If Texas stops providing that, we may be running out of dynamic states where the less than affluent can achieve their aspirations. America needs a Texas that is still Texas, not a big, flat, dry place trying and failing to impersonate San Francisco.
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There is more.

Some Texans have called this movement an attempt to "Californicate" Texas.  Houston has thrived in the past by encouraging growth and electing smart leaders.  This time it did the opposite.  Republicans in Houston need to start sounding the alarm over what Democrats want to do to ruin the city.

The politicians in Austin also need to take note of the attempt to ruin the state by imposing regressive liberal policies.