Newbie Floridians are killing our paradise
I’ve got a message for people considering the big move. Ignore
Ron DeSantis. Forget about coming to Florida. Stay put. Take up curling. Try ice fishing.
Before his presidential campaign fizzled, the governor campaigned in the frozen reaches of Iowa and
New Hampshire as the two-fisted hombre in cowboyish boots who had transformed a debauched haven for commie drag queens and subversive librarians into the sunny paradise where MAGA Americans come to drink beer, drive oversized pickup trucks, dine at Hooters, pack heat, eschew vaccines, spin conspiracy theories and — most importantly — kick liberal asses.
For people of a Trumpian bent, DeSantis has fashioned “the nation’s most desired destination.”
Which elicits a collective groan from the nearly 23 million residents already here, jammed onto a 160-mile-wide peninsula like commuters on a Tokyo subway. We’re thinking that when the only available dinner reservation hereabouts is 4:30 p.m. on the second Saturday in April, Florida has already reached capacity. When the quest for downtown parking has become as futile as Sisyphus pushing his boulder up Space Mountain, Florida doesn’t really need an influx of wild-eyed right-wing interlopers.
Florida can barely accommodate the average 900 newcomers already arriving each day. Until lately, they’ve been drawn here by amusement parks, 850 miles of beach, 1,240 golf courses and more taco joints than Mexico City. But DeSantis has added his own incentives.
The governor has been telling residents in frigid early primary states that he has transformed Florida into “a refuge for freedom and sanity” and a safe space for disaffected filmgoers still livid that Disney has cast a woman in the lead role of its live-action Snow White remake who just isn’t white enough.
The governor has fashioned himself as the MAGA Moses, who’s leading an “exodus from states governed by leftist politicians imposing leftist ideology and delivering poor results.” DeSantis describes a “great migration” coming to Florida from these lefty blue states.
Sounds like the Cuban exiles who utterly transformed South Florida. Except those particular exiles came seeking freedom and economic security. Apparently, MAGA exiles long to reside in the right-wing autocracy DeSantis calls “the Free State of Florida” (an appellation that requires a rather narrow definition of “free”).
Liberal-loathing blue-state refugees can be assured that the governor and his personal paramilitary troop, the Florida State Guard (not to be confused with the Florida National Guard), have created a sanctuary state where patriotic Americans can enjoy the unfettered right to censor books, stop abortions, humiliate transgender people, disparage modern medicine, teach students the upside of slavery, mock college professors, belittle school teachers, persecute drag queens and undermine gay rights. Suntans and the attendant skin cancer are just a bonus.
Must be working. An average of more than 300,000 newbies a year have been flooding into the Free State of DeSantis. The flow of wannabe Floridians became a torrent in 2022, when, according to driver’s license data retrieved by the Palm Beach Post, an astounding 583,200 recent arrivals traded their out-of-state licenses for a Florida replacement.
The other-state migrants have made Florida the nation’s fastest-growing population. Before DeSantis unleashed his come-hither campaign, I had assumed that the state’s influx of out-of-staters were so many work-at-home telecommuters who decided to do their telecommuting from a Florida poolside.
Unhappily, we probably need gobs of new residents to keep us solvent, even if they’re right-wing nutters who regard the Jan. 6 insurrection as a rowdy picnic. Over the last century, the state has sustained an economy that the New Yorker described as a giant Ponzi scheme that “depends almost entirely on growth — that is, on new arrivals and the wealth they generate in construction and real estate.” That was in 2009. Things haven’t changed.
DeSantis wants to keep the Ponzi going, but with new arrivals who think Donald Trump was chosen by God to rain down retribution on uppity women, epidemiologists and sneaky immigrants.
Those of us who have lived here for a few decades are not so enthused. We can see that so many millions of new residents have degraded the very natural wonders that drew them to Florida.
The effluent we flush has overwhelmed aging sewer systems. We’re running out of landfill space for the 50 million tons of trash Floridians discard annually. Farm runoff and leaky septic tanks have sullied springs, lakes and rivers while feeding massive algae outbreaks. We’re killing off manatees, coral reefs and the state’s last few panthers. (Legislation awaiting the governor’s signature has added unruly black bears to the hit list.)
We’ve destroyed our dwindling bits of wilderness to make way for suburban sprawl. Our last remnants of architectural quaint have been demolished ahead of new development.
We’ve clustered luxury homes and condos along our shore while failing to build urgently needed workforce housing. Which means that hundreds of thousands of the newly arrived will struggle to find accommodations.
Florida interlopers should be warned, perhaps with billboards erected at the Georgia state line, that anyone who intends to settle in the Free State of Florida should bring their own housing. Maybe a nice RV or a tent sturdy enough to withstand an onslaught of sneaky liberals.
Otherwise, the newbies should stay home. Florida is full up.