Two Families Got Fed Up With Their States' Politics. So They Moved Out. 1 to blue, 1 to red state

[Demovictory9]

Two Families Got Fed Up With Their States’ Politics. So They Moved Out.
The Nobles of Iowa moved to blue Minnesota. The Huckinses of Oregon moved to red Missouri. Their separate journeys, five weeks apart, illustrate the fracturing of America.

Mr. Huckins and his wife, Ginger, were leaving Portland, Ore., one of the most progressive cities in the United States. They said Portland’s tolerance of homeless encampments, along with the open use of hard drugs and rising crime, had filled them with despair. So they headed 2,000 miles east, to deep-red rural Missouri.

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“One thing I do like about Missouri, there’s lots of American flags,” Mr. Huckins said as he steered around a traffic circle where the Stars and Stripes flapped crisply on a pole. “In Portland, the American flag was offensive.”

One day earlier, in a neighboring state, another couple making a politically motivated move had a different flag on display — a Pride flag on a T-shirt.

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Their only child, Julien, came out as transgender at age 11. Now 16, Julien uses prescription testosterone. After Iowa banned gender-affirming medical care for minors, criminalizing their son’s treatments, the Nobles — lifelong Iowans — concluded they had to get out.

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Americans are increasingly fracturing as a people, and some are taking the extraordinary step of moving to escape a political or social climate they abhor. Democrats have left Iowa, Texas and other red states as Republicans have moved out of California, Oregon and other blue states, often over their views on issues like abortion, transgender rights, school curriculums, guns, race and a host of other matters.

Ms. Huckins and her husband visited a farm called Shared Bounty, where they were surprised to find that payment was on the honor system.


The Huckins family and the Noble family have not met, yet their journeys — from blue Oregon to red Missouri, and from red Iowa to blue Minnesota — mirror each other, unfolding only five weeks apart this spring. One family relocated because of a single issue — restrictions on transgender rights — while the other believed a broad swath of progressive policies had degraded their quality of life. But both families used strikingly similar language to describe their main concern: the need for personal safety.


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/07/us/politics/politics-states-moving.html