New Florida residents are explaining why they flocked to the Sunshine State, praising the policies enacted by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
Paula Miller, who lived 12 miles from downtown Chicago, told Fox News Digital that she always told herself she would never move to Florida, but that changed dramatically, and it “really didn’t have so much to do with the weather.”
“The taxes I was paying in Cook County … were getting really insane. My property tax went up $1,000 in one year. And I realized that that trend was going to continue,” she said, noting some of the policies that drove her out of her town of Evanston, Illinois. That included the fact that most of the city council voted last year to defund the police, and earlier this year, the city council “voted in favor of paying reparations to Black residents in March 2021, becoming the first U.S. town to do so,” according to Fox News.
“I just saw that as a trend that I couldn’t get behind. And as the election approached … no one was sure of the outcome, but … if Trump won again, I was really afraid of riots breaking out, and I did not feel safe,” she said, adding that she feels “truly safe” in Florida and praising DeSantis as a governor of “law-and-order.”
Similarly, Lauren Callahan, a former Chicago resident who was robbed in the city two years ago, said she planned to move out of the city but escaped to Florida earlier than planned due to Chicago’s coronavirus restrictions.
“Our plan was to reassess in the summer of 2022 where we wanted to go, but with COVID and city life in general … we decided to come to Florida in November,” she said, explaining that the violence in the city was “creeping up into the North Side, which is where we lived.”
“You know, it’s a city, so everywhere has its issues, but it’s typically one of the safer areas. Carjackings, robberies — just to the point where I didn’t feel safe alone outside if it was dark out,” she said. “It just isn’t a good way to live.”
Warren Cohn, who formerly lived in New Jersey, close to Manhattan, also moved to Florida, describing it as an “opportunity to live outside, as well as get some tax benefits.”
“And also, it’s a state that has …various freedoms. … I think that the governor has done a good job here allowing people to decide what’s comfortable or not for themselves,” he added.
In May, Gov. DeSantis noted the phenomenon of people flocking to Florida.
“Like, literally last April, they’re saying Florida’s doing worse than New York. New York was like, ten times worse. And so I think what it did is, the people that buy those phony narratives for these media, they probably aren’t coming to Florida,” he said during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s Hannity.
“But most people see through it, but the people that see through it, they think like us. And so I think a lot of these people are coming. I think they’re registering as Republicans overwhelming. And I also have come across a lot of people who quite frankly were Democrats,” he added.
As Breitbart News reported in November, registered Republican voters now outnumber Democrat voters in Florida.
