Conservative-leaning tech magnate Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and an early Facebook investor, was among the latest to join the growing list of powerful people moving to Florida with the purchase of a $19 million Miami mansion announced this week.
For the past quarter-century, conservatives have been flocking to the Sunshine State, where (save for hurricane season) the climate is similar to that of always-temperate California, but without all the radical leftist hostilities.
Gov. Ron DeSantis‘s favorable tax policies and refusal to acquiesce to leftist lockdown demands during the coronavirus have helped it to flourish even more while others falter economically.
In a case of life imitating art, Florida has now begun to resemble Galt’s Gulch, the breakaway commune of rational-minded people seeking to escape the oppressive tyranny of the liberal Establishment in Ayn Rand’s 1957 tome Atlas Shrugged.
State Rep. Anthony Sabatini agreed, telling Headline USA recently that he likewise had observed the growing trend.
“Yes conservative[s] from around the country are fleeing badly [run] liberal Democrats states to come to Florida,” Sabatini wrote.
Pioneering radio host Rush Limbaugh was among the first GOP heavy-hitters to relocate there in the 1990s.
He was followed by erstwhile conservative webmaster Matt Drudge—who later fled back to his home state of Maryland around the time that his eponymous site made a dramatic leftward pivot.
Newsmax—one of the two main networks currently challenging Fox News’s monopoly on the conservative broadcast market—is also based in South Florida.
And the state has become breeding ground for rising political stars, including outspoken Rep. Matt Gaetz, who recently got engaged at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.
Although plans to relocate last year’s Republican National Convention to Jacksonville fell through as abruptly as they were announced, the Republican National Committee recently had its winter retreat at nearby Amelia Island.
The gravitational pull is only likely to grow with Trump, the party’s current anchor, beginning his post-presidency there, alongside several of his family members.
Despite potential worries that a mass migration might allow Democrats to gain a greater foothold in increasingly purple regions, such as Georgia and Texas, Sabatini said having Florida become a centralized base of influence in the movement was “a good thing” overall.
In fact, he is leading the effort to declare a major state thoroughfare as the Donald J. Trump Highway.
“Donald Trump is one of the greatest president[s] in American history and he lives in Florida so it’s only fitting that we need the largest and longest highway in our state after him,” Sabatini told Headline USA.
“Donald Trump represented the heartland of the country,” he continued, “so this road which runs through the heartland to Florida is the perfect one.”
