Amid all the chatter about the New York City mayoral race, both the jokes and the serious conversations are pointing in the same direction — people are already talking about leaving. With Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani now in charge, the idea of a mass exodus from the Big Apple doesn’t sound so far-fetched.
It’s not just talk — it’s a very real possibility. A recent Daily Mail poll found that roughly 765,000 New Yorkers say they would “definitely” leave the city if Zohran Mamdani took office, with another 2 million saying they would seriously consider it.
That’s nearly three million people looking for the exit — taxpayers, business owners, and working families who’ve had enough of the left’s social experiments.
“The departure of at least 765,000 citizens would be one of the biggest mass exoduses in American history, with a population equivalent in size to Washington DC, Las Vegas or Seattle leaving the Big Apple,” the news outlet noted.
Where would they go? The same places freedom-loving Americans have been fleeing to for years — red states with lower taxes, affordable living, and booming job markets. Florida is at the top of that list. During the COVID lockdowns, tens of thousands of New Yorkers packed up and headed south when then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo buried the state under one draconian restriction after another.
And now, history might be repeating itself. With a socialist mayor in charge, another wave of New Yorkers could soon be heading for the exits. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been sounding the alarm for months. In July, he said this after Mamdani won the Democratic primary:
“We’ve absorbed a lot of people over the years,” DeSantis told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday evening. “I think this guy’s policies, soup to nuts, are probably the most radical left that I’ve ever seen of a major party candidate in a big jurisdiction.”
“I’m telling you, I think I’m going to have to charge an entry tax or something because of this guy, because I don’t know if we’re going to be able to absorb everyone that’s going to flee his poor rule if he gets in,” DeSantis added.
Then, on Election Day, DeSantis added:
Mamdani is going to be realtor of the year in way more places than Palm Beach if he wins. https://t.co/GkzdcqtVQY
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) November 4, 2025
DeSantis even got a laugh on X recently when he quipped — though maybe only half-jokingly — that if the wave of New Yorkers keeps coming, he might have to start redirecting them to southern Connecticut:
Southern Connecticut? https://t.co/tOrgyqQ7iH
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) November 4, 2025
It’s a familiar frustration among conservatives in red states — people fleeing blue-state chaos for the freedom and affordability of the South, only to drag the same failed ideology with them. They escape high taxes, suffocating regulations, and woke nonsense, but then vote for the very policies that made their hometowns unlivable in the first place.
It’s how once-sane, affordable red areas start turning blue — housing prices rise, local governments drift left, and suddenly the same cultural rot that wrecked New York or California starts creeping into Texas, Florida, and Tennessee. Conservatives down south aren’t being mean when they complain about it — they’re being real. They fought hard to build free, thriving communities, and they don’t want to watch those places destroyed by imported liberalism.
I’ll say it plainly: if you’re fed up with life in a blue city or state — the crime, the taxes, the nonsense — that’s fine, but don’t pack up and move to a red state just to turn it into the same mess you fled. Don’t vote for the same high-tax, anti-police, big-government policies that made your old home unlivable.
Red states work because their people believe in freedom, responsibility, and common sense. If you move there, respect that. Don’t try to “fix” what isn’t broken.
That might sound “unwelcoming” to some — and honestly, that’s the point. Reasonable political disagreement is healthy, but what we’re dealing with now isn’t reasonable. The modern left has gone so far off the deep end that meaningful dialogue is nearly impossible — and many would argue we passed that point a long time ago.
I don’t want wokeism or far-left ideology taking root in my beloved North Carolina, or in any red state for that matter. Not now. Not ever. These places stand for faith, freedom, and common sense — the very values blue states abandoned. If that makes me sound harsh, so be it.
I’m not apologizing.
