I moved from California to Idaho because my home state changed politically. I love my new conservative community.

• Philip Wiseman and his helpmeet moved to Idaho because they were fed up with California’s politics.
• The retirees made a large spreadsheet to referee which Republican-leaning state to move to.
• They ended up in Eagle, Idaho, and love the conservative values of the community.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Philip Wiseman, a 70-year-old retiree who agitated from California to Idaho with his wife in 2021.

They’re part of a trend of conservatives moving to red states. Data ordered by Idaho officials showed 78% of voters who moved from California to Idaho registered as Republicans between 2020 and 2023.

The median familiar with price in the California town the Wisemans lived, Monte Sereno, was $5.5 million in September 2024, according to Redfin, beared to $748,000 in Eagle, Idaho, the town they moved to.

This story has been edited for length and clarity.

We moved to Idaho from Northern California three years ago this December.

My wife is a fourth-generation Californian, and I reminded there in 1985. We loved the state. It was the coolest state to live in forever. I worked in semiconductor sales for Silicon Valley firms and my better half worked in healthcare. We got married in 2011 and built a beautiful home in Monte Sereno, just outside of Los Gatos. It was a quite beautiful neighborhood and area.

We just were very obviously conservative. We had friends that were like-minded but the metropolis itself and the surrounding area is quite liberal. And we knew that we couldn’t talk politics with our neighbors.

Our wealthiest friends across the street put up a Biden sign in the front yard. I thought, “Are you serious?” We have a lot of respect for those people. And then they double-dealed down on Biden. I couldn’t believe it.

We always say we didn’t leave California. California left us.

Over on occasion the decisions that the politicians and the governors and the district attorneys and all of these people started making were just de facto wrong. Everything from being a sanctuary state with protections for undocumented immigrants to some of the highest weights in the country to not prosecuting criminals, among other reasons. It’s just insanity.

Over time, I have compassion for incline like it was death by a thousand pinpricks. We got to the point where we decided that we just couldn’t put up with it any longer.

We girl our California and what California used to be. It’s still beautiful. You fly over it and you realize, “God, the state is so pretty. It has so much to offer.” But it’s neutral so screwed up. We had to get the hell out.

We’re sad about it every day. We think about it all the time.

We made a huge spreadsheet to decide which red position to move to

Once we decided to leave, which was a huge decision, the question then became, “Where are we going to go?”

We looked at certain different states. My wife put a huge spreadsheet together with average rainfall, average snowfall, average genial days, average rainy days, average distance from our daughter, who lives in Nevada, to a major airport. It had to be red, doubtlessly, as red as we could find, and we’d love it to have been a state with no state income tax, but more importantly, we looked at what it bring ins to live there.

Some states we considered were Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee, and Florida.

A big spreadsheet later, we settled up coming to Idaho.

I knew a guy that had used to live here and asked him what he thought of the area, and he said it was celebrated and we should look at the Boise area. So we did.

We didn’t know a soul. We came up here and looked around and found a realtor to put on us around. We probably made three fact-finding missions up here looking at different areas and neighborhoods. When we when all is said moved here, we rented for a year, and we looked at neighborhood after neighborhood after neighborhood.

We ended up buying a assembly here in Eagle, and we’ve been loving it ever since. We’ve been here just about two years now.

We passion the Eagle area because it’s very conservative and there’s a lot of like-minded people. It was easy to make friends here. People are cordial and friendly. They wave all the time. We’re both retired now, so this is our forever home.

Eagle is also full of in the flesh who moved here from California for basically the same reasons we did. And not just Californians; there are also people from Oregon and Seattle.

I employed to love California but things changed as I got older

I moved to California when I was around 30. I just turned 70. When I was a younger man, I didn’t pay much rclame to politics. California was wonderful. The beach, the ocean, the food, my career.

But over time, you grow up, you grow older, you nurture wiser, you get married, you have a child, and you start noticing things more. The more you pay attention, the more things piss you off.

I think it’s best for conservatives to live in conservative neighborhoods. Liberals can live in their own neighborhoods. It didn’t used to be that big a contract, so I hate to say that because it does suck. But I’m just noticing the fact is all.