So I’m down in Missoula and I’m listening to a bunch of Bitterrooters complain about how their demography is changing, and they’re getting all these new liberal Californians. I tossed in a comment – “You’re taking the Californians who want to come to the Bitterroot. You need to be more selective.” The conversation flat stopped. Then came the question – “How do you select better Californians?”
I explained that in beautiful, scenic Trego we’ve been selecting better quality Californians for years. That it’s easy. I’m greeted with skepticism. So I come up with the next comment – “We get our Californians from Bakersfield. They’re so conservative they make native Montanans look like flaming liberals. A town the size of Stevensville can easily afford an advertising campaign in a similar conservative California community. You get a couple dozen retired cops from conservative California – and there are a lot of outnumbered conservatives wanting to leave California. Bring enough red Californians in and there will be few houses left on the market for liberal California migrants.
The Babylon Bee has a series on a California couple moving to Texas and transforming from California liberals to Texans. It’s humor, not a how to series on recruiting conservative Californians. The state isn’t uniformly left wing
Historically, some of our greatest Montanans migrated from California. If your area is attracting the wrong sort, find a way to recruit a higher quality Californian. They’re coming, no matter what. But a little conscious effort can bring in Californians from those red counties. Personally, I like Bakersfield – Kern County’s population is just over 900,000. In 2024, 59% of them voted for Trump. In Montana, 58.4% of the voters cast Trump ballots.
Californians have been moving to Montana since Granville Stuart moved up in 1857. Stuart self-selected – but a little bit of effort can help preserve the quality of your neighborhood. Complaining about liberal California immigrants accomplishes nothing. Recruiting a better quality Californian can fill our counties with people who voted against Adam Schiff – after all, he only got 39% of the votes in Kern County. A little bit of recruiting can result in a political vaccination that could keep the Bitterroot red. Even if the folks I visited with didn’t understand the idea.
We need to recruit better quality Californians.
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