America's early, post-Revolution history is a vast tapestry of exploration and opportunity, starting with Appalachia and proceeding to the Pacific. Names out of legend are associated with that exploration: Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Lewis and Clark, Kit Carson, Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger, and many more; for a complete listing, I can't recommend the masterwork on the American West enough: Wild and Woolly, An Encyclopedia of the Old West, written by an Englishman (!), Denis McLoughlin.
The westward expansion was driven in large part by enterprising people seeking several things: Land, game, resources, prosperity, freedom, independence, and most of all, opportunity. "Go West, young man" was the cry, and millions did just that, seeking free land and free lives.
The Oregon Trail, blazed in large part by Lewis & Clark, became a highway for the travelers, and Oregon, a shining, fertile land of opportunity, where anyone with a little get-up-and-go could make a name for themselves.
That was then. This is now. In a startlingly short time, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest in general have turned to the hard left and are no longer a land of opportunity.
A decade ago, Oregon and Washington ranked among the country’s most desirable destinations. Polls and migration data showed that hundreds of thousands of Americans—especially from California and Nevada—were moving there. Though reliably Democratic, both states remained politically competitive. The Pacific Northwest offered natural beauty, relatively moderate taxes, and manageable living costs, helping fuel an economic boom led by a growing tech sector. As one Portland resident wrote: “The city combines the delectable slowness of a small town, the conveniences of a bigger city, and the unspoiled beauty of the Far West.”
Especially from California, I think I see part of the problem. I've experienced the same phenomenon in Colorado, where I lived for so long; the wave of Californication, as the unflux was not so much people fleeing the oppressive tax-and-regulate states to seek more business-friendly environments in places like Texas and Florida. No, the influx into Colorado, and into Washington and Oregon, consisted largely of committed leftists moving to the latest "cool" place, and now we see the result.
Starting in the late 2010s, however, both states, led by their largest cities, began moving sharply left. Government spending surged, taxes and regulations expanded, urban disorder intensified, and personal freedoms narrowed during the Covid lockdowns. The result was a dramatic reversal in migration patterns. Even as Californians continued to head north, Oregon and Washington began losing residents to nearby states and beyond. In the final five years of the 2010s, the two states gained a net 438,000 domestic migrants; in the first five years of the 2020s, that figure turned negative, with 12,000 more people leaving than arriving. Oregon, which led the nation in percentage gains from domestic migration in 2016, ranked among the biggest losers by 2023, along with Washington.
It's the Great Sorting again: As the Pacific Northwest's policies swing hard left, the people who weren't hard left, left.
Read More: Seattle’s Slide Continues: Exclusive Columbia Tower Club Calls It Quits
This all started, not coincidentally, in the mid-2010s. As noted, about ten years ago. That's when both states hit the TURBO button on leftist governance.
Mid-decade, however, both states lurched left. Oregon, long led by a Democratic governor and senate but a divided house, became fully Democratic in 2014. Washington followed in 2017, when a special election flipped the state house from Republican to Democratic control. With an increasingly progressive Democratic Party in charge, levies in both states have climbed sharply.
In 2019, Oregon, already taxing corporate profits, added a business activity tax on the gross receipts of high-volume firms, including those with slim profits. The levy generates about $1.5 billion annually. Oregon now has fallen to 35th on the Tax Foundation’s state tax competitiveness index, and its tax burden on businesses is second-highest in the nation. No wonder, then, that business executives now place the state in the bottom ten as a location to open or expand operations.
Oregon, in particular, has the highest income tax rate in the nation in 2026. And what do Oregonians get for that? A major city, Portland, is a stronghold of Antifa violence, arson, and looting. Washington is little better, having surrendered the mayoralty of their capital city to a far-left socialist ideologue who has never done an honest day's work in her life - sort of a West Coast version of New York's Zohran Mamdani. The Pacific Northwest is an economic and social doom spiral, a far cry from the lush land of opportunity uncovered by Lewis & Clark. Punitive taxes, riots, property destroyed, businesses looted - if the cities of Seattle and Portland wanted to drive away all of their productive citizens, it's hard to see what they would do differently. And that is why we are where we are now: For opportunity-seekers, the Oregon Trail has reversed, and the flow now goes the other way.
It's not clear that these cities can be recovered, not without some major cathartic event, or an unprecedented reversal on the part of the cities' voters. And, with every business owner, with every employer, with every middle-class working stiff deciding they've had enough, packs up and leaves, that becomes less and less likely. And, in those cities, raddled with the far-left, almost all of whom are in the throes of Stage IV Trump Derangement Syndrome, we may well be looking at a long, hot summer leading to the midterm elections.
