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REPORT: Democrats just cost their voters one TRILLION dollars

By:

by Frank Holmes, reporter

Democrats think they can win the 2026 midterms with one magic word: affordability.

Ever since Zohran Mamdani rode the rising price of living into Gracie Mansion, he and his fellow democratic socialists realized they have a winning campaign slogan.

But their tax-and-spend policies have lost their cities more than a trillion dollars—and the cost is still rising.

The results are damning for the Democratic Party’s hard-left and soft-socialist policies. All in all, blue states lost $2.2 trillion of revenue to red states.

And New York City is right in the middle of the money exodus.

All 10 of the 10 counties with the largest population loss in America are located in deep-blue New York or California, a review of IRS data reveals.

Three of the country’s top five losers of tax bases are in the New York City area.

Queens County—home of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—came in second, losing 17,109 people. It was followed by the other county AOC represents, the Bronx, with 16,319.

Suffolk County, New York, which used to be thought of as a nice suburban area, rated fifth by losing 10,434 people.

Mamdani is such a disaster that even his success is a failure.

The one and only part of New York City that had more people immigrate than emigrate was Manhattan. But the city still lost almost $1 billion in adjusted gross income, because the people moving in made less money than the people moving out.

But it’s not just neo-Communist New York City that is driving people out. It’s also taking place in California, where Governor Gavin Newsom pretends he’s a “moderate” (not to mention a latchkey kid who made his own grilled cheese after school).

Los Angeles County ranked number one on the list, losing 17,496 taxpayers. Orange County, California, rated fourth with a loss of 11,618.

It seems like people who experience Democratic leadership would like to live almost anywhere else, and are fleeing by the thousands.

The population purge shouldn’t have come as a surprise. A survey taken near last November’s election found nine percent of the city’s population said it would “definitely” move if Mamdani became mayor, and more than one in four New Yorkers said they will “consider” moving.

In all, 39 percent of residents said they “believe Mamdani is a threat to the future of the city.”

Part of the threat is his decision to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. On tax day, April 15, Hochul announced, “Today, Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani and Governor Kathy Hochul announced the proposal of the state’s first pied-à-terre tax,” which taxes any home “valued above $5 million when owners have a separate primary residence outside of New York City.”

The new tax will make sure “the wealthy contribute what they owe,” said Mamdani. “If you can afford a $5 million second home that sits empty most of the year, you can afford to contribute like every other New Yorker,” added Hochul.

It must not have occurred to them that if the millionaires already live primarily outside New York City, they might cut ties with the city altogether. And these figures prove that they have.

If New York City’s population and income had just held steady at 2013 levels—when Michael Bloomberg left office, before socialists like Bill de Blasio and Mamdani started the decline—they would have at least an additional $12 billion in their coffers every year, according to the National Taxpayers Union.

The taxpayers’ lobby also shot down the wealth tax proponents’ arguments that it hasn’t really hurt the city, because it currently has more millionaires than in prior years. “New York has more millionaires as of the latest (2022) IRS data than it did a decade prior,” said NTU. “But so does the rest of the country, as economic growth and inflation push more and more Americans above the $1 million threshold.”

At the same time, a new study released last week by the Citizen Budget Commission found in 2010 some 12.7 percent of America’s millionaires lived in the five boroughs; by 2022, it was down to 8.7 percent—a fall of nearly one-third.

“This represents tangible evidence that the ‘tax the rich’ mantra does not yield higher revenue,” wrote Rusty Weiss at RedState.com. “It is actually taking money away from the state and those residents who might benefit.”

California’s problems are legendary.

The Horn has told you several times over the years that Californians are going East, young man.

The Golden State has led U-Haul’s list of states with the largest number of people leaving every year since Gavin Newsom became governor.

At one point, the state ran out of U-Hauls, and Newsom—a leading candidate for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination—got caught red-handed lying about it.

That change has cost California big bucks. Legendary stockbroker Charles Schwab pulled up stakes from its California offices and took its $10 trillion in assets to Texas in April, because the Texas franchise tax is less than one-tenth the tax rate in California.

Instead of listening, Newsom passed a “wealth tax,” which has only sped up the process of people moving.

Newsom’s one-state policy is such a loser that now he’s calling for “a national wealth tax.”

They can’t escape, if there’s nowhere to go.

America’s free states have known this for years.

“We have a lot of people that have families going back generations that fled these nation-states that failed because of the exact policies that they are pushing,” said Ashley Moody, a Republican running for U.S. Senate in Florida, “which is defund the police, open the borders, seize production.”

“They are pushing a con (when) they are talking about (how) they want to bring more democracy to working people,” said Moody.

Instead, they make their people work to escape their quasi-Communist economic and social policies.

The people who have experienced socialist policies—from Cuba and Vietnam to New York and California—have packed up everything they own to find a better future in a freer location.

That’s been part of the magic of the American Dream for 250 years. We shouldn’t cancel our national creed by electing a socialist in two years’ time.

About the Author

Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”