Op-Ed by: Liam Edgar
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo may believe he is God’s gift to politics.
But many of his fellow New Yorkers disagree.
Make that former New Yorkers.
Newly released census data show that 126,355 people fled New York state over the past year, a decline of 0.65 percent.
“That’s the most by any state in the nation by both number and percentage,” noted columnist Phil Silver of The Blaze, a conservative news service.
Cuomo, a Democrat, who earlier this year was discussed as a possible presidential candidate had Joe Biden faltered, was first elected governor of the Empire State in 2010.
Ironically, New York gained people during his first term, census data show. With Cuomo in charge, New York added roughly 280,000 people from the 2010 census to the first year of his second term in 2015.
But that’s when the state’s population peaked, at 19,657,321.
Since then, again with Cuomo in charge, that gain has been wiped out, as 320,545 New Yorkers have left.
The Empire Center, a conservative think tank in Albany, has pointed out that if the population figures hold up once the census is completed next year, the past decade will be the first since the 1970s that New York’s population went down overall – again, all on Cuomo’s watch.
Meanwhile, since he’s been in office, Florida has overtaken New York as American’s third-most populated state.
The population decline carries political implications as well.
New York, which is now tied with Florida with 27 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, is almost guaranteed to lose one of those seats, and maybe two, Silver noted.
With that in mind, the exodus from big-government, high-tax New York sharply contrasts with what’s been happening in less-government, low-tax Florida for the past decade.
Under Republican Govs. Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis, with the GOP firmly in control of the Legislature, Florida has added 2.9 million people since Cuomo became governor of his state.
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