As the political divide between states becomes more pronounced, what political scientists call “sorting” may accelerate. Conservative Illinois billionaire Kenneth Griffin announced last week that he has moved to Miami from Chicago and will take his Citadel hedge fund with him. He told his employees that Florida offered a better corporate environment.
At the same time, Ms. Caprara said the Pritzker administration routinely boasts about the welcoming political environment in the state, where abortion rights are codified and companies will never find themselves in the position that the Walt Disney Company now occupies in Florida — sandwiched between a conservative government that restricts gay and transgender rights and liberal consumers that demand a corporate pushback.
“Companies don’t want to deal with people boycotting their businesses or struggling to get people to move to them, especially younger workers,” she said.
Joanna Turner Bisgrove, 46, a family physician at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, had worked her entire professional life in Oregon, Wisconsin, a small town south of Madison, when her hospital was purchased by a Catholic health chain that began to restrict abortion and transgender care. After the Wisconsin Legislature tackled the issue of transgender girls in sports, she said her transgender child and the child’s circle of friends became such bad magnets for bullying that they made local news.
Almost a year ago, the Bisgroves finally moved across the red-blue border, to Evanston, Illinois, where, Dr. Bisgrove said, her children would be accepted and her medical practice could flourish.
“After all,” she said, “my morals wouldn’t match what I could do.”
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