Paul and his wife were in some ways the typical California parents. On weekends, sure, they could sometimes enjoy the beach and the mountains. But there were drawbacks that, to them, outweighed the natural beauty. They didn’t like the schools in the area, so they put their kids in pricey private schools. Paul ran his own company doing counterterrorism consulting, and his wife would commute hours on clogged highways. Nobody went to PTA meetings; they were too busy fighting traffic. People in California are “house broke,” he says—if they can afford a house, that’s all they can afford. In California, unions “control everything.” The state has “decriminalized drugs”; it’s letting criminals off the hook with what he considers to be lenient sentences. Meanwhile, the state hikes gas taxes, further sticking it to the poor commuters.

The Inland Empire seems to be Paul’s favorite case study. In 1977, he points out, the city of San Bernardino was designated an “All-America City,” an award given by the National Civic League for good citizenship. Since then, he says, the city has opened lots of drug rehabs and halfway homes—nice in theory, but “as a dad with kids, do I want a house right next to me to be [filled] with four felons that just got out of prison?” He couldn’t take his kids to the nearby mountains, because, he says, they were covered in graffiti and trash. “San Bernardino today,” he said, “it is the second poorest city only behind Detroit. They have on average I think thirteen police officers on duty in a city of two hundred thousand. Over 50 percent of the population is on welfare. Gang violence, drugs, crimes, out of control. Many parts of it look like a third-world country, and that is happening to a lot of other cities throughout California.” In Paul’s view, Democratic policies are what have caused this hellscape.

Some elements of his dystopic view seem slightly exaggerated. San Bernardino was indeed the second-poorest “large city” in 2010.327 But since then, its economic picture has improved: unemployment in the county has fallen from 14 percent to less than 4 percent.328 The city of San Bernardino’s police department web page says it has “225 sworn officers,”329 and in 2011, just after the recession, 46 percent of San Bernardino330 did receive some type of government aid. But that includes food stamps and the state’s Medicaid insurance program, not simply welfare.

Nevertheless, in 2016, the second time Paul ran for Congress—as a Republican—and lost—to the Democrat—Paul and his wife threw up their hands. We cannot help people who don’t want to help themselves, they thought. They decided to head for greener—which is to say redder—pastures.