Because the political divide between the states becomes more pronounced, what political scientists call “sorting” may speed up. The conservative Illinois billionaire Kenneth Griffin announced last week that he had moved to Miami from Chicago, and would take Citadel, his hedge fund, with him. He told his employees that Florida offered a greater corporate environment.
At the identical time, Ms. Caprara said the Pritzker administration routinely boasts of the state’s welcoming political environment, where abortion rights are codified and corporations won’t ever find themselves within the position the Walt Disney Company now occupies in Florida — squeezed between a conservative government constraining gay and transgender rights, and liberal consumers demanding a company pushback.
“Corporations don’t need to need to cope with people boycotting their business, or struggling to get people to maneuver to them, especially younger staff,” she said.
Joanna Turner Bisgrove, 46, a family physicianat Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, had worked her whole skilled life in Oregon, Wis., a small town south of Madison, when her hospital was purchased by a Catholic health care chain, that began restricting abortions and transgender care. After the Wisconsin Legislature took up the problem of transgender girls in sports, she said, her gender-fluid child and the kid’s circle of friends became magnets for bullying so bad that it made the local news.
Nearly a 12 months ago, the Bisgroves finally moved across the red-blue border, to Evanston, Ailing., where, Dr. Bisgrove said, her children could be accepted and her medical practice could thrive.
“Ultimately,” she said, “my morals wouldn’t square with what I could do.”
