Under Republican Trifecta Government, Exodus Ohioans Pulled $16.44 Billion from State Since 2011

Ohio desperately needs its Moses who will lead Ohio back to the promised land. More uninspiring candidates with the same pale pastel ideas will only push more Ohioans to take their money elsewhere.

Exodus 8:1-3 and Exodus 14:21-29 read:

Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh and say to him, `This is what the LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs. 

…

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land.

The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.

The Egyptians pursued them, and all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and horsemen followed them into the sea. During the last watch of the night the Lord looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. He jammed the wheels of their chariots so that they had difficulty driving. And the Egyptians said, “Let’s get away from the Israelites! The Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.”

Then the Lord said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may flow back over the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen." Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at daybreak the sea went back to its place. The Egyptians were fleeing toward it, and the Lord swept them into the sea. The water flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen—the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived.

But the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. That day the Lord saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant..

It appears Ohioans in large numbers have seen themselves as modern day Israelites fleeing Pharaohs named John Kasich and Mike DeWine. These Exodus Ohioans aren’t led by a Moses; rather, they are being led by the lure of greener pastures where incomes aren’t taxed, workers aren’t forced to join unions, and traveling to/from home for business or leisure can be done in one flight. Some even fled to cold states, so blaming Ohio’s decline to cold weather just won’t work.

According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), from 2011 to 2022, over 111,000 Ohioans fled Ohio, with most moving to RED states. Those 111,000+ Exodus Ohioans took with them Adjusted Gross Incomes (AGI) of nearly $16.5 billion ($16,500,000,000). As the chart below shows, the amount of lost AGI is growing each year, as wealthier Ohioans who can leave, do.

From 2021 to 2022, Ohio lost another $2.14 billion in AGI as Exodus Ohioans again leaving for greener pastures exceeded those out-of-staters coming to Ohio. Ohio did attract BLUE staters less repelled by Ohio’s state income tax, pro-union policies, and weak infrastructure, but the RED state exodus far outpaced the BLUE state influx. There is no basis to believe the IRS data for 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 will reverse this trend, but we will have to wait until next July and July 2026 to know for sure.

Throughout this decades-long exodus, Ohio has been run by a trifecta Republican government, with supermajorities in the Ohio House and Ohio Senate for large portions of that span. Do policymakers even know this exodus is occurring, or are they so entrenched that they just don’t care? Am I the only one willing to speak on this topic with clarity and force? Will JINOs (journalist in name only) ever ask DeWine or his lapdog #2, Jon Husted, how this data along with the systemic weak jobs data can be viewed positively? Will any elected official in leadership propose even one major reform policy to reverse Ohio’s decline?

Rumor has it that, with Donald Trump’s stamp of approval, J.D. Vance and Bernie Moreno are trying to recruit someone to primary Husted in 2026. Shockingly, they reached out to Kasich acolyte and former failed JobsOhio head Mark Kvamme to run, as if Kvamme represents something fundamentally DIFFERENT THAN Husted. They’ve already ruled out Jim Renacci. Despite Vance’s own win in 2022, it appears they are using the same stale formula that says only candidates with deep financial pockets are worth backing. Recent history on those candidate isn’t good (see Jane Timken, Mike Gibbon, Matt Dolan, and Renacci). That is too bad. Ohio desperately needs its Moses who will lead Ohio back to the promised land. More uninspiring candidates who put together the same pale pastel policies will only create more Exodus Ohioans who take their billions of dollars in AGI elsewhere.

P.S. The picture below is exactly what they meant when they said “a picture is worth 1,000 words.”