I have a candidate who is moving here from Seattle, Washington. He’s moving himself, his wife and two children. He has no family here, doesn’t really know anybody, but when you ask him why he’s moving here he says it’s because Texas is a red state. He goes on about how goofy where he was born and raised is (Seattle) and that he just can’t imagine raising his family there and, even if he has to start all over, he’s got to get out of there.

I had another conversation with a candidate who just moved here from Illinois. She has some cousins here and wanted to start a better life. I called her about an appointment that I had for her and she told me that, “I can make more money than that on unemployment… maybe I’ll just move back to Illinois.” In the 47 years that I’ve been doing this I hear this reason of why a person doesn’t want to go on an interview from time to time. I’ve heard it more lately and it’s all I can do to keep from getting sick. It isn’t so much that a person can make more on unemployment. It’s that that kind of attitude is pathetic. It’s obvious that when people can make more money not working then they can working, we got our values messed up.

When I first moved to Texas from Oklahoma via St. Louis for a few years, there were 600,000 people in all of North Texas. I’d love to tell you that it was dazzling brilliance that brought us here, but it was more luck than anything else. I’ve seen eight recessions, but this is still an absolutely wonderful place. We simply can’t afford to have Texas become blue.

I really appreciate that companies from California like Oracle and Tesla are moving to Texas. But the whole reason they’re moving to Texas is because we are a red state. It is because 99% of the people in this state do not have the attitude that the lady from Illinois does. The government thinks it’s helping people out by giving them hefty unemployment checks. And maybe those people will vote to keep the people that gave them that money  in office. But it’s a lousy idea.

I hope that all the people that moved here from the “left” coast bring the work ethic with them that made Texas what it is. It’d be better if they leave their blue state attitude behind. The attitude that “I can make more money off of unemployment than I can working,” is not what got us where we are.

I remember my immigrant grandfather telling me what it was like to trade dry goods with the Indians in Oklahoma. He immigrated to Oklahoma before it was a state. He learned to speak Cherokee before he learned to speak English. He was dirt poor when he came to this country, became rich before the depression and then became poor again after it. He said that’s what he loved about America so much was that you could be rich or poor by your own willingness to work. And yeah, he was discriminated against. He was a foreigner and a Catholic. The clan burned a cross on a (Christian) church across from his house one time. But he never complained or acted like a victim, at least according to my father. He just worked harder.

The government didn’t take care of my grandfather and I don’t want the government to take care of me. I have an idea that my candidate moving here from Seattle will find a good job. Let the lady from Illinois move back.  Just don’t let Texas become blue.