Florida is weird. And, with a leg up from Covid, it’s working.

In a story titled “How Florida Beat New York,” the journalist Jerusalem Demsas put it well: “At the heart of a prosperous society is people, and lots of them.” Between 2020 and 2023, about a million people moved to Florida, seeking housing affordability, tax relief, and, according to Byron Donalds, a Florida Congressman who’s running for governor next year, freedom (people just wanted to be left the hell alone).

“Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut — they're oppressive. They tax everybody to death. They have rules all over the place about the silliest things in the world. How they handled COVID was oppressive. And I think people just had enough,” Donalds told me. “You couple the fact where it's like, man, Florida is great. Great weather. As long as I'm not harming another person, I can largely just do what I want.”

COVID was more than just net migration into Florida — it marked a vibe shift and economic overhaul. Floridians decided they were done with super woked out concepts like gender ideology in schools (“A lot of those fights, if you will, have been won by Republicans,” as Donalds put it). From 2020 to 2025, Florida’s GOP didn’t just grow; the state’s Democratic base shrunk by about a million voters, which might help explain why, during last year’s election, Miami-Dade went red for the first time since George H.W. Bush. Meanwhile, private equity, venture capital, and crypto set up shop. Last year, the cost of luxury offices in Miami broke records as demand — fueled by investment firms like Citadel and Thoma Bravo — surpassed supply. For a long time, Florida’s purple politics underpinned a simple economy: agriculture, tourism, and construction, Donalds said. Now it’s a red state steering a powerful financial capital, with more non-farm employees and overall jobs than New York.

But judging by the housing market (sales are taking longer; prices are dropping), Florida’s COVID boom is cooling off at best, and so over at worst.

“Now the question becomes, what are we going to be as a state when it comes to the economy and innovation — and really the future?” Donalds said.

Florida got people there, in other words. How will it get them to stay?