Chip Taylor

Voting with your feet, Part 2

Earlier I made a post about people voting with their feet (Unfortunately, that post was lost in the debacle with my former webhost).

The plural of anecdote is not data. But still:

Roland Fortier was not looking for a new home or a Republican utopia when he turned on CSPAN earlier this year, but now he thinks he may have found both.

The 62-year-old Massachusetts native was intrigued as he watched a Spartanburg crowd give Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney a warm reception during a President's Day speech here.

"It seemed like it was a place where different people from different places could get along," Fortier said. "Everybody seemed friendly towards (Romney) and he came from the Northeast."

Now with Fortier and his wife Glenda set to move to Spartanburg, red Republican South Carolina is set to get a bit redder.

Fortier first visited Spartanburg last weekend and said he liked what he saw -- enough so that he has found a real-estate agent to find him a house.

The Virginia resident, who is retired, has passionately supported Republican campaigns for the last decade and has five party medals to show for it, including the Republican Legion of Merit medal.

"He's looking to get involved in our whole structure here," said Spartanburg County Republican Chairman Rick Beltram.

But isn't Virginia nearly as Red as South Carolina? Presumably the SC GOP's gain is the VA GOP's loss.