Opinion

Mitt Romney turns blue ON POLITICS

Of course Mitt Romney wants to settle in a blue state.

According to the Boston Globe, Mitt and Ann Romney will likely move into their home in La Jolla, the San Diego suburb that is sometimes called "where the money meets the sea."

But it is also in La Jolla where the local Democratic councilwoman was just re-elected, giving the San Diego City Council a 5-4 Democratic majority.

And it is in La Jolla where the longtime Republican congressman was just beaten by a Democrat.

And it is in La Jolla where, according to the New York Times, there are six gay households within a three-block radius of the Romneys' $12 million home.

This is not to mention that La Jolla is part of the bluest of blue states, California, where Republican registration just fell below 30 percent, and where voters said "yes" to a tax increase on people just like the Romneys.

So what gives? If you are the Romneys, then why not settle in a red state where people love you? What's wrong with Alabama, Mississippi or even Utah? Simply put, when it comes down to it, Mitt and Ann Romney seem to want the same things that so many others seek in California living: a tolerant, open, environmentally beautiful place to live that we're not afraid to pay for. They would rather be close to gourmet pizza than Chick-fil-A.

And, in fact, the Romneys fall right in line with the work that has been done by sociologists such as Richard Florida, who has developed a cottage industry by studying what he calls "the creative class."

He has written extensively that successful, bright creative professionals - perhaps 30 percent of the American workforce - are the ones driving America's new economy. At the top of Florida's list of "creativity rankings" is, of course, San Francisco. That's followed by Austin, Texas, and then San Diego (including La Jolla).

Washington Monthly magazine summed up Florida's work with the headline "Why Cities Without Gays and Rock Bands Are Losing the Economic Development Race."

Contrast that to a place like Imperial County, in the southeast corner of California. It has the state's highest unemployment rate, at 28.1 percent, and yet officials there had the time, money and energy to file a legal brief in favor of Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage. They have their priorities.

Citizens there probably would love to experience the kind of boom that Silicon Valley techies have brought to the Bay Area. But it took a creative, open environment for Silicon Valley to grow - the same kind of open environment - full of eccentricities and inventiveness - that once gave California the image as The Land of Fruits and Nuts.

Much has been written about why Silicon Valley could only have happened in Northern California. Many think you can draw a direct line to the valley from the original, crazed gold miners, through the wild days of the Barbary Coast, to the beatniks of the 1950s, the hippies of the '60s, the San Francisco music scene and gay liberation.

And you can continue to draw that creative line right to Hewlett-Packard, Lucasfilm, Pixar, Facebook and the new Big Three: Google, Apple and Yahoo. These are companies that began with an idea and found respect and cash for them here - unlike a place like Boston, where your grandfather had to be from there to get venture capital.

There is a culture of creativity in California that is in our DNA.

Certainly the Romneys know that at some level, and they're bound to enjoy it as they settle into the home they've named Fin de la Senda.

Incidentally, that roughly translates as "the end of the road."