There has been no shortage of Californians moving to Tennessee in recent years. Influencers. Business executives dangling new headquarters, looking for a friendlier tax environment. Conservatives fed up with what they view as heavy-handed liberal governance.
On Saturday evening, the Democratic governor accused of driving many of them away paid a visit to their new home, stopping in Nashville to kick off a nationwide tour to promote his new book.
“You matter,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, speaking onstage at Oz Arts, a Nashville performing arts center. And it was important, he told the crowd, that “we not turn our back just because it’s a, quote unquote, red state.”
Mr. Newsom has framed his book tour, with stops in Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina, as part of a larger strategy to help boost Democrats in red states. But it did not go unnoticed among some Tennessee Republicans that a favorite foil had chosen to begin a longstanding political ritual — debuting a personal memoir ahead of a likely presidential run — in their backyard.
The California governor has increasingly reveled in Trump-style sparring with Republicans, dismissing criticism of his state policies as “California Derangement Syndrome.” Yet in Tennessee, Republicans have delighted in highlighting the California conservatives and businesses who have moved to their state.
“While you’re here, I’m certain you’re going to want to visit with people that are former Californians,” Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican running for governor, said in a video, one of multiple posts taunting Mr. Newsom ahead of his visit. (Mr. Newsom, after walking out to a standing ovation, declared on Saturday “eat your heart out, Marsha.”)
Cameron Sexton, the Republican speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives, mused that perhaps Mr. Newsom “was trying to do a homecoming for himself in Tennessee because so many conservative Californians escaped.”
“I think everybody needs somebody to be their evil villain,” Mr. Sexton said. “He wants us to be the boogeyman because we’re being very successful.”
While Mr. Newsom unspooled personal anecdotes about his upbringing on Saturday, he also made sure to take several shots at President Trump and his administration.
“It’s America in reverse right now — you’re seeing it not just in Tennessee, you’re seeing all over the country,” he told Justin Kanew, the founder of the progressive website The Tennessee Holler. Mr. Kanew, a onetime Democratic congressional candidate in Tennessee, also used to live in California and has built his own reputation for confronting Republicans and championing liberal policies.
“These guys want to bring us back to a pre-1960s world,” Mr. Newsom added, saying “it’s code red.”
The sold-out crowd at Oz Arts on Saturday did not appear to include many Tennesseans who disagreed with Mr. Newsom. (Compared with the rest of the state, Nashville remains stubbornly liberal.)
“California proud, always interested in what’s happening back home, and want to see where this goes,” said Lisa Bjarke, 50, a Nashville resident wearing a shirt from her alma mater, the University of California, Davis. “There’s a reason he’s here.”
Migration out of California increased during the coronavirus pandemic, driven by workers emboldened by the promise of remote work and conservatives frustrated with the policies of a Democratic-led government. Tennessee is among the top 10 states when it comes to net migration from California — but it was not necessarily an obvious contender.
“Tennessee really stood out,” said Eric McGhee, a policy director and senior fellow at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, which conducted the migration analysis. “It wasn’t close to California and wasn’t that big.” (Mr. McGhee has not personally visited Tennessee.)
But, he and other observers said, Tennessee’s lower cost of living — boosted by the absence of a state income tax — proved to be a draw. For businesses, there is the promise of a friendlier regulatory environment. For conservatives, the Republican supermajority in the General Assembly is far more aligned with their political beliefs.
Not every Californian who has decamped to Tennessee is conservative, and there are more reasons than politics and taxes to move to the state. But that perception has been exacerbated by vocal pockets of powerful conservatives in two places: Nashville, as well as nearby Williamson County, an affluent and more conservative enclave to the south.
Among the current and planned transplants are The Daily Wire and its growing conglomerate of conservative media and entertainment, and the chief executive of In-N-Out, Lynsi Snyder, who announced last year that she was moving her family to Tennessee as the burger chain established a corporate office there.
“Raising a family is not easy here,” Ms. Snyder said of California in a podcast interview last year. “Doing business is not easy here.”
“Clearly, California is one of Tennessee’s best business incubators,” said Matt Largen, the president and chief executive of Williamson, Inc., the county’s chamber of commerce.
In 2023, an analysis of I.R.S. data found that between 2020 and 2021, more than 1,500 people moved to Williamson County from Orange County, Calif., and Los Angeles County. And in Davidson County, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce found that more than 2,500 people from California moved to the county between 2020 and 2022 — the county’s largest out-of-state source of migration.
Those numbers may seem paltry to counties in California that still register millions of residents. But in more tight-knit Tennessee cities, the arrival of a few thousand people can feel palpable as part of a wave of rapid development.
“There’s a lot of flight from California,” said Tom Gibney, 70, who moved to Tennessee three decades ago for family and business opportunities. In the years since, he has seen strangers and friends from California join him, thought not everyone has stayed.
Even as he remains in Tennessee, Mr. Gibney said that Mr. Newsom “feels like a bright light.”
It is too early to say whether a majority of California transplants will stay. But after the Democratic Party sunk to the minority in Congress after the 2024 elections, Mr. Newsom has appeared to consider more seriously the extent to which conservatives say they have been driven away from the party by its left-leaning policies.
And, in an ongoing exploration of what Democrats could be doing to regain trust with men, Mr. Newsom has also started a podcast. His inclusion of far-right figures and conservative firebrands — as well as an admission on the program that allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s competitions was “deeply unfair” — has irritated some among his liberal base.
But some attendees at Saturday’s event said they appreciated that Mr. Newsom was having conservations with people who aligned more with their conservative co-workers and neighbors.
“Look at everybody who’s going to love him by the time they walk out,” said Julie Schoerke, 63, gesturing to the line ahead of her.
Laurel Rosenhall contributed reporting.
Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville.
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