It's important, though, to delve deeper into the growth in Florida - it's mainly people retiring which is going to be a large number just because of the size of the boomer generation. California is seeing a negative migration (and it's really small) BUT it's mainly because old people are cashing out their houses and retiring elsewhere - at the same time they are almost totally offset by a younger generation moving to California. And yes, businesses are about profits but they're also about appearances that help their bottom line. Obviously, that matters more to some than others, but VW is trying to court a younger generation so they've been trying to stay out of the culture wars and making a big splash in Oklahoma could've been problematic (Germans don't take risks - it's not how Germans work). Ultimately though, Germans value organization and responsiveness in business, and the OK state government is neither as they're more focused on the culture wars than making sure the trains run on time (or that there are trains at all), which I'm sure was a huge factor in all this. That is one constant about red states - they aren't run well on any level which I think will continue to keep businesses out of them, unless it's a chemical factory or a child labor sweat shop or something that would prefer to not have oversight.
I can tell you 'appearances' is the key word there. They create DEI positions/divisions within the company to appear they are doing things all while still offering females less in compensation, passing over qualified candidate for a buddy's kid, refusing to give paid sick leave, etc. etc.
VW could care less about 'culture war' issues people are talking about in Oklahoma - that gets about zero consideration in the boardroom who makes decisions on where a battery plant, etc. will be located. You're over estimating 'blow back' a firm like that would get - South Carolina is not any less problematic than Oklahoma - sorry. They received a grand total of zero major stories about locating a plant there and what that could mean for their workers in terms of access to medical care for female employees, LGBTQ+ employees, etc. They just do not care - they care about their bonuses and that means how to squeeze margins and places like Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, etc. offer that up. Cheap labor, cheap power/utilities, etc. Canada offered up raw material access too, something nothing Oklahoma could ever have competed with - it's likely we could have offered to cover 100% of all their costs and they probably would have picked Canada just to have access to the materials needed to make batteries.
MAIP offers up renewable power sources and cheap prices for that power - that checks every box a company like VW would need to go back to investors and go we are meeting ESG/DEI metrics. No one on the investment side drills into anything beyond that and no one is willing to ask critical questions to someone like VW of why they'd be willing to open a plant in South Carolina or Oklahoma instead of say Minnesota or Colorado.
You are likely spot on in terms of VW getting irritated by lack of professionalism from many in our state (you can make an argument that lack of business professionalism goes hand and hand with the other things). Not enough Oklahoma political leadership takes economic development seriously. That's the reason states like Texas blow us out of the water in terms of business expansion - they've had tax incentives, etc. down to a science for a decade plus while we've done very little to counter that. Kansas is getting their act together as well while a lot of our political leaders are trying to find their head up their a**. The Governor's office doesn't take non-disclosures and other agreements seriously, etc. Panasonic had to threaten the Governor's office to stop waiting and resulted in that dumb press conference at the end of session last year to get the legislature to finally vote on the bill. Kansas voted on their incentive bill pretty much first thing in their legislative session and then moved on to culture war BS - while we did the opposite. We likely sunk any chance we had with Panasonic because of that - not because we were having debates over culture war BS but because we didn't prioritize their corporate handout first. Somewhat ironic too. I do feel sorry for a lot of our economic development folks who work really hard just to have a lot of leadership not take things seriously.
Everyone got upset over Tesla snubbing us and who is lighting fires under the culture war stuff? Didn't just about everyone blame Republicans here for us not being in a place we could support Tesla - Elon didn't pass us over because we are too conservative lol. He's not an outlier either in the corporate CEO/management level - he just says the quiet part loudly and publicly because he feeds off attention wether it's negative or positive.
More business leaders have to push our legislature to prioritize economic development and other issues to be first in session then move on to anything/everything else they want to get in front of cameras for and grandstand about.
I see encouraging signs. OSU has some great leadership and their health center is one of the fastest growing medical programs in the US and they can have a massive impact on rural health if they keep on the trajectory they are on. TCC and Tulsa County was the first place in the US to have free access to Community college by nearly a decade. It was funny when San Francisco passed free community college a few years back and claimed they were the first to ever think of the idea and do it - wrong, Tulsa beat them by a decade almost. Who cares about facts though. OSU could easily get enrollment above 40k - they should make an aggressive push for post graduate degrees and concentrate that in Tulsa. Stillwater campus is undergrad and Tulsa is research and graduate focused for them. OU Polytechnic has an opportunity to be very impactful. Would like to see OU/TU make a push to expand their medical program. It would be nice to see a full four year university established in Tulsa - take either the metro TCC campus or Southeast TCC campus and convert it to a four year institution. Call it Tulsa Polytechnic or something, focus it on tech/engineering and programs don't overlap as much with OSU/OU. ORU enrollment is growing - they could really be a big driver to Tulsa if they keep going. TU seems to be getting its act together too. I see a lot of things to be hopeful about. Tulsa and NE Oklahoma just five years ago was even in consideration for a lot of massive projects - while it sucks to lose - being in the top two for some many of these is a huge leap forward. I'm hopeful.
I'm not saying ignore the bad things Oklahoma is doing politically, but we can't be lazy and just lump that into why companies are passing us over as the main and only thing because if that was the case Apple, Google, Goldman Sachs, Schwab, JP Morgan Chase, State Farm, etc. etc. would not be moving HQs or building out massive regional campus in Dallas, Austin, Atlanta, Nashville, etc. Oklahoma could easily be the next Georgia and there's a ton of momentum in the 44/412 corridor between OKC-Tulsa-NWA wether we acknowledge it or not. Until economic development, incentives, etc. are taken more seriously here we're likely to stay as a back up for a while.