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I had a conversation last week with a gentleman who said that in recent weeks he had seen two cars with “Refugees Welcome” bumper stickers whose drivers were flipping off cars with California license plates.

My first thought, which I didn’t express out loud, was that at least the refugees aren’t coming here to close down our libraries.

People like Phil Reynolds, who led an effort to dissolve the Meridian Library District over imagined fears of pornography.

He’s a formerly elected member of the Santa Clara Republican Party Central Committee in San Jose, California, who posted on Jan. 6, 2021, on social media, “The war has begun! WE MUST DEFEND OUR CONSTITUTION TO THE DEATH!” just as a mob of Donald Trump supporters were storming the U.S. Capitol.

Last week, we learned that former Californian and now Nampa resident Theo Hanson, 54, had become the seventh Idahoan charged on suspicion of participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Reynolds and Hanson are among the thousands of people who have moved from the Golden State to Idaho in recent years, contributing to a trend showing how Americans are sorting themselves into politically and culturally homogeneous communities.

In short, Republicans represent the vast majority of newcomers to Idaho. It’s something we’ve known for a while, but data released by the Secretary of State illustrate it in stark detail.

Of the 118,702 Idaho voters who moved here from other states since 2004, 77,136, or 65%, registered in Idaho as Republicans, while just 14,711, or 12%, registered as Democrats. That’s greater than the overall balance of 58% Republicans in the state.

California, in particular, is shedding Republicans fleeing to Idaho. The data show that of the 39,558 Idaho voters who moved here from California, 29,516 (75%) are Republicans. That compares with only 3,940 California voters, less than 1%, who moved here and registered as Democrats.

The myth that California liberals are moving to Idaho, which never really was true, has been busted again.

And it’s not just California. The data show that Republicans made up the majority of transplants from 48 of 49 states. Blue states, such as Washington and Oregon, are sending more Republican voters to Idaho than Democrats.

There’s nothing wrong with Republicans moving to Idaho, of course. There’s nothing wrong with moving to any state from any state. There’s nothing wrong with supporting Republican policies such as low taxes and a business-friendly climate.

But as we all know, the Republican Party has been taken over by Trump and his authoritarian tendencies. It’s a strain of the Republican Party that’s evidenced in Idaho by book bans, an attempt to dissolve a library district, an Idaho teacher of the year leaving the state, chaos and dysfunction in a North Idaho school board and North Idaho College, infringements on women’s rights and transgender rights, and attempts to limit voting based on unfounded conspiracy theories and Trump’s Big Lie.

I’m less concerned with what political party or what state newcomers come from. What I’m more concerned with is the type of people who are moving here and whether they’ve come here to change Idaho for the worse. Idaho has always had its share of extremists, but this new wave of extremism might tip the scales too far.

Far-right transplants from other states are helping extremists who were already here try to eradicate the sense of decency and concern for ordinary people that was once a feature of the governing center-right in Idaho.

Let’s not let them destroy “The Idaho Way.”