A family-owned Washington manufacturer that has built and repaired camshafts since 1977 says it is packing up and leaving the state, not because the work dried up, but because the costs of doing business under progressive governance finally broke the math.
Jon Bodwell, owner of Delta Camshaft, told Fox News Digital in an interview Tuesday that rising crime, graffiti, surging insurance premiums, skyrocketing power bills, and relentless tax increases have made it impossible to justify staying. The company's website confirms the plan: Delta Camshaft "is not closing," it says, and "our plan is to relocate the business and continue to serve our customers for years to come."
Bodwell estimates the move alone could cost him upwards of $100,000. He is doing it anyway. That fact tells you everything about what Washington's political class has done to the people who actually make things in the state.
Bodwell did not point to a single breaking point. He described a cascade. In his words:
"A majority of it is the constant battle with the city over the graffiti and the crime stuff here, the constant massive tax increase, everything is increasing."
His insurance premiums on the building jumped 20 percent. His power bill, he said, was "supposed to be going up another 13%." But the reality was worse.
"My power bill is going up. The claim is supposed to be going up another 13%. But just last month, it almost doubled."
Those are not marginal increases a small manufacturer can absorb. They are the kind of numbers that force an owner to choose between relocating and closing.
Bodwell told Fox News Digital that crime has driven the insurance spiral directly. As Breitbart reported, Bodwell explained that rampant crime pushed his building insurance costs sharply higher over the past three to five years.
"Because crime is running rampant, my insurance policy on the building is skyrocketed."
He said the officers he talks to about graffiti and property crime tell him it takes longer to write the report than it does for the suspect to be released. Bodwell's blunt summary of the situation: "the criminals basically have more protective rights than I do as the building owner."
Bodwell's experience is not an isolated complaint. An FBI crime report for 2024, released in August, ranked Seattle fourth-worst out of the 30 largest American cities for total crime. That is the backdrop against which Washington's lawmakers have chosen to raise taxes rather than restore order.
In March, state Democrats passed the so-called "millionaires tax", Washington's first-ever income tax, pushed by progressives and opposed by conservatives. Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson signed it on March 30. The new levy arrives on top of every other cost increase Bodwell described, layering a brand-new tax category onto a state that had never imposed one before.
The pattern is familiar. In Seattle, progressive leaders have laughed off warnings that new taxes would drive residents and businesses away. The laughter rings hollow when a 48-year-old manufacturer is spending six figures just to escape.
A recent survey by the Association of Washington Business, reported on by The Center Square, found that 44 percent of business leaders said they are considering moving their personal residence out of state. Fox News reported that businesses are now more than twice as likely to expand outside Washington than within it.
Those numbers describe an economy where the people who create jobs and pay taxes are actively planning their departure. Delta Camshaft is not an outlier. It is a leading indicator.
Bodwell told Fox News Digital that he has been forced to live inside his own business, a detail that captures how far conditions have deteriorated for small-business owners in parts of Washington. He is not a billionaire hedge-fund manager with a second home in Miami. He is a 56-year-old manufacturer with serious heart and lung problems who grinds camshafts for a living.
He said he regrets not selling the building a few years ago, when buyers were still moving into downtown Tacoma. Now, he said, "there's just a ton of buildings for sale in the market because everyone's leaving." The window closed because the conditions that made Tacoma attractive to buyers evaporated under the weight of the same policies Bodwell is fleeing.
The same dynamic plays out across blue-state America. In New York, progressive leaders have dismissed the exodus of wealthy residents and businesses as fiction, even as the evidence piles up. The script is identical: raise taxes, tolerate disorder, mock the people who warn you, and then act surprised when the tax base walks out the door.
Bodwell's frustration runs deeper than dollars and cents. He framed his departure as a defeat he wishes he could have prevented through political engagement.
"If I was in my younger years, if I was in my mid-20s or 30s, I would go into politics to stop what's occurring now."
He added, with evident resignation:
"Unfortunately, I'm 56 with some very bad health issues that won't allow me to be around for a whole lot longer with my lungs and heart issues. But I definitely, I wish I could go back to get involved in politics to stop what's occurring."
That is not the voice of a man gaming the tax code. It is the voice of someone who built something real, watched the government make it impossible to sustain, and ran out of time to fight back.
The broader lesson is not complicated. When aggressive tax hikes become a recruitment tool for lower-tax states, the jurisdictions imposing them should not be surprised by the results. Washington's new income tax, its tolerance for property crime, and its indifference to rising utility and insurance costs are not abstract policy debates. They are line items on a balance sheet, and the balance sheet said leave.
Delta Camshaft has not announced where it will relocate. The company has not disclosed how many employees the move will affect. What is clear is that a business that survived nearly half a century in Washington could not survive the state's current political leadership.
Progressives in Olympia and city halls across Washington can celebrate their new millionaires tax and their lenient criminal-justice reforms. But every time another manufacturer loads a truck and crosses the state line, the tax base they are counting on to fund those policies gets a little smaller. And as officials in other blue jurisdictions have already discovered, the math eventually catches up.
You can tax a business that stays. You cannot tax one that left.
