Jon Bodwell's family founded Delta Camshaft in 1977. Nearly half a century later, he is packing up and leaving Washington state, not because the work dried up, but because the cost of staying has become unbearable. Rising crime, surging insurance premiums, ballooning power bills, and a political class he says cares more about protecting offenders than property owners have finally pushed him out.
Bodwell told Fox News Digital that the decision came down to a grinding accumulation of costs and frustrations no single business owner can absorb forever.
His account is blunt. And it fits a pattern that Washington's political leadership seems determined to ignore: businesses are not just grumbling. They are leaving. A recent survey by the Association of Washington Business found that 44% of business leaders said they are considering moving their personal residence out of state. When nearly half the business class is eyeing the exit, the problem is not a few malcontents. It is a policy environment that has made productive people feel unwelcome.
Bodwell laid out the math in plain terms. His insurance jumped 20%. His power bill, he said, was supposed to climb another 13%, but last month it nearly doubled. Every major operating cost is moving in the same direction, and not by small increments.
"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."
He described a business environment where crime drives costs in ways most voters never see. Because break-ins and vandalism are rampant, his building insurance has skyrocketed. Officers he speaks with about graffiti tell him it takes longer to write the report than it does to process an arrest, if an arrest even happens. The revolving door, in Bodwell's telling, means the people damaging his property face fewer consequences than he does for owning it.
"The criminals basically have more protective rights than I do as the building owner."
That is a framing statement, not a legal finding. But it captures the lived frustration of a small manufacturer who has been forced to sleep inside his own business because the cost of operating in Washington has grown too steep to maintain a separate residence.
The policy backdrop makes Bodwell's departure harder to dismiss as one man's grievance. In March, Washington state Democrats passed what has been called the "millionaires tax", the state's first-ever income tax, pushed by progressives and opposed by conservatives. Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson signed it on March 30.
The tax sent a signal. To supporters, it meant the wealthy would finally pay their "fair share." To business owners already squeezed by rising costs, it confirmed that Olympia views private enterprise as a revenue source to be tapped, not an engine to be protected. The pattern is familiar in blue states: raise taxes, expand government, and then express surprise when the people who fund the system start relocating.
It is the same dynamic playing out in Democratic circles nationally, where progressive leaders have openly discussed punishing businesses that don't fall in line with their political agenda.
Bodwell operates out of the Tacoma area, but the dysfunction he describes extends across the Puget Sound region. An FBI crime report for 2024, released in August, ranked Seattle fourth-worst out of the 30 largest American cities for total crime. Fourth-worst, in a country with no shortage of troubled cities.
Photo documentation from as far back as 2022 tells its own story. A homeless encampment known as The Treeline sat near downtown Seattle along Interstate 5, bordering redwood trees. In March 2022, the executive director of a nonprofit called We Heart Seattle was photographed talking to a homeless man injecting methamphetamine in the open in Seattle.
These are not hidden problems. They are visible, documented, and persistent. And they impose real costs on the people who still try to run businesses, employ workers, and pay taxes in the state.
The broader exodus is not limited to manufacturers. When major donors abandon the Democratic Party entirely, and when nearly half of surveyed business leaders contemplate leaving, the common thread is a political class that has prioritized ideology over the basic conditions that keep an economy functioning.
Bodwell estimated the move could cost him upwards of $100,000. That is a staggering sum for a small manufacturer, money spent not on new equipment, not on hiring, not on growth, but simply on escaping a state that has made staying untenable. He said he believes he can make the money back once he is resettled.
Delta Camshaft's own website confirms the company "is not closing" and that "our plan is to relocate the business and continue to serve our customers for years to come." The work will go on. It will just go on somewhere else. Washington loses the jobs, the tax revenue, and the institutional knowledge that comes with a 48-year-old family business.
Bodwell said he regrets not selling his 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." That is not the observation of a pessimist. It is a market signal.
The frustration runs deep enough that Bodwell told Fox News Digital he wishes he could do more about it. He said if he were younger, he would run for office to try to stop what is happening. But at 56, facing serious lung and heart problems, he does not have that option.
"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. 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 someone leaving in triumph. It is the voice of someone who fought to stay as long as he could and finally ran out of room.
Washington's political leadership has had every warning sign available. The FBI crime data. The business surveys. The for-sale signs multiplying in Tacoma. The insurance premiums. The power bills. The open drug use. The graffiti that police say isn't worth the paperwork.
And yet the response from Olympia has been to pass a new income tax, one that tells every remaining business owner exactly where they stand in the progressive hierarchy of priorities. The insider politics of the Democratic establishment in blue states consistently favor expanding government reach over protecting the conditions that let ordinary people earn a living.
Several open questions remain. Where is Delta Camshaft headed? How many employees will the move affect? When will it happen? Fox News Digital's reporting does not answer those questions, and neither does the company's website. What is clear is the direction: out.
The Association of Washington Business survey, reported by The Center Square, puts Bodwell's story in sharper relief. He is not an outlier. He is the 44% made flesh: a real person, with a real business and real employees, making the rational decision to leave a state whose leaders have made staying irrational.
It is worth noting that the internal frustrations within the Democratic Party extend well beyond Washington state. When your own coalition is exhausted by the leadership, it should not come as a shock that the people footing the bill are exhausted too.
Jon Bodwell spent 48 years building something in Washington. The state spent the last several years making it impossible to keep. When the last manufacturer turns off the lights, Olympia will have plenty of tax codes on the books, and nobody left to pay them.