Besides jobs, California offers open minds and much a much friendlier atmosphere for brown people.
Ironically, I feel that California offers much less in terms of "open minds" - I am strongly liberal on social matters and advocated for homosexual marriage rights in AZ. Here I feel legitimately scared to mention that I have conservative views on business affairs without fear of potentially losing a job given how quickly people are to lambaste anyone they can for any opinion that doesn't conform to the acceptable limits of non-conformity.
I'm just keeping my head down and doing my job until I can go back to a more sensible location.
As far as the political views you highlighted, my guess is you're part of the vast majority of the electorate that's socially liberal and financially conservative.
Question is, can that vast majority ever organize?
There isn't a vast majority on controversial social issues or they wouldn't be so controversial.
I'm a trans lesbian, born and still live in Texas. When I move out of state, it's going to be a state with trans-inclusive protections at the state level.
Spending this entire year worrying about Dan Patrick shoving transphobic legislation down our throats was emotionally harrowing, and I don't want to go through it again. I hope to be out of the state by the time the 2019 session begins. And Patrick promised to do this long before the legislative session ended, so I spent all of 2016 worrying too.
Finding a place to move to has been like solving a puzzle. A red state is out of the question. I don't want to risk another bathroom bill. And statewide LGBT protections are needed even if a local government has its own protections because a) being protected in one city is worthless when none of its suburbs have protections, and b) the state can revoke local government's ability to protect minorities at any time (look at Arkansas or North Carolina).
I also love southwestern-style suburbs and I'm fairly conservative in a lot of areas that don't involve LGBT rights (namely that I love suburbs, I utterly despise hipsters, I'm a very proud neoliberal globalist Jew, and I'm an establishment Democrat that despises the Bernie wing), so that's making it hard to find a place that's exactly like what I want. I'm looking for a conservative, sprawling suburb that isn't riddled with hipsters and is located in a blue state. I also insist on a place where AC is universal, and for food-related reasons, I want to live somewhere there's a lot of Asian people.
I've basically narrowed it down to parts of the LA and Vegas areas (OC and Torrance in LA, Spring Valley in Vegas).
You're describing Westchester or Long Island, down to a T.
I dislike how old the houses are, and the way it's laid out, the residential areas feel like they're out in the country. And central AC isn't universal there: the house in Bronxville my aunt and uncle lived in when I was a kid didn't have it, though they installed it shortly before they sold it in 2003 (and like most New York Jews, moved to Florida). Not sure about the house in Harrison my cousin just bought; I'll have to ask her.
I'm also not a fan of how the suburbs of NYC all orbit around the city. All of the good shopping is in the city. All of the jobs are in the city. When my aunt came to visit me for my college graduation, she was shocked at the massive amount of restaurants and shopping in the suburbs of Dallas, because where she comes from, the suburbs are just bedroom communities and all the businesses are in the city. I'm also used to working in the suburbs; in Dallas right now, I live in the burbs and commute farther out in the burbs. You can't do that in New York.
And the suburbs there are laid out like shit too: Dallas suburbs are all built on an arterial grid, where the suburbs contain endless six-lane divided arterial roads placed one mile apart from each other both north-south and east-west. On the other hand, major thoroughfares in Westchester are two-lane roads, and nothing is laid out with any rhyme or reason.
My ultimate fantasy is for somebody to dig Plano, TX out of the ground and transplant it into a blue state. I want to live somewhere that's exactly like where I live now, except in a state with state-level LGBT protections and a 0% chance of electing a government that will reverse them.
To give you an idea of what I'm looking for, here are some Street View shots of residential neighborhoods in Plano. I'm looking for some place that looks identical:
https://goo.gl/maps/d9shDtPFxZ62
https://goo.gl/maps/6pLpYCtpW2R2
https://goo.gl/maps/QWRw3rVfMPr
On the other hand, here are some Street View shots of the Westchester I'm used to. I'm not a fan at all of how this looks:
https://goo.gl/maps/KKk9JrbsJ3N2
Lotta immigrant communities in a lot of "red states" that've largely been making progress on their own just like everywhere else, and now we're helping hang them out to dry.
If I move I want it to be to such a place for just that reason. You don't win over anyone, or win any battles, by retreating.