I actually used to live in rural California and now live in Texas and I found Rural Californians to be MUCH more conservative than your average Texan just that Texans love to over compensate a lot.
I think even suburban California culture is much more similar to Texas culture than it is to SV culture.
It makes sense. There’s a lot of shared history: Central American cultural influence/heritage, long history of intense and local economic booms and busts (Oil in SoCal and Texas, gold in NorCal), fiercely independent political history. It’s produced an interesting mix of conservative and progressive ideas. The only thing that California has that’s unique on top of that base mindset is environmental conservatism; because California is jaw droppingly gorgeous and Texas isn’t.
Totally agree with the point others have made, that Texas is a lot more blue than its gerrymandered districts let on. Similarly, California is much more “red” outside of the urban bubbles. They’ve a lot more in common than cultural memes would lead you to believe.
I grew up and lived as an adult in central and rural California (and the Bay Area) before moving to Texas.
I thought I was pretty conservative, like many in rural California.
But coming to Texas it was shocking how liberal I was. Not in anything specific, but in the overall. Texans and California’s government and voter just don’t even think about the same kinds of things. What is perfectly reasonable in California is completely foreign in Texas and vice versa.
The big example: the taxpayer. In California I never thought about them. Who’s going to pay for this great new law or public policy? In California we never ask. In Texas, everyone knows: the taxpayer.
No conservative one in Texas is going to support a law, no matter how good, that the taxpayer isn’t going to want to pay for.