“Don’t California my Texas.“
That was Gov. Greg Abbott’s message to the influx of Californians who’d moved to the Lone Star State a blue tsunami struck during the midterms.
But now transplants are firing back at being blamed for the sweep of Democratic votes, saying they were Republicans too.
“It’s totally ignorant nonsense,” Doreen Diego, 65, told The California Post. The former Bay Area native moved to Texas in 2019 with her husband, Joe.
Unlike some Texans who had second thoughts about the state after Democrats James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa won the Senate and gubernatorial races, she has no plans to go anywhere.
She believes the state turned blue instead because of the companies that relocated to Texas. “People who voluntarily made the choice to come here are clearly red,” she said.
“However, companies that have come here and relocated, thus offering employees relocation packages and job incentives, I can’t speak to. If they were not red voters prior, they are not going to vote red.”
She added that people from a variety of places relocated to Texas, including “minorities” who came to Texas to work virtually “for their kids, no state tax and lower housing prices,” she said.
Those voters turned Dallas-Fort Worth suburb Collin County, which was red in the 2024 election, blue, she added.
The Golden Stater-turned-Texan says companies will continue to relocate and expand in Texas, leading to change in the state.
Companies ranging from Tesla, Oracle, Chevron, and Charles Schwab have moved assets from California to Texas in recent years. Elon Musk, for example, said he moved Tesla to Texas because of a California business climate he viewed as increasingly hostile.
Marie Bailey, a 44-year-old realtor at the head of a massive California-to-Texas Facebook group, said most of her members are conservatives.
“I don’t think the Californians turned Texas blue,” she told The Post. “The following that I have mostly is conservative, and they’re excited to move to Texas to vote red.”
She believes “homegrown younger Texans” flipped the state to Democrats after Republicans flubbed key issues like abortion and marijuana.
The realtor believes state Republican choices to outright ban abortion in Texas and criminalize certain pot products were “highly unpopular” even among her conservative friends.
Hinojosa made it a point to call out Abbott after the state banned several THC products this summer.
She said she would allow the citizens of Texas to vote on whether the products should be allowed in a move she believed allowed Texans to protect their freedoms.
As for abortion, Paxton presided as the state’s top law officer in 2022 when Texas banned abortions following the overturning of landmark case Roe v. Wade.
Talarico said he wanted to repeal the ban, a law which he said even pro-life voters should be “deeply disturbed” about.
Another cause of Texas’ blue shift could be Hispanic voters shifting away from Republicans this election cycle, according to an AP voter poll.
Only about one-third voted for Republicans in their local House race, the poll said, while about six in 10 voted for Democrats.
Republicans lost the Senate and House in the 2026 midterm elections, along with several key congressional and statewide races in Texas.
Census figures showed more than 77,000 people moved from California to Texas in 2024, the single busiest state-to-state move in the nation.
A Realtor.com analysis prepared for The California Post earlier this year pegged the California-to-Texas pipeline at roughly 1 million people between 2015 and 2025.
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