I know Texas very well, I was married there, all my kids were born there, and it's definitely the place I felt most accepted (Texas was very different then), but I gotta say it's a bit trickier than this for folks nowadays, the government there really has gotten into everyone's business and even local cities can't pass their own laws without the state government overriding them and enforcing their ideas on everyone else. It's a shadow of the state I'd come to love. So I get why people would not be anxious to sign up for that deal ( even if they don't know that Austin is in some ways less liberal and accepting than Houston or Dallas which are much more cosmopolitan and diverse).
That said, California has literally nothing like HEB and if I could have elected HEB to be the government I would have taken that deal in a heartbeat, so you and I agree there.