Lived in CA from '84 to '95, wife was in the Air Force. We stayed and bought a house in Lodi after she got out. It was a naturally beautiful place and the weather, other than 100+ for awhile in summer, was nice.
Found the people outside of the big cities were ok, just trying to raise their families. But there was always this undercurrent of liberal BS going on. Our relatively small town had very liberal people running it. It was crazy.
Not sure you can transplant most people from there. Even if they have conservative values there will be a break in their reasoning someplace.
We were conservative when we went there and conservative when we left.
Don