I do not know about the "statists". Perry talks about "business" but his debate against Ted Cruz brought out his interventionist ideas. He created a $3 billion bond for cancer research. The state borrowed the money; the taxpayers make good on it. The committee gave the money to an M.D. Anderson of Houston laboratory whose manager was the wife of the man who chaired the committee. That was only the last of a string of problems. The legislature yanked all the funding and set up an oversight committee. You can google it from there. Texas is also one of the states that prohibited Tesla from selling cars via their showrooms direct from the factories. The Texas car dealer's association pumped money into the campaign cycle and the Republican house and senate saw the matter their way. No of them was shocked at the intrusion of government into the market. We have a Railroad Commission. They no longer regulate the non-existent railroads; they went on to regulate other industries. Read about their "stewardship of our natural resources" here: http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/ Texas just proves that fascism is less disastrous than real socialism.

While Texas is "conservative" and Austin is "Democratic" or "liberal" or "progressive" those all mean many things. _The Brave New Books_ store (http://bravenewbookstore.com/) hosted the largest and most financially successful meetup for Ron Paul's presidential bid: they outdid Paul's own district.

The countercultural weekly, the Austin Chronicle is pro-govenment: they never met a program they did not like. When I moved here, I read it every week, expecting the Albuquerque Alibi or the East Village Other, but it got predictable enough to be tiring.

That reflects on the Lehmberg case. It was a farce. I never met anyone who did not think they should not have thrown the book at her, taken her from office, and locked her up like any other drunk who assaults a sheriff's deputy. For the county prosecutor to be involved in that was just egregious. Even the Chronicle distanced itself from her in many stories, such as this one:
http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2013...
(The indictment of Gov. Perry makes stories about Lehmberg harder to find, actually. You have to go down a few pages, change the search words. I used "lehmberg sentenced" not "lehmberg indicted.")

The other shadow here is the gubernatorial bid of state senator Wendy Davis. She filibustered an anti-abortion bill and that launched this bid. Davis represents Fort Worth. It is not true that all of Texas is conservative Republican except for Austin. Dallas and Fort Worth form a metroplex, but Dallas is more like Atlanta, while Fort Worth is still an old cow town. That being as it may, the Democratic party has deep roots all over the state.

The only difference between the Republicans and Democrats is which spheres of your life they seek to control. For all of that, yes, you do find more or less libertarian people across the spectrum. But that is a national phenomenon, not specific to Texas.

This just shows how intent the statists are at pushing their agenda and, more importantly, preventing the agenda of any opposition.

Texas should do itself a favor and move the state capital out of Austin, the liberal mecca in an otherwise red state.