I'm being nitpicky, I know, but a truer way to say this is "... important places like San Francisco and L.A.," NOT "California." For one thing, California is its own micro-flyover country because its farmland feeds and clothes a whole hell of a lot of America; California is mostly agricultural. For another, a by-county breakdown of California reveals it to be a MOSTLY RED state.
I accept the correction, it’s difficult for an “outsider” of those states to remember that their sum total is not their large cities :)