It could also be a case of taking the money from Nasa and putting into more visible Democratic social programs.
JPL will probably get hit hard by this and it is in California (Boxer/Feinstein land).
Keep in mind as well - Democrats tend to be "settlers", whereas once upon a time we were a nation of pioneers. They'd rather focus on the past or plow money into failing programs that don't work, time and again, rather than looking towards the future (or our descendants' future for that matter).
There are NASA facilities in many states, including Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Texas, California, etc.