Yep. Austin is so far gone now. I truly think it cannot recover. Austin never was conservative, but now with the liberals invading, it is quickly becoming a intolerable place to live. Property taxes have, and continue to rise in order to pay for all the “free stuff”.
The one difference is that Austin does have, for now, some ADULT SUPERVISION, which is not true of California cities.
When Austin goes too far left, such as trying to drive out Uber/Lyft or registering guns, then the state steps in and says, “sorry, no dice”. Right now the state is trying to deal with Austin’s self-manufactured ‘homeless crisis’. It’s a new area for the state to go into, so it’s taking a while...but the state certainly knows what’s up, since Austin is also the state capital.
And the above is good and fine as long as Texas as a whole remains Republican. Should that change, things here will get ugly, very ugly, and it will happen very fast.