Lynn, Lynn, city of sin.
That Lexington, Amherst, and Acton (even Acton, Howie?) have become full-scale BP towns isn't surprising, they were always, always on that trajectory. Heck, back in the 80's even little Needham used to host Unitarian anti-nuke rallies on a weekly basis.
Yeah, the sane people do escape to New Hampshire, excluding Portsmouth.
Always? That's a dangerous way to look at things. It leads to tribalism. In that way of thinking, "they" (Northeasterners, Unitarians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists) are always the bad guys even when they were reliably voting Republican. "We" (Southerners, Catholics, Evangelicals, ethnics) are somehow always the good guys, even when our ancestors were voting in the New Deal.
For decades, the BP towns had GOP state reps, some townie good-old-boy with an insurance agency. Suddenly, the population tipped, and the local-yokel Republican was replaced by some dour ACLU hag who delivered her maiden speech on the evils of the Pledge of Allegiance. Now she's become a justice of the peace, so she can perform gay ``marriages'' for her lesbian constituents.
This is quite true and right on target. Some of these towns had more cows than people sixty years ago. A lot of the old state reps were dairy farmers, conscious of the realities of nature and economics. It was suburbanization and the increased influence of ever more liberal universities that made the difference. When the cows went, so did common sense.