Conservative areas, Paul says, are more likely to have the three ingredients of a quality life: good schools, low crime, and good-paying jobs. In McKinney, Paul felt like he “moved back to America.” It was California the way he remembered it. His neighbors brought him baked goods when he moved in. People tried to help him unload his moving van, which he would never have allowed in California, lest someone run off with his television. Here, the PTA has “like ten vice presidents.” His four kids ride bikes in the streets—and they don’t have to worry about locking them up. There’s always a new church being built in McKinney, and, wouldn’t you know it, Paul’s neighbor is his pastor. The brain-searing heat of North Texas—it was supposed to be 104 the following day—was not that different from summers in the Inland Empire, he said.

Paul said he always had a mix of liberal and conservative friends, but he feels at home in Texas now that he’s among fellow Republicans. (Or at least, the majority of the county’s residents are.) “I’m not here to change Texas,” he told me, crescendoing. “I’m here to be a Texan.” He’s even created a political action committee called Keep Texas Red PAC. The premise: don’t let liberals ruin Texas like they ruined California.

Even the process of setting up Conservative Move proved Paul’s case to himself. It took him six months to set up a business in California, he said, but just two weeks to create Conservative Move in Texas.

Conservative Move can refer its clients to real-estate agents in different states, but 90 percent of the people who contact them are interested in Texas. Number two is Idaho. Some people want to move to Waco, where the TV show Fixer Upper was set, but McKinney is the main event.

Sure, people could just find a real-estate agent on their own, but they’re inspired by Paul’s story. They sympathize with the reasons Paul left. He said the company had three thousand leads in its system at various points in the process. Some are years away from moving to McKinney. They contact Conservative Move every month to say, “I’m coming as soon as I retire.”

Derek Baker, an eighth-generation Texan, is the company’s lead agent in the state. He graduated from the evangelical Liberty University before working for conservative members of Congress and for the House Republican Study Committee. Derek carries a concealed handgun with him almost everywhere he goes. (He’s never had to use it, but he’s twice had to flash it at someone—and that “did the trick,” he said.) “Once he told me his conservative credentials, we knew he was the right person for the job,” Paul said happily.