"Uhh, "is California too conservative?" is a rhetorical question I thought I'd never hear. Democrats have supermajorities in state politics and all the major cities are dominated by Democrats."It might come as a surprise to you, but there are conservative Democrats.
There are Green party and Peace and Freedom party (which seems to be a more organized version of the Green party here in California) candidates in California, but they virtually never get in to office. The last time I looked Republicans won something like 40% to 50% of the votes in California (though they didn't win quite as much this last mid-term election, probably due to anti-Trump backlash).
So Democrats might hold the reigns of power for the moment, but Republicans are in second place and had Trump not so soiled his party's image in all but the most conservative strongholds in the nation, they'd be close at the Democrats' heels.
In fact, even in the 2018 election, with Trump at his loudest and most obnoxious, and with nearly the entire Republican party backing him, many Republicans in California still got 40% or more of the votes in California, and some of them even won.[1]
But, whatever the balance of power, the really really progressive or left-wing parties have no share of it in California.
Now let's look at one of the prominent Democrats who got in to office recently: Governor Newsom.
I just searched DDG for "newsom vetoed", and some of the top hits showed that he vetoed:
1 - legislation that would have given Santa Cruz access to $16 million in affordable housing bond funds
2 - two child support reform bills that anti-poverty advocates had hoped would give a boost to low-income families
3 - a bill to give California one of the toughest recycling mandates for plastic bottles in the nation
4 - a bill that would have given teachers six weeks paid leave after giving birth
5 - a bill that would have let state workers bring their babies to work
6 - a bill aimed at stopping the Trump administration from rolling back federal environmental regulations in the state
To me, all of these vetoes (which are anti-worker, pro-corporate, and anti-environment) clearly show that he's, at least arguably, too conservative.
Or take a look at Senator Dianne Feinstein, who voted for the PATRIOT Act and has been one of its most stalwart defenders, and also supported the Iraq war. It's hard to argue that these positions are not "too conservative", at least for California's left-wing reputation.
Not to mention that California has a gigantic prison industry and one of the biggest prison populations in the world, is incredibly pro-corporate and pro-capitalist (else the Bay Area would not be so loved by some of the richest, biggest, and most powerful corporations on the planet). Many of California's corporations, incidentally, support the military, which is not a left-wing position, as the left-wing in the US tends to be anti-war and against the military-industrial complex. So, once again, California scores "too conservative" on this point.
If California was really as left-wing as Fox News and right-wing talk radio paints it out to be, you'd have thought that it would have nationalized all corporations or made them worker-owned and outlawed private property. But nothing could be further from the truth. California is in many ways a capitalist paradise, not a Marxist utopia. It's just that, yes, it likes to keep its air and water clean, and has some worker protections, but (as Governor Newsom's vetoes show) not nearly as much as it could have, had it had a more left-leaning Governor, for example.
[1] - https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/sov/2018-general/sov/2018-c...