The complacency in the rest of the US of course has a lot to do with the fact that there's a very loud and active pro fossil fuel lobby that kept insisting coal was the future even while a lot of coal plants were going out of business. A lot of states invested in gas plants instead of wind generation because of that too. And now that renewables are clearly cheaper, a lot of those investments are starting to look pretty bad.
While solar might generate less energy per unit area, it is at least condensed so that you could get away with buying a plot and fully exploit the area. You can add additional (unconnected) plots as cheap land becomes available.
I could also see the advantage that solar has quite limited opex after installation. A fleet of windmills may require significantly more resources to keep operating after years of service.
[^1] https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost....
[^2] https://www.quora.com/Which-is-more-expensive-to-build-wind-...