When Dallas-Fort Worth’s leaders make their pitch to California’s big companies, they tell them Texas is a great place to do business.

They say the cost of living is lower. They point out great schools and safe neighborhoods in fast-growing suburbs.

Those are the same things that lured Paul Chabot, a recent transplant to McKinney — and they're the same qualities he's touting to clients of his new company, which aims to help Californians relocate to the Lone Star State.

Paul Chabot

But unlike the region's economic cheerleaders trying hard to convince young workers with progressive values that Texas isn't so bad, Chabot's pitch is explicitly political.

North Texas can be a conservative, family-values utopia, Chabot said. And if you, like him, are fed up with California’s liberal policies, you should pick up and move here, too.

"Leaving California and moving to Texas is like getting out of a bad relationship," said Chabot, a military veteran who last year mounted a second unsuccessful run for Congress in a San Bernardino-area district. "You never realize how bad it was until you're out of it -- we don't miss California at all."

In the last decade or so, Chabot said, he's seen some of the Golden State's last remaining Republican toeholds turn blue or purple. Orange County, long a bastion for the moneyed GOP elite and a regular fundraising stop for national candidates, voted for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election.

The Inland Empire, where Chabot lived, “used to be a very conservative region for the state,” he said.

“But that has significantly changed in the last five or 10 years,” he said. “It’s not a place that my wife and I fit in anymore.”

Chabot said that his company, Conservative Move, launched about a week ago. Since then, he said about 500 families or homeowners have reached out.

The way the business works is that when those Californians contact Chabot, he chats with them about his experiences, talks up the opportunities for a life that better aligns with what he describes as family values conservatism and then refers those clients to real estate agents.

Derek Baker, with Keller Williams in Collin County, is Conservative Move's lead Texas real estate agent -- and an eighth-generation Texan, as Chabot is quick to point out.

Chabot then gets a commission from any home sales, but he wouldn't say how much. The company is an initiative of his consulting business, Chabot Strategies, LLC, which he says specializes in counterterrorism advice drawing on his law enforcement background.

“Texas has been doing a really good job of promoting Texas as a business friendly state, but we filled a void,” he said. “It provides people a level of comfort.”

Eventually, he said, Chabot hopes to take the idea national.

The problem may be that Texans are already squabbling about the best ways to keep up the state’s economic momentum, and worrying about the impact of blue state migrants on everything from housing prices to politics.

Look no further than businesses' opposition to the Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick-led effort to pass a so-called bathroom bill.

Chabot said that while bathroom legislation was far from his top issue, he was happy to know that the debate was happening.

Instead, he said, he hopes to hone in on “what makes up a great city and a great community.”

For Chabot the question is, “Where can I survive?”

He said initiatives aimed at relieving overcrowding in California’s prisons have made communities there unsafe. Texas, he said, seems “tough on crime.”

Despite skyrocketing housing prices around the region, Chabot said that, at the end of the day, it's still possible for California families to buy a house here -- something he said is "essential to caring about your community."

“The one thing I would advocate is building single family homes, not so much apartments,” he said.

Never mind, he said, that developers are adding hundreds of luxury apartments to their massive mixed use developments, from Uptown to Frisco.

“Because of the size of Texas, it’s really limitless,” he said.

As for whether or not he’s considering taking another run at public office, Chabot said that’s another negative.

“Thankfully this area is flush with conservatives,” he said.