White voters are more elastic, and NY and CA are much more non-White than MA
Maryland is also much more nonwhite than Massachusetts, and yet it has a Republican Governor (Larry Hogan). But what's interesting about New York and California is that both had Republican Governors as late as the 2000s. New York had George Pataki, who upset Mario Cuomo (Andrew Cuomo's father) in 1994 and was subsequently reelected twice by landslide margins in 1998 and 2002. And California had Arnold Schwarzenegger, who won the replacement ballot in 2003 when Gray Davis was recalled, and was reelected in a landslide in 2006. Both were moderate Republicans. But now, those two states seem to be out of reach for even those kinds of Republicans.
