Does California even have a big government ?

There are so many redundancies in the CA state government that it's ridiculous. On top of that our public sector workers earn exorbitant salaries, get pensions that are often more than they were making while working and their unions write the laws of the state (because they've bought off all the elected officials). This state has an unfunded pension liability to these workers that's in the billions (because again, the mouth you feed can't say no). Not sure how they handle themselves in Texas, but I can see why they wouldn't want to become California. 

Republicans call it big government when it's government that does stuff they don't like. They're perfectly fine with the government telling doctors that they can't discuss abortion with their patients, or prohibiting doctors from informing patients about the dangers of having a gun in the house with children around. But raising the minimum wage to something people can actually live on, so they don't need to take food stamps, that's "big government interference." 

You can measure the size of a government by the number of laws that are in place.  The common notion is that in California, each level of government has tons of laws that they enforce, to the point where it feels like a person just can't be free, whereas in Texas, the idea is that the only laws that exist are the ones necessary to maintain a peaceful society.

Of course, that's a load of crap.  There isn't a single politician who advocates for the reduction or elimination of any laws (unless that elimination would benefit themselves or their campaign donors personally, and then it's suddenly very important to get that off the books).  Everybody who gets into government adds more laws to the books.  There are 1214 cities in Texas, each with their own set of laws, whereas there are 482 cities in California.  The size of each state's penal codes are fairly equal, too.

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes.xhtm...

https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/

I would wager that they're both just about the same when it comes to how intrusive the respective governing bodies are.  I would even bet that both states have a comparable number of taxes that are levied, with the major difference being in the rates.  Because if there's one thing that government loves more than making rules for people to follow, it's figuring out clever ways to tax them as well, so that people don't realize just how much their tax burdens are.