I sure don't think of the northeast that way. I see it as fairly conservative both in politics and business. One data point is that it wasn't anywhere in the northeast that first legalized weed. It was Colorado and Washington, followed by Oregon and Alaska. Another data point is that people wear jeans or shorts at work in Silicon Valley (or Socal, Oregon, Colorado, etc) whereas they're far more likely to be required to wear suits in the north east.

The northeast is very urban, which has some overlapping effects with but is still very different from actually being liberal. Change is mostly driven by the west. It's just that the change reaches the dense cities of the northeast more quickly than the rural areas in between.