Austin is not near as special and 'weird' as it thinks it is. I say this living in the largest city in the U.S. with a gay mayor, also located in Texas.
Yeah Houston (I'm assuming you are talking about Houston) is a really progressive place. I do love Austin (its a young city and I'm a young person) but its not some shining light in the center of Texas. It's really not that different than any other big city in Texas.
Houston was just about split in the last election (Obama won Harris County by 585 votes). Austin went heavy for Obama (60.2% to 36.2% or just under 100k votes). Houston has quite a ways to go before being liberal. The hispanic vote makes Texas as a whole pretty interesting though.
I don't care if Houston is 'Liberal'. I prefer pragmatic and reasonable. If the two go hand and hand, so be it, but I don't think that's always the case.
