California used to be Australia: A couple actual cities, some small towns and then vast unpopulated, seemingly uninhabitable outback wilderness. Now California has stuff in it. and it’s not being governed very well at all.
Representing such a large surface area with diverse political views is sure to under-service all of them and – surprise – it totally does, but lately there is growing push to solve that problem by letting the different regions of the state govern themselves independently of the others. Meaning: make new states out of the existing one.
I first heard about this a few months ago when ReasonTV released this segment on what would-be the Libertarian state of Jefferson (the northernest part of Current-California).
Activists in Northern California, near the border with Oregon, are pushing to secede from the Golden State. They say they’re fed up with taxes, regulation, and lack of representation. If they get their way, the country’s 51st entrant would be called the State of Jefferson.
“The three major urban areas dictate politics for the entire state,” says Mark Baird of the Jefferson Declaration Committee. “Our children are leaving, our economy is crashing, we are taxed, every breath we take is regulated, and we feel that a free state will cure that.”
To date, five county governments have signed on the plan and more may be joining up.
“We can’t afford to run a California style bureaucracy, that is true,” says Baird. “But as a small rural state, we don’t want to. ”
The idea of secession in California isn’t new. During the Great Depression, folks started pushing a similar plan in the same part of the state but threw in the towel after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Now Californians may get a chance to vote on chopping the state up into 6 smaller states.
The most accurate spoof of this I’ve seen has been this cartoon making it’s own split-up proposal:
This one is a little more to the point and keeps the same divisions of the official 6 California’s movement:
And finally, this is what the 6 California proposal actually suggests:
Background on the initiative from Reuters:
Timothy Draper, a founder of a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that has invested in Twitter, Skype and Tesla, among other companies, has been agitating for months for a ballot initiative to chop the most populous U.S. state into smaller entities. “It’s important because it will help us create a more responsive, more innovative and more local government, and that ultimately will end up being better for all of Californians,” said Roger Salazar, a spokesman for the campaign. “The idea … is to create six states with responsive local governments – states that are more representative and accountable to their constituents.” Salazar said Monday that the campaign had gathered more than the roughly 808,000 signatures needed to place the measure on the November, 2016 ballot. Draper and other supporters plan to file the signatures with California Secretary of State Debra Bowen on Tuesday.
Here’s the official pitch from the movement via one of those live-drawing videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyPNjPzUTuo
Sounds kindov impossible but isn’t totes impossible when in the hands of voters.
No U.S. state has been divided since the Civil War. But this idea sounds less antiquated after considering that just one of California’s 58 counties (San Bernardino) is larger than nine U.S. states and four of them combined. Supporters have gotten the go-ahead from the secretary of state to begin collecting signatures, so this idea could spark a thought experiment.
The whole “State of Jefferson” thing is mentioned and noted as the pipe dream it is but then asks the legitimate question of how things change if and when voters get a say on the matter:
Even small U.S. states have differences, but California’s are arguably so extreme that it’s hard to imagine any way to reconcile them. There are efforts in the rural far north to join with some Oregon counties and become the state of Jefferson. They already have a flag. Folks there say California’s land-use restrictions are leaving them in penury.
That movement lacks political clout, but what happens if state voters say yes to a divorce? It’s hard to imagine they would do so given that urban residents can easily out-vote disgruntled folks in the hinterlands. It seems likely that the legislature would fight this and unlikely that Congress would accept a break up. But campaigns – provided they are serious, and that’s far from clear in this case – can lead to reforms that address simmering frustrations.
Whatever your opinion on the matter, I will now proceed to tell you the right one: It’s a good and fair idea that will not happen for emotional reasons. Mostly because of branding.
The California brand is a thing. None gives a crap if Fresno and Sacramento don’t feel a part of the beach culture/Golden Gate western coast of America. California is California and it will stay the way it is, regardless of how massively unfair to its far stretching diverse groups of residents it is.
Because that’s how ‘Merica works, y’all.