Ex-assemblyman pushes plan to split California into two states

SacBee ^ | Published: Thursday, Feb. 26, 2009 - 12:00 am | E.J. Schultz

[BenLurkin]

The revolution will begin in Visalia – and it will be led by a man named Maze.

As in Bill Maze, a termed-out Assembly member turned rebel who is pushing for California to split in two: the conservative interior as one state and the liberal coast as another.

"We're looking at establishing a breakaway state," he said, with a new government and a new capital. "We'd actually be creating a 51st state."

He is tapping into the anger of farmers and others who say environmental rules and high taxes are sending the state into a tailspin.

"Citizens of our once 'Golden State' are frustrated and desperately concerned about the imposition of burdensome regulations, taxation, fees, fees and more fees, and bureaucratic intrusion into our daily lives and businesses," declares downsizeca.org, the movement's Web site.

Under Maze's plan, 13 coastal counties from Los Angeles to Marin would split from the remaining 45 counties, which the Web site calls "the new revitalized California." To promote the idea, Maze has established a nonprofit group called Citizens for Saving California Farming Industries.

Meanwhile, Maze is selling the plan up and down the state, appearing on television and radio shows. With enough money and momentum, he hopes to put the question before the state's voters. According to the U.S. Constitution, Congress and the state Legislature would have to sign off.

Californians have tried to parcel the state 27 times before, with most attempts never getting far off the ground, said former Republican Assemblyman Stan Statham, who made the last serious attempt in the early 1990s.

The most famous secession movement came in 1941, when several counties in Northern California and southern Oregon tried to form the State of Jefferson – until World War II intervened.

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[SierraWasp]

"4. State of Central Valley"

Please reconsider that name. Most of that land mass is located in the Sierra-Nevada range with the valley counties getting their life-giving water from the western slope of the Sierra, thus... May I once again recommend SIERRA REPUBLIC?

[AuH2ORepublican]

I know that the names I selected suck; I only picked them so that people know what region of the state is in there. I think that “The State of High Sierra” has a nice ring to it, though.

[BillyBoy]

I've been a proponent of splitting up California since at least 2000. Given the current conditions of California, the need to split the state is more apparent that ever.

When they created California in the 1850s, they carved such a huge land mass because few people lived there at the time. They never would have let California get so big as a single entity if they knew what it would become. No state should be able to cast 55+ electoral votes for a RAT presidential candidate — that's such a huge avalanche of votes it disenfranchises the popular vote of about five million Americans who are the minority party in that state, and most of the other big states COMBINED aren't even enough to override California's choice of President (I'm in the FIFTH largest state in the union, and we only have 21 electoral votes, less than half of California). Plus with Pelosi/Boxer/Feinstein, you have the Bay area running the rest of the state, even the much bigger city of Los Angeles.

SoCalPol makes a good point that not everyone on the southern California coast is Marxist — indeed there are several GOP strongholds there that have a huge population, like Orange County and San Diego. The northern California Coast IS uniformly Marxist though, except for those unfortunate souls in the county of Del Norte.

The best solution would be to combine the “split the coast from the inland” proposal with the “split the northern half from the southern half” proposal, and combine them so we'd have THREE states: North California, South California, and Sierra.

The results would be as follows:

STATE OF NORTH CALIFORNIA
Capitol: San Francisco
Humboldt
Mendocino
Sonoma
Lake
Napa
Martin
Yolo
Contra Costa
Alemeda
San Francisco
San Mateo
Santa Cruz
Monterey
San Benito
Santa Clara

STATE OF SOUTH CALIFORNIA
Capitol: San Diego
San Luis Obispo
Santa Barbara
Ventura
Los Angeles
Orange
San Diego
Imperial

STATE OF SIERRA:
Capitol: Fresno
Del Norte
Siskiyou
Modoc
Shasta
Lassen
Trinity
Tehama
Plumas
Sierra
Butte
Blenn
Colusa
Sutter
Yuba
Nevada
Placer
El Dorado
Alpine
Amador
Calaveras
San Joaquin
Stanislaus
Tuolumne
Mono
Mariposa
Merced
Madera
Fresno
Kings
Tulare
Inyo
Kern
San Bernardino
Riverside

North California would quickly become the Massachusetts of the west coast — a complete Dem monopoly over the state — but they would no longer be able to decide the President and statewide for 1/5th of the nation's population. They would have a much more modest population. South California would probably lean Democrat overall due to the huge population in Los Angeles, but it wouldn't be total RAT rule like its northern counterpart. It would send several good conservatives to Congress and you'd probably see the occasional good GOP official elected statewide. It would be tiny in size, like Vermont, but makeup for that with it's huge population, giving it the kind of clout New Jersey has. Sierra would be a modest sized state like Colorado, and lean VERY strongly Republican. It would be like 60-80% GOP officials with the occasional “moderate” Democrat getting elected to something. We'd create a new GOP stronghold in the west that would be up there with Kansas in terms of GOP voter strength.

None of the new states would have Sacramento as the capitol. I'm actually thinking of splitting up Sacramento county between the states of North California and Sierra. North California would get the communist RAT infested areas of the county, it's that geographically doable. ;-)

If you think that plan is radical, you should see what I'd do with the rest of the county if I had the power. I'd buy up Baja California from Mexico and turn it into a non-voting territory. I'd sell the area south of Phoenix (the Gandsen purchase) BACK to Mexico so we'd have a new border with Mexico entirely along the Gila River-Rio Grande. I'd merge North Dakota and South Dakota into one state called “Dakota” with a decent population of around a million people. And we have to do something about the poor GOP minority in weirdly shaped Maryland. I think I'd give tiny useless Delaware all the Maryland areas east of the Cheskepeare Bay, like Salisbury. That would make them a halfway decent state in land area, size, and population, and might be enough to swing Delaware into the Republican column. The rest of Maryland would get Washington D.C.’s population as part of their constituents. Communists need to be united.

[BillyBoy]

California voted simularly to Illinois this year, with Hussein getting about 60% of the vote and winning some areas that are normally considered reliably Republican. Of course Illinois had a valid excuse with Hussein being our incumbant Senator, and his vote totals against McCain being far weaker than he was against Keyes (when Hussein carried something like 92 out of the state's 102 counties, vs. getting about half the state's counties against McCain).

I wonder what happened to all freepers who gloated how RINOld would "deliever" the state once they had a "popular Republican governor" in office. They don't seem to post much anymore. ;-)

Interesting to me is your home state of Tennessee is one of the few states to go the OPPOSITE direction of where it was in 2004. Hussein actually did much WORSE in the state than Kerry did, which is surprising since Obama's southern clone Harold Ford was the media's "rising star" for a while and considered their best chance of a RAT pickup. Hussein only won about six counties in TN, and about 41% (reverse totals of California). I wonder why flip-flopping Dukakis clone Kerry did better than the smooth talking marxist?

2004

2008

[Galactic Overlord-In-Chief]

I wonder if Hillary’s defeat angered some of the state’s Democrats, who decided to vote against Obama. Of the five states that swung more GOP from four years ago (Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and West Virginia) she carried four of them in the Democratic primary. Of course, these are also very culturally conservative states who don’t have huge epicenters of liberalism, except maybe New Orleans, Memphis, and Nashville.

[gost2]

This is always about northern and southern Califonicate but the real division there is between E and W. Same with Washington and Oregon. The eastern half of all three of those states hate the coastie’s guts.

[fieldmarshaldj]

The issue of Hillary was the overwhelming reason why. Most of the state Dems down to the grassroots were pledged to Hillary (with very few for the False Messiah, such as my Congressman, Jim Cooper). Junior Ford, unlike the False Messiah, was a far more moderate candidate (and although he was left of center, his voting record wasn’t moonbat, though his Caucasian successor Cohen IS a moonbat, who proudly declared himself the most left-wing member of the TN legislature for the nearly 3 decades he served), and that’s why Ford came so close to winning (that and Corker the RINO not doing much to motivate the GOP base).

Truth be told, the Dem establishment in TN is overall more moderate than many other state parties (so much so that leftists have openly agitated because of it and want to depose the establishment), and it was their opinion that the False Messiah would be a total fiasco (in this state, that was absolutely true. Outside Memphis and lamentably, my own city of Nashville, he was completely toxic). When the left gets its way and takes control of the state party, the GOP is going to take over a massive chunk of the state (the rural areas, especially, where the Dems still have a lot of sway) and the Dems will only have minority areas and trendy urban White lib districts remaining.

[ElkGroveDan]

North California would get the communist RAT infested areas of the county, it's that geographically doable. ;-)

If you just carved out the City up to West Sac and Yolo County, then sure. But you'd have to protect the Delta communities like Isleton, and the Northern communities around Antelope and keep them in the good area.

Down where I am we are already indistinguishable from Amador, so that would be fine with me.

[Impy]

Not a one for McLame. With campaigning though he could have carried the 3 normal states.

Cali is headed for deep deep excrement. I hope secession will gain traction in the future.

It would probably take armed insurrection though to get the rat legislature to agree, lest it could be done via ballot initiative.

Are you good at math or what AuH? I would take me hours to calculate the Presidential vote %s from various groups of counties. ;)

[fieldmarshaldj]

It’s not “headed for”, it’s already there. The election of Off-White Davis was bad enough, but Ah-nold was the nail in the coffin.

[AuH2ORepublican]

You’re assuming that I hadn’t already created the five states on my spreadsheet. : )

[Clintonfatigued]

This is a good idea. The state has clearly become unweildy. There is plenty of precedent for the move.

[calcowgirl]

There is plenty of precedent for the move

? When is the last time a State was split?

[Impy]

When is the last time a State was split?

I'm thinking it was West Virginia. Not counting territories that were divided.

Before WV it was Maine from Massachusetts.

It's been a long time. Reorginization of political boundaries hasn't been common in recent history, aside from a new county in Colorado and some local government consolidation. The will for such major changes is lacking from our staid status quo universe. If I were dictator I'd have a top to bottom review of all levels of government, splitting up states and counties like nobodies business. ;)

[calcowgirl]

Los Angeles went through quite a battle a few years ago. To split, or not to split?

Those wanting to split lost, obviously.

[Impy]

The Valley, I remember that. It narrowly passed in the Valley.

It failed cause it required the support of the whole city’s electorate (and also because one of the proposed names was Camelot right? That was silly :p). And the pigs don’t want to give up taxpayers/victims I guess so they opposed it and got their sheep to vote it down.

Nothing short of guns in their faces would ever get GOP suburbs in Cook County IL liberated from the Country government mafia.

They shouldn’t get a say, If an area wants to separate that should be their right.

[Mojave]

Florida ceded lands to Alabama as part of the resolution of the resolution of the Flora-Bama Lounge and Package conflict. The bar, which originally was in Florida, now lies within Alabama’s border.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flora-Bama

[Mojave]

My bad. Florida retained the bar, Alabama got the land accessing the bar.

[Impy]

There’s a land (river?) dispute right now between Georgia and Tennessee I believe are the 2 states. I think the Supreme court has jurisdiction.

[Tennessee Nana]

Yeah...

from very old original state lines...