4 ms·

What's the likelihood of California actually splitting?

by chlvsl 8y ago

JeremyBanks 8y ago
0
mc32 8y ago
There already is a request in congress which was never visited, from the 1800s. From my understanding those never die—but also very unlikely to be brought to the floor. This new effort has like a 1% chance. I’d give Jefferson State a 2% chance.
- dfee 8y ago
  I can only assume you’re referring to the Russian propaganda campaign. https://www.kqed.org/news/11217187/from-his-home-in-russia-calexit-leader-plots-california-secession https://www.kqed.org/news/11217187/from-his-home-in-russia-c...
  - mc32 8y ago
    No, that’s some nut who lives in the urals. The proposed state of Jefferson has been ongoing since a while. The last serious effort was before wwii, so it got derailed by a national emergency. The current three way split is funded by some billionaire guy. It’s actually not a bad idea. The rural interior has way different needs than the coastal areas. Kind of like the downstate upstate dichotomy NY suffers.
    - akkartik 8y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_state) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_st...
    - lev99 8y ago
      > It’s actually not a bad idea. The rural interior has way different needs than the coastal areas. The biggest impact of a new state isn't on the local area that gains a new governor but on the national legislative branch. It creates two new senators and changes the house of representatives adjusting the political balance of the entire nation.
      - rectang 8y ago
        The three-way split produces 4 new Senators, 2 which would likely be Democrats and 2 which would likely be Republican. That's a wash. California is not currently gerrymandered as far as house seats. That could change for any the three new states. The biggest change would actually be the electoral college. Currently California is winner-take-all and reliably blue. If they split it without splitting another large state like Texas, that compounds the current Republican advantage and makes it even easier for a Republican president to be elected while losing the popular vote. In other words, Draper's ballot initiative is a gerrymander which benefits Republicans. And that's one reason it's going nowhere.
        seanmcdirmid 8y ago
        If all those new states go blue, however, republicans lose out on the two extra electoral votes per state. I don’t think republicans really like this either, even SoCal is in the process of going blue in the near term.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > The current three way split is funded by some billionaire guy. True. > It’s actually not a bad idea. It's a phenomenally bad idea. > The rural interior has way different needs than the coastal areas. To the extent that's true, it just proves that the proposed three-way split is a bad idea, since it includes: (1) a south-to-central coastal state (“California”; basically LA plus less populated coastal regions), and (2) a Bay Area and further north coastal + northern half of the inland regions state (“Northern California”, loosely Bay Area + Sacramento + rural regions), and (3) a far southern coast and southern half of the inland regions state (“Southern California”; San Diego + inland rural regions).
- bdowling 8y ago
  Bills that aren't passed in a single Congress (2 year period) are dead and would need to be reintroduced to be considered.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
0 with the proposed map. The big driver here is that the major coastal cities and everywhere else want nothing to do with each other and are inching closer and closer to throwing up their hands and saying "screw it, it's worth the cost" and actually splitting. The proposed map portions out the coastal urban areas among the three states in a way that nobody is pleased with. In each case you've got a bunch of delusional commie leftists sharing a state with a bunch of backwards hicks (yes, I'm sure both sides would consider those their preferred pronouns). That's exactly the status quo right now. The proposed split wouldn't make it better. Splitting up a state will cause a lot of economic upheavel. Think about all the reverberations from changes in government funding on the city/town level for example. Just the friction of figuring everything out would cost a huge amount of money. Pretty much everyone stands to lose a few bucks in any deal that splits the state. Splitting a state has big economic downsides and the proposed map does not reflect the cultural divides of CA so it's all downsides and no upsides therefore it's not happening, at least not with the proposed map.
- CalChris 8y ago
  Well, Redding officially wants nothing to do with the State of Jefferson proposal, and they'd be the state capital. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304091913/http://www.krcrtv.com/news/local/redding-city-council-rejects-state-of-jefferson-proposal/22230558 https://web.archive.org/web/20160304091913/http://www.krcrtv... So I think it's more that rural areas want nothing to do with city areas.
claydavisss 8y ago
Zero and if it did, in each "state" there would immediately be calls to split each of them vertically to reflect the legitimate schism of "blue"-coast/"red"-valley. There is legitimate polarization in California - only the coastal areas are reliably "blue"...the three-state proposal does nothing to address that and only seeks to create more Democratic Senators. California-split-in-three would also create an eventuality most liberals would likely want to avoid - Texas as the eventual "superstate" acting as power broker.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- cis2butene 8y ago
  That split has been shifting in the last 20 years or so. When I first became aware of politics the central valley, high desert, inland (southern) valleys, and orange county were red. However, it feels like the rest of the country has been moving right, causing shifts in voting behavior. Some of that is also that califonia is a punching bag for right-wing speeches- similar to how alabama or arkansas is for left-wing speeches. Riverside/San Bernardino County are now more purple, with larger blue areas. Orange County is more blue on everything except immigration. There are certainly pockets of red left, including much of imperial county, but southern california is looking much more like the bay area in the late 80s than Reagan-era SoCal. Even central california has blue pockets with the growth of fresno. Fresno county actually went for clinton in 2016 despite solid down-ballot wins for incumbent R reps. If current trends continue as the state grows in pop (more middle-class people priced out of the major metro areas, growth of secondary metros in logistics/agra hubs like fresno, riverside, and sacramento, and a rise in train commuting) you'll see R areas shrinking to rural areas and areas without good transportation connections. That is a big "if", though, I admit.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > in each "state" there would immediately be calls to split each of them vertically to reflect the legitimate schism of "blue"-coast/"red"-valley. The new “California” in the proposal is purely coastal counties. What you suggest might, I suppose, be an issue in the new NorCal and SoCal (though Imperial County and some other inland counties in the south, and those on the I-80 corridor from Sacramento west, are pretty reliably blue, so the “coast”/“valley” split, aside from missing that not everything off the coast is valley, is quite oversimplistic.) > There is legitimate polarization in California - only the coastal areas are reliably "blue" Well, the densely populated parts of the coast, plus the I-80 corridor inland about as far as Sacramento, plus Imperial County. > the three-state proposal does nothing to address that and only seeks to create more Democratic Senators. The three states would be, basically, two blue one red, which would add one blue- and one red-leaning state, keeping the expected absolute difference between Democratic and Republican votes in the Senate the same (what matters for simple majority votes), but narrowing the ratio of Republican structural advantage (which matters for supermajority votes.) > California-split-in-three would also create an eventuality most liberals would likely want to avoid - Texas as the eventual "superstate" acting as power broker. Well, and New York. (CA, TX, and NY all play that role to a degree now.)
carapace 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_9_(2018) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_9_(2018... > California has been the subject of more than 220 proposals to divide it into multiple states since its admission to the U.S. in 1850, including at least 27 significant proposals in the first 150 years of statehood. It's a fun and interesting hobby of Tim Draper[0] that will never fly. It's actually pretty great to be Californian and no one wants to fuck that up.[1] [0] It reminds me of one of my favorite Richard Pryor jokes: "Cocaine is Nature's way of telling you you have too much money." [1] For example, if you have enough money you can get wacky vanity laws on the ticket and everyone has a good laugh. Back in the day, SF was going to name the new sewage treatment plant after G.W. Bush. I signed the petition but then voted against it. It was a good joke but it would have been tasteless to go through with it. "Cal 3" is just the same sort of thing writ large(er).
jmspring 8y ago
As previously mentioned, the split seems engineered to amplify the Democrat party representation for the current state of CA (basically tripling it). The majority of the large land mass that makes up "Northern CA" in the three way split really wants nothing to do with SF or Sacramento.
- jmspring 8y ago
  Downvotes without comment? Always fun. Try living/spending time talking to people outside Sac or SF. Bay Area born/native/raised... spending solid time in the large section of the state east of Chico. It’s actually refreshing having non-SV conversations about things substantive.
  - tomhoward 8y ago
    I didn't downvote you, but maybe easing off on the conspiratorial tone of the comment would help. Nevertheless, complaining about downvotes is against HN's guidelines; you're better off to think about how you could make the same point in a way that's more palatable to people (i.e., makes them think).
maire 8y ago
I grew up in Northern California. The original movements to split the state came from the water wars in the early and mid 20th century. In the early 20th century the Los Angeles water district took water from Owens Valley under suspicious circumstances. The movie China Town came from this era. In the mid 20th century the movement to split the state was revived when Gov Edmond G Brown and Gov Ronald Reagan (Democrat and Republican) put in the Calif Aqueduct to take water from Northern California to Southern California. Back then water was a tangible reason to split the state. The current bill doesn't seem to have the same compelling argument. Nobody has articulated a reason to split the state outside of possible gerrymandering. Have we really sunk this low?
- lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
  "No" reason for splitting; you know other than the fact that nearly 40 million people spread out over 150k square miles are represented in government by only 2 senators. If you can't think of a single reason why California might want to split for better representation I wonder why you think we should have states at all (which is a perfectly fine stance, just be consistent with it).
  - maire 8y ago
    I am saying the opposite. I suspect we are on the same side even if we have an opposite opinion. I care more about California right now than I care about federal politics - which is currently toxic. California is currently strong enough to be considered a country. Our economy is double the size of Russia. Look at what a strong California has done at the national level even with only 2 senators. We caused the car companies to have clean emission laws when the 2 Bush administrations opposed this. We are currently protecting immigrants when the US is not. We are currently supporting ecological programs when the US is not. We currently support women's rights when the US is on the road to dismantle women's rights. I am not willing to give that up.
    - chlvsl 8y ago
      Those causes might be misled, though, is what he's trying to say. As in those positions likely would not have passed because there would have been more accurate representation. Do you think it's fair for a small group of people to legislate over 40 million?
raincom 8y ago
Impossible, since every extra state will dilute the power of other states in the Senate.

What's the likelihood of California actually splitting?

by chlvsl 8y ago

What's the likelihood of California actually splitting?

JeremyBanks 8y ago

mc32 8y ago

There already is a request in congress which was never visited, from the 1800s. From my understanding those never die—but also very unlikely to be brought to the floor. This new effort has like a 1% chance. I’d give Jefferson State a 2% chance.

dfee 8y ago
I can only assume you’re referring to the Russian propaganda campaign. https://www.kqed.org/news/11217187/from-his-home-in-russia-calexit-leader-plots-california-secession https://www.kqed.org/news/11217187/from-his-home-in-russia-c...
- mc32 8y ago
  No, that’s some nut who lives in the urals. The proposed state of Jefferson has been ongoing since a while. The last serious effort was before wwii, so it got derailed by a national emergency. The current three way split is funded by some billionaire guy. It’s actually not a bad idea. The rural interior has way different needs than the coastal areas. Kind of like the downstate upstate dichotomy NY suffers.
  - akkartik 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_state) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_st...
  - lev99 8y ago
    > It’s actually not a bad idea. The rural interior has way different needs than the coastal areas. The biggest impact of a new state isn't on the local area that gains a new governor but on the national legislative branch. It creates two new senators and changes the house of representatives adjusting the political balance of the entire nation.
    - rectang 8y ago
      The three-way split produces 4 new Senators, 2 which would likely be Democrats and 2 which would likely be Republican. That's a wash. California is not currently gerrymandered as far as house seats. That could change for any the three new states. The biggest change would actually be the electoral college. Currently California is winner-take-all and reliably blue. If they split it without splitting another large state like Texas, that compounds the current Republican advantage and makes it even easier for a Republican president to be elected while losing the popular vote. In other words, Draper's ballot initiative is a gerrymander which benefits Republicans. And that's one reason it's going nowhere.
      - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
        If all those new states go blue, however, republicans lose out on the two extra electoral votes per state. I don’t think republicans really like this either, even SoCal is in the process of going blue in the near term.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > The current three way split is funded by some billionaire guy. True. > It’s actually not a bad idea. It's a phenomenally bad idea. > The rural interior has way different needs than the coastal areas. To the extent that's true, it just proves that the proposed three-way split is a bad idea, since it includes: (1) a south-to-central coastal state (“California”; basically LA plus less populated coastal regions), and (2) a Bay Area and further north coastal + northern half of the inland regions state (“Northern California”, loosely Bay Area + Sacramento + rural regions), and (3) a far southern coast and southern half of the inland regions state (“Southern California”; San Diego + inland rural regions).
bdowling 8y ago
Bills that aren't passed in a single Congress (2 year period) are dead and would need to be reintroduced to be considered.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

0 with the proposed map. The big driver here is that the major coastal cities and everywhere else want nothing to do with each other and are inching closer and closer to throwing up their hands and saying "screw it, it's worth the cost" and actually splitting. The proposed map portions out the coastal urban areas among the three states in a way that nobody is pleased with. In each case you've got a bunch of delusional commie leftists sharing a state with a bunch of backwards hicks (yes, I'm sure both sides would consider those their preferred pronouns). That's exactly the status quo right now. The proposed split wouldn't make it better. Splitting up a state will cause a lot of economic upheavel. Think about all the reverberations from changes in government funding on the city/town level for example. Just the friction of figuring everything out would cost a huge amount of money. Pretty much everyone stands to lose a few bucks in any deal that splits the state. Splitting a state has big economic downsides and the proposed map does not reflect the cultural divides of CA so it's all downsides and no upsides therefore it's not happening, at least not with the proposed map.

CalChris 8y ago
Well, Redding officially wants nothing to do with the State of Jefferson proposal, and they'd be the state capital. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304091913/http://www.krcrtv.com/news/local/redding-city-council-rejects-state-of-jefferson-proposal/22230558 https://web.archive.org/web/20160304091913/http://www.krcrtv... So I think it's more that rural areas want nothing to do with city areas.

claydavisss 8y ago

Zero and if it did, in each "state" there would immediately be calls to split each of them vertically to reflect the legitimate schism of "blue"-coast/"red"-valley. There is legitimate polarization in California - only the coastal areas are reliably "blue"...the three-state proposal does nothing to address that and only seeks to create more Democratic Senators. California-split-in-three would also create an eventuality most liberals would likely want to avoid - Texas as the eventual "superstate" acting as power broker.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
cis2butene 8y ago
That split has been shifting in the last 20 years or so. When I first became aware of politics the central valley, high desert, inland (southern) valleys, and orange county were red. However, it feels like the rest of the country has been moving right, causing shifts in voting behavior. Some of that is also that califonia is a punching bag for right-wing speeches- similar to how alabama or arkansas is for left-wing speeches. Riverside/San Bernardino County are now more purple, with larger blue areas. Orange County is more blue on everything except immigration. There are certainly pockets of red left, including much of imperial county, but southern california is looking much more like the bay area in the late 80s than Reagan-era SoCal. Even central california has blue pockets with the growth of fresno. Fresno county actually went for clinton in 2016 despite solid down-ballot wins for incumbent R reps. If current trends continue as the state grows in pop (more middle-class people priced out of the major metro areas, growth of secondary metros in logistics/agra hubs like fresno, riverside, and sacramento, and a rise in train commuting) you'll see R areas shrinking to rural areas and areas without good transportation connections. That is a big "if", though, I admit.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> in each "state" there would immediately be calls to split each of them vertically to reflect the legitimate schism of "blue"-coast/"red"-valley. The new “California” in the proposal is purely coastal counties. What you suggest might, I suppose, be an issue in the new NorCal and SoCal (though Imperial County and some other inland counties in the south, and those on the I-80 corridor from Sacramento west, are pretty reliably blue, so the “coast”/“valley” split, aside from missing that not everything off the coast is valley, is quite oversimplistic.) > There is legitimate polarization in California - only the coastal areas are reliably "blue" Well, the densely populated parts of the coast, plus the I-80 corridor inland about as far as Sacramento, plus Imperial County. > the three-state proposal does nothing to address that and only seeks to create more Democratic Senators. The three states would be, basically, two blue one red, which would add one blue- and one red-leaning state, keeping the expected absolute difference between Democratic and Republican votes in the Senate the same (what matters for simple majority votes), but narrowing the ratio of Republican structural advantage (which matters for supermajority votes.) > California-split-in-three would also create an eventuality most liberals would likely want to avoid - Texas as the eventual "superstate" acting as power broker. Well, and New York. (CA, TX, and NY all play that role to a degree now.)

carapace 8y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_9_(2018) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_9_(2018... > California has been the subject of more than 220 proposals to divide it into multiple states since its admission to the U.S. in 1850, including at least 27 significant proposals in the first 150 years of statehood. It's a fun and interesting hobby of Tim Draper[0] that will never fly. It's actually pretty great to be Californian and no one wants to fuck that up.[1] [0] It reminds me of one of my favorite Richard Pryor jokes: "Cocaine is Nature's way of telling you you have too much money." [1] For example, if you have enough money you can get wacky vanity laws on the ticket and everyone has a good laugh. Back in the day, SF was going to name the new sewage treatment plant after G.W. Bush. I signed the petition but then voted against it. It was a good joke but it would have been tasteless to go through with it. "Cal 3" is just the same sort of thing writ large(er).

jmspring 8y ago

As previously mentioned, the split seems engineered to amplify the Democrat party representation for the current state of CA (basically tripling it). The majority of the large land mass that makes up "Northern CA" in the three way split really wants nothing to do with SF or Sacramento.

jmspring 8y ago
Downvotes without comment? Always fun. Try living/spending time talking to people outside Sac or SF. Bay Area born/native/raised... spending solid time in the large section of the state east of Chico. It’s actually refreshing having non-SV conversations about things substantive.
- tomhoward 8y ago
  I didn't downvote you, but maybe easing off on the conspiratorial tone of the comment would help. Nevertheless, complaining about downvotes is against HN's guidelines; you're better off to think about how you could make the same point in a way that's more palatable to people (i.e., makes them think).

maire 8y ago

I grew up in Northern California. The original movements to split the state came from the water wars in the early and mid 20th century. In the early 20th century the Los Angeles water district took water from Owens Valley under suspicious circumstances. The movie China Town came from this era. In the mid 20th century the movement to split the state was revived when Gov Edmond G Brown and Gov Ronald Reagan (Democrat and Republican) put in the Calif Aqueduct to take water from Northern California to Southern California. Back then water was a tangible reason to split the state. The current bill doesn't seem to have the same compelling argument. Nobody has articulated a reason to split the state outside of possible gerrymandering. Have we really sunk this low?

lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
"No" reason for splitting; you know other than the fact that nearly 40 million people spread out over 150k square miles are represented in government by only 2 senators. If you can't think of a single reason why California might want to split for better representation I wonder why you think we should have states at all (which is a perfectly fine stance, just be consistent with it).
- maire 8y ago
  I am saying the opposite. I suspect we are on the same side even if we have an opposite opinion. I care more about California right now than I care about federal politics - which is currently toxic. California is currently strong enough to be considered a country. Our economy is double the size of Russia. Look at what a strong California has done at the national level even with only 2 senators. We caused the car companies to have clean emission laws when the 2 Bush administrations opposed this. We are currently protecting immigrants when the US is not. We are currently supporting ecological programs when the US is not. We currently support women's rights when the US is on the road to dismantle women's rights. I am not willing to give that up.
  - chlvsl 8y ago
    Those causes might be misled, though, is what he's trying to say. As in those positions likely would not have passed because there would have been more accurate representation. Do you think it's fair for a small group of people to legislate over 40 million?

raincom 8y ago

Impossible, since every extra state will dilute the power of other states in the Senate.