Yes, California Should Absolutely Be Split into Two States

Have you seen this?

This is from a Yahoo article about this subject:

The Republican leader of the California Assembly says he will be presenting a resolution to split the state into two distinct parts.

State Assemblymember James Gallagher (East Nicolaus) intends to hold a press conference Wednesday to present the plan, which he says is in response to California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to redraw the state’s congressional maps.

Gallagher, Republican leader in the State Assembly, will introduce Assembly Joint Resolution 23, which calls for the creation of a new U.S. state comprised of 35 inland California counties, including most of Northern California, the Sierra Nevada, Central Valley and Inland Empire.

Calling it a “two-state solution,” Gallagher says the resolution will protect rural voters who he says will be silenced by Newsom’s redistricting plan.

“The people of inland California have been overlooked for too long,” Gallagher said in a news release issued Tuesday.

First of all, on a meta level, anywhere the majority of people in a county, particularly a large majority, want to move to a contiguous state, and that state is also willing to bring them in, we should be in favor of that. After all, few things could happen at the local level in our country that would encourage better, more thoughtful governance than allowing overlooked, taken-for-granted counties to move to another contiguous state where their interests would be better represented. For example, that’s what the “Greater Idaho” movement is about:

Incidentally, this is a good idea as well. Why shouldn’t long-ignored and abused rural counties go somewhere their concerns are taken seriously? Why should they be permanently bound to states that view them as nothing more than a resource to be exploited instead of taxpayers and citizens who deserve to be treated with at least a basic level of respect?

You may say, “Well, if they don’t like it there, why not just move?” Of course, people can and do move from badly run states. In fact, according to ChatGPT, California has lost more residents than any other state over the last five years:

However, one problem with this is that if the most dissatisfied people leave a state, in a sense, it rewards incompetence by removing the people most offended by it from the state. On the other hand, it would be a lot harder to paper over the loss of multiple counties. When the size of your state is literally shrinking and your neighbors are growing directly at your expense, you can’t keep pretending everything is actually okay.

This would likely lead both states to make more of an effort to govern in a way that benefits ALL of their citizens and more realism among the populace. For example, it’s fine to say, “Abortion and trans rights are everything to me,” but what if your county has to decide between staying in the state that lines up with your positions on those issues or joining a state that has a tax rate that’s 50% lower? Suddenly, when you have to weigh your priorities, you may realize what’s really most important to you isn’t what you thought it was.

Getting beyond that, California has a uniquely good case to be split. For one thing, it’s our biggest state by a lot. It has 40 million residents, while Texas, which is in 2^nd place, has only 29 million. In addition, although the state is almost entirely controlled by Democrats, much of the interior of the state would prefer Republican governance. Like nowhere else in America, these really are two different states, with different priorities and political leanings.

Furthermore, look at how ChatGPT calculates things would play out if California were broken into an Eastern and Western half:

What do you notice about that map?

First of all, the liberal Western half of California would be the 2^nd largest state behind Texas, while the Republican leaning Eastern half of the state would be the 6^th largest state, just ahead of Illinois. So, we’d still be talking about two of the largest states in America.

In addition, given how badly California is governed, wouldn’t splitting the state up make a lot of sense? States like Texas and Florida have proven that they’re not too big to be competently governed, but no objective person can currently say that about California. That state is a poorly run mess. If California is too big for the people in charge to effectively manage, wouldn’t it make more sense to give them less to manage?

Similarly, under this plan, the Eastern half of the state would go from the nearly powerless, red-headed stepchildren of California to one of the most influential states in America. Objectively, the Eastern half of the state would be MUCH BETTER OFF if it split off from the rest of California.

They’d almost certainly end up with lower taxes, lower crime, more national influence, and the ability to govern themselves instead of being treated as an afterthought behind California’s big Western cities. Furthermore, although it has been quite a while, this would not be unprecedented. Maine split off Massachusetts, and West Virginia left Virginia during the Civil War.

It’s also worth noting that America itself was founded in large part over “taxation without representation,” but isn’t that basically what the people of East California have right now? If you deny that, what meaningful representation do they have in their own state? They’re practically locked out of the decision-making in the capital. California is one of the most gerrymandered states in America, that’s almost entirely at their expense, and it seems likely to get even worse. They basically have no real say in the tax policies, water policies, and environmental policies that they’re forced to live under – and why should they be in that position? Not only do they live in California, but there are 13 million of them. That’s certainly enough people to justify having their own state.

Realistically, this is a heavy lift.

It would have to get on the ballot in California, it would have to win in a state where Democrats have a political advantage, and it would also have to get through a far-left wing state house. Still, crazier things have happened. If this could get on the ballot and WIN, you never know what might happen over the long haul and yes, California absolutely SHOULD be split into at least two states.

---