A few years ago there was a ballot measure to split Los Angeles into two parts - essentially, the San Fernando valley area wanted to secede and form its own city. As it happens, the entire City of Los Angeles got to vote on it - and it was voted down. So, rather than just the San Fernando valley voting “YES”, you had the rest of LA voting “NO”.
I would suspect the same dynamic would occur if the state were to try to split - one section would want to secede, while the rest of the state (and US Congress?) would get to vote also. Likelihood of success? - Near zilch.
I have to say I’ve never seen any proposal like Stone’s. He’s essentially trying to split off the eastern part of the state. His new state would look like a backwards F.
As said, people have been bringing up this idea every so often forever and it never goes anywhere. It would take something really politically earthshaking to actually happen; the creation of West Virginia in the wake of the Civil War being an obvious example of the kind of disruption that can split a state. But as quarrelsome as we can get, we certainly aren’t fielding armies against each other.
Well, according to Article 4 of the Constitution:
So it seems like the consent of both the state legislature and Congress would be enough to make it arguably legal. I expect that the new state lines would have to be drawn by negotiations; and as others have pointed out, good luck getting agreement on that.
The “desert” part was hyperbole. Doesn’t change the fact that you’ve got 20 million people living in an area that can barely provide water for one-fifth of that population.
Possibly one of the most simplistic summaries of an incredibly complicated issue that i’ve ever seen. Kudos.
Of all the stereotypes about SoCal, i think this one is the least viable. Los Angeles has plenty of culture; it has fantastic museums, galleries, and attractions of all types, from highbrow to lowbrow.
Of course, many of the high culture institutions were created by wealthy Angelenos precisely because the place was a cultural wasteland. They recognized that the area lacked a lot of the stuff that made San Francisco and Chicago and New York attractive, so they set out to create it with their money.
Maine was part of Massachusetts at one time. So we already have precedent for splitting part of a state off, without a war involved (like with West Virginia), though Maine’s admission helped balance the number of slave and free states.
Split it up like the fault lines indicate nature wants it to be split or just wait until the big one. Naming them would be fun and could be a contest. Maybe sell the names to corporations. SonyCal, CommuneChinaCal, Calgon, Calpo, or just contests with prises Calboys, Calcrap, Calfornicate, WaterCALmellon(green outside, red inside), Arnoldnation, DemocratCal, Caliberaladonia, MediCal, MexiCal, etc… winners would get to move to a real state like Canada.
It seems to me that if there were a serious movement for a split, we’d routinely have a proposition or constitutional amendment on the ballot for it. I’ve lived here for 16 years, and I can’t recall ever seeing one (although I could be mistaken).
If I ever did see it on the ballot, I’d vote against it.
I think you’ll find this to be the case for any border drawn beyond the original Eastern Seaboard settlements.
Most “natural boundaries” chosen in the East were rivers, which are essentially as arbitrary as latitude and longitudinal lines. Rivers are centers of culture and bring together the people living on either side. Using a river as a boundary is antithetical to the idea of a state boundary drawing a line between cultural groupings.
In any case, none of this explains the claim that “California is two [non-contiguous] states combined” in a way that doesn’t also apply to most other states.
Okay, but you still haven’t told us what you mean by “states” when you say “California is two [non-contiguous] states,” because I can’t think of any logical or common definition of “state” that would make sense in that context.
What I meant was California is made up of liberal cities and coastal areas and a conservative central valley and random enclaves. Each group of Californians believe that they are the ones the state is meant to serve. The groups never see eye to eye on anything, and are ridiculously stubborn to boot. Neither can survive without the other, but try to tell them that.
Two states. It’s metaphorical or something, not a literal joining of two different states (governmental).
You are correct, at the time the lines are drawn. However, because of the effects of state law and the people and or businesses that come or leave because of those laws, it can come to be more unified economically, socially, or culturally than it was originally.
I agree that it still would not be self sufficient.
Actually a lot of the east coast boundaries were drawn to reflect geography, which given the primitive forms of travel available to the early Americans could have major impacts on culture and create distinct communities.
Some of that continues up until the modern day, obviously in a very limited manner.
There are genuine cultural differences between different States, but you are correct the lines on the map aren’t the major dividing lines. For example Virginia has a few very distinct cultural “regions” just within itself. In the Southwest part of the State it is very Appalachian, there is little difference between Virginians on the other side of the big interstate tunnel and West Virginians over in Bluefield. Arguably from Richmond on south you have a more traditionally southern culture. From roughly anywhere in VA that is an hour’s drive from DC you have a very different culture that is more akin to that of DC’s itself (more liberal, more urban.)
The Hampton Roads region is also a bit different from the rest of the state.
The drawn boundary between West Virginia and Virginia is also significant. It’s really a line that roughly corresponds to the rough parts of the mountains that were not easily traversed prior to railways being dug through them. Because of this the early settlers to Virginia were almost all of English extraction, it was mostly poor Scots-Irish pioneers who settled the region known as West Virginia. In fact many of them came south from Pennsylvania and it was mostly just because of the original charter of Virginia that the land west of the Appalachians was even part of it, because most of the early settlers in that region were extremely dissimilar from the people who settled Virginia. They were from different parts of the Old World and had very different customs. By 1860 these differences had only magnified dramatically, not abated with time.