Maybe I should’ve said Oxnard…or Port Hueneme…
Santa Barbara county is conservative but it’s still California. I read a couple of years back that the population had shifted to the northern part of the county as Santa Maria was now the largest town Santa Barbara county. The farmers and oil field guys in wine country are pretty conservative.
That being said this is a dumb idea that will never fly. The only way it could work is if Texas was broken up in a way that kept it most red to balance out all the new blue states. The arguments that California is too big to govern is more of a reason the break up the US then it is to break up California maybe instead of breaking up the state they should do one to ceed power to the counties as a federal type system.
‘Bakersfield, Gateway to Fresno!’
Few people would know how to pronounce it. 
(Incidentally, my wife was born there.)
Fresno, gateway to Yosemite, where the bears are trained to eat all out-of-state visitors. The rattlesnakes bite the rest.
Cal Dept. of Tourism.
Yeah, I had trouble getting my mind around that too. I’m not sure exactly why, either, since it derives from the Spanish, which should make it way-NAY-may, not wy-NEE-mee.
And my sister once lived there. 
As someone who was ‘born in L.A.’ (actually Lakewood, but an L.A. suburb so ‘born in L.A.’ is close enough) and grew up in a Navy family in San Diego before moving to the desert of northern L.A. County, the only pronunciation I’ve ever heard was ‘why-NEE-mee’.
As to the OP, I no longer live in L.A. so it doesn’t really matter to me. But a new nation made of California, Oregon and Washington would be interesting.
Here’s a crazy man’s plan on what the Democrat’s should do with unified control: Why Democrats should rig the Senate and pack the Supreme Court.
And as for ‘not happening’: given control of Congress - my reading of the Constitution is that if CA wants to split, it just takes Congressional approval (not subject to the veto or the courts - Article IV, section 3:
In the 2012 presidential election:
Orange County: Romney took it 52% to 46% over Obama
Santa Barbara County: Obama took it 58% to 40% over Romney
CA as a whole: Obama took it 60% to 37% over Romney
Santa Barbara County looks pretty average for CA, even if it’s not SF or LA:
SF County: Obama took it 84% to 13% over Romney
LA County: Obama took it 70% to 28% over Romney
Not using 2016 since who the hell knows what kind of an election that was!
And that’s SB County which includes Santa Maria and Santa Ynez which, as mentioned earlier, skew fairly conservative. The actual city of SB is much more liberal.
The very fact that people are discussing this really makes me weep for humanity. The same jackholes who ran Brexit are now leaving their slimetrails all over California trying to push this. Not to sound too paranoid, but breaking up California is part of the Russian project strategy to destabilize the west. They may not be funding or directly pushing this, but they sure are interested in the outcome.
Here’s the thing: If we were starting the country over right now, we probably would have different state lines, and CA would probably be split up into 2 or more states. But we’re not starting things over, and it ain’t gonna happen. I would not compare this to Brexit. CA seceding from the country is comparable to Brexit, in a sense, but it’s actually much, much worse. Splitting the state up? It does make sense, but not politically viable.
It’s a running joke. It’s never had anything resembling majority support in the modern era. Basically, it’s a talking point for a bunch of survivalists living in the northern counties. No one else takes it very seriously.
Yeah, and Hillary winning was a sure thing. 
They couldn’t get 800K signatures last time. There are nearly 40 million residents, of which over 18M are registered voters. I wouldn’t lose sleep over it; not even Hillary could screw this one up.
Exactly. They don’t want to be part of thum thar librulz.
They want to run things themselves without understanding that splitting off means they will be a tax sink and the other liberal and coastal counties that currently finance them won’t any more.
There is a State of Jefferson flag on a house two blocks from me. In Sacramento County. I don’t understand if they want to secede from Sacramento County, or what.
They make nice wine.
I like that the flag of Jefferson uses the symbology of Adenoid Hinckel. I wonder how the state’s namesake would feel about that.