I assume you’re whoosing. The majority of people in L.A. love San Francisco. San Franciscans, however, mostly can’t stand L.A., especially those who have never been there.
Sacramento, on the other hand, doesn’t mean much to Angelenos other than a place where government things happen. Not being in politics, I can’t think of any reason to go there, other than passing from S.F. to Lake Tahoe.
As a place to visit. I’m willing to bet less than 5% would ever want to live there, and 90% of those would be Bayers who had to move south because of their jobs.
But you’re right about LA not hating SF. Why waste good hate on something so…insignificant? 
Actually, Springfield is closer to Chicago (175 miles) than it is to Cairo (the southern end of the state) (193 miles). :dubious:
But, with the exception of recently made capitals in places like Australia, or Canada, or, artificially, Brazil, the vast majority of countries have their seat of government in their most important city (which is often the largest one as well). This is because they were located there as the result of the fortunes of history. Thus, while West Germany artificially placed a capital at Bonn, the capital of Germany was, and is again Berlin. Russia, Moscow; England (and indeed the United Kingdom now), London; Argentina, Buenos Aires; Iraq, Baghdad (even though the country is relatively new, the importance of the city over time as a capital was honored); Greece, Athens; etc.
This explains the pattern in most of the states of the United States. Of the original colonies, the pattern is fairly evenly split between states where the capitol is located in the primary city (Massachussetts, Rhode Island, Virginia, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Georgia, off the top of my head) and those where it is located somewhere else (New York, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania (though note that they used to have it in Philly, and moved it later), Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina). But as the states began to be created with artificial boundaries derived much later than the British colonization, the tendency overwhelmingly becomes one of locating the seat of government in a preferably centralized town or city, even if it isn’t the largest in the state. Thus, places like Columbus (and before that Zanesville, etc.), Ohio; Lansing, Michigan; Springfield, Illinois; Columbia, Missouri; Denver, Colorado; etc. There are exceptions, and they can be quite notable. Lincoln, Nebraska, for example, is 400 miles away from Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, putting it almost as far away as San Diego is from Sacramento! Imagine if you are a citizen of that city, and need to be in the state’s capital? I would imagine you would wonder why the heck someone didn’t choose Broken Bow. 
Obviously, there is not one all-encompassing answer as to why state capitals don’t equate to the primary/largest city in a state (the reason for Sacramento is much the same as for Carson City, but not for Olympia, Washington). But, in general, the main reasons tend to be centrality of location, or desire to avoid having the seat of government in an already large city.
A number of people have mentioned rural vs Urban conflict and I think that is the root of it. When I was at the University of the Illinois in Urbana, the running joke was that when the state was set up, there were three spoils: the state capital, the state prison, and the state university to be divided among Springfield, Kankakee, and Urbana. Urbana lost.
Not really. Los Angeles was a backwater for decades after Sacramento became state capital.
Sacramento became capital for two reasons. First, it made a better offer, in terms of space and facilities, than the other candidates did. Secondly, its’ location was fairly convenient for the era, as it was closer to the populations in the northern part of the state (which at that time were very important- the main reason Northern California has so many counties, in fact) than the other, coastal candidates.
Please.
The other end of the state is Cairo, a good 250 miles further south.
Tallahassee, Florida was chosen because it is roughly midway between Jacksonville and Pensacola, the two largest cities in the state at the time.
(bolding mine)
[singing]One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just isn’t the same.[/singing]
Okay, I’ll buy the ‘central location’ argument, but I’m still unsure about the second idea. Why shouldn’t the seat of government be in an already large city? Is it really because of the rural v. urban political pressures suggested upthread?
You haven’t made a case why you think it should be in existing city. That is the puzzling part. I am not sure why you are so tied to the idea that an already prominent city should become the capital just because it is already thriving. The reverse is much more true.
The basic case is simple:
Most states already had one than one city striving for additional prominence
There can only be one capital city
The capital is going to induce substantial economic development wherever it is.
Why not create a thriving new center of economic and political development just by declaring a more neutral and less thriving place the new capital? It will grow just due to the fact that the government moves there and now there is additional thriving city in the state. No one whether urban or rural is unduly offended because the capital has been moved to a more neutral location.
A combination of rural vs. urban and the need for a central location. Albany, NY was mentioned, but the main reason it’s the capital is that the city promised to build a capitol building. NYC was unacceptable to most of upstate, but the actual choice of capital boiled down to who made the best offer.
I wasn’t aware there was a debate here.
Because that’s what a capital city has been throughout history. See DSYoungEsq’s post above. Very few nations have had their seat of government in a city that wasn’t the most important or most populous.
Like New York, for example? Or Pennsylvania? Or California? Which state are you thinking of that had one outstandingly prominent city, but still had other serious contenders for the capital?
Now this is an interesting, possibly valid argument: they used the government to “seed” a new city, thus creating economic growth within the state. I’ve not heard this idea before. Is it true?
When the U.S. acquired Florida, the largest cities were Pensacola and St. Augustine, which served as capitals in alternation. Tallahassee, centrally located in the populated northern tier of the territory (the peninsula south of St. Augustine was sparsely inhabited), was a compromise location.
If a new capital were chosen today, and if central location still mattered (electronic communication reduces its importance, of course), and if a major city were desired, the most obvious choice would be either Tampa or Orlando. Naturally, I’d plump for Tampa. 
(C’mon, give us something, you guys have Disney!)
You’re being mislead by subsequent history.
In the 1790 census, Concord was the fourth largest city in New Hampshire, behind Dover and Rochester and less than half as big as Portsmouth.
Atlanta doesn’t enter the census until 1850. By far the leading city of the revolutionary days was Savannah.
New Haven was far larger and more important in every way than Hartford through the end of the 19th century.
Richmond was the largest city in Virginia, true, but not overwhelmingly so. It had 3761 people in 1790. Alexandria had 2748, Norfolk 2959, Petersburg 2828.
Capital cities grew disproportionately in many cases because they were capital cities. You’re getting cause and effect reversed.
Springfield isn’t at the other end of the state. It’s in the middle of the state. I’m from the other end of the state (Du Quoin, near Carbondale and, well, Kentucky).
Helena is another example of a not-very-important city being capital simply because it’s centrally-located. Remember that in the 19th Century, travel was slow and expensive and the people who decided these things wanted the pain to be shared equally.
And additionally consider third causes - Atlanta, for example, used to be called Terminus because of the railroads.
No cite, but I read once that in 1865 there was a bill proposed in Congress to move the national capital to St. Louis, MO. That would be a good choice, if central location matters – St. Louis is not only pretty near the population center of the U.S. (now), it is culturally neither Northern nor Southern, Eastern nor Western, and it’s (more or less) on the confluence of two major waterways – the Mississippi and the Missouri. (See this thread.)
As I understand it, President Mirabeau B Lamar established Austin as the capitol more or less just to annoy the tribes along the frontier.
More seriously, we in the big cities tend to forget that California is still major Ag. It is fairly appropriate, seems to me, that the capitol is in the biggest ag city we have - as it was when it was first established as the capitol - and for that, established at a time when LA was still one small pueblo.
Once California’s capital (with an a, not an o as the other word refers to a building) was established in Sacramento, the state legislature realized that they finally had a good city to work out of. The first three state capitals (San Jose, Vallejo, and Benicia) were not good places to do business.
San Jose was too wild at the time and Vallejo and Benicia were prone to flooding.
Sacramento was eventually a terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad and that didn’t hurt. Los Angeles didn’t have a population boom until the 1880s when a rail line and a fare war drove the population down south.
I wish the capitol would move elsewhere, even to a Sac suburb. It takes up valuable downtown property that can be used to insert some life into this city. It is a gorgeous building with beautiful well-maintained grounds, but I’d love to see it elsewhere.
The state capitol of California was all over the place:
California State Capitol History
guizot
Word. Doesn’t mean much here either.