The founders of New California took an early step toward statehood on Monday with the reading of their own Declaration of Independence from California, a state they describe as "ungovernable."
Their solution: Take over most of current-day California - including many rural counties - and leave the coastal urban areas to themselves.
"The current state of California has become governed by a tyranny," the group, led in part by vice chairman Robert Paul Preston, declared in a document published online.
The split would look something like this, per the group:
"After years of over taxation, regulation, and mono-party politics the State of California and many of it’s 58 Counties have become ungovernable," the group said in a statement, citing a "decline in essential basic services" including education, law enforcement, infrastructure and health care.
The group, organised with a council of county representatives and various committees, hopes to model their split after the state of West Virginia. That's according to CBS, whose Sacramento affiliate filmed the reading in a sparsely crowded conference room.
Claiming the authority of Article 4, Section 3 of the United States Constitution, the aspiring 51st state plans to convince California's legislature to split the state before submitting the resolution to Congress.
The effort remains, to be clear, a long shot.
A California venture capitalist named Tim Draper sought in 2014 to split the Golden State into six parts, including the "State of Silicon Valley." It failed to make the ballot.
New California's work with regular California's state legislature won't likely start in earnest until later this year or early next year, organizers told CBS.
“We have to demonstrate that we can govern ourselves before we are allowed to govern,” Tom Reed, a founder, told the network.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel