So long, California: Major county votes to study secession

One of California’s largest counties will consider whether to secede and establish a new state, a largely symbolic move driven by economic stress and frustration with state government

The November elections saw Californians continue to embrace progressive leadership, but voters in one of the state’s most populous counties are so frustrated with this political direction that they voted to consider seceding and forming their own state.

An advisory ballot proposal approved in San Bernardino County — home to 2.2 million people — directs local officials to study the possibility of secession. The razor-thin margin of victory is the latest sign of political unrest and economic distress in California.

This attempt to create a new state — which would be the first since Hawaii in 1959 — is a longshot proposition for the county just east of Los Angeles that has suffered from sharp increases in cost of living. It would hinge on approval by the California Legislature and Congress, both of which are highly unlikely.

Still, it’s significant that the vote came from a racially and ethnically diverse county that is politically mixed, as well as the fifth-most populous in the state and the largest in the nation by area. San Bernardino’s 20,000 square miles (51,800 square kilometers) is comprised of more land than nine states.

The votes speaks to the alienation that some voters feel from a statehouse long dominated by Democrats who have made little progress on the growing homeless crisis, soaring housing costs and rising crime rates while residents pay among the highest taxes in the country.

There is "a lot of frustration overall” with state government and how public dollars are spent — with far too little coming to the county, said Curt Hagman, chairman of the Board of Supervisors that placed the proposal on the ballot. The county will look at whether billions of dollars in state and federal funds was fairly shared with local governments in the Inland Empire.

From record inflation to friction over long-running state pandemic policies, “it’s been a rough few years” for residents, Hagman said.

Kristin Washington, chair of the San Bernardino County Democratic Party, dismissed the measure as a political maneuver to turn out conservative voters, rather than a barometer of public sentiment.

“Putting it on a ballot was a waste of time for the voters,” she said. “The option of actually seceding from the state is not even something that is realistic because of all the steps that actually go into it.” In San Bernardino County, Democratic voters now outnumber Republicans by 12 points. Still, in November Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom lost in the county by 5 points. He easily defeated a recall last year driven by opposition to pandemic health orders that shuttered schools and businesses. California was among the first states to close schools and turn to online learning, and also among the last for students to return to in-person teaching.

Democrats dominate the California Legislature and congressional delegation, and the state is known as an incubator of liberal policy on climate, health care, labor issues and immigration, and the vote could be seen as partly a reaction to the state’s priorities. Once solidly Republican terrain, with recent population growth San Bernardino County has become more diverse and Democratic, similar to changes in neighboring San Diego and Orange counties.

Throughout its 172-year history, California has weathered more than 220 failed attempts to dismantle the state into as many as six smaller states, according to the California State Library. Earlier breakaway efforts sought to carve out a new “State of Jefferson” from nearly two dozen Northern California counties, though they were largely rural, conservative-leaning and sparsely populated.

Competition between mining and agricultural interests, as well as opposition to taxation, have driven some of these secession efforts. There have been proposals to divide the sprawling state into north and south sections, as well as splitting in lengthwise to create separate coastal and inland regions.

“Everybody outside this county thinks we are the wild, wild West,” Mayor Paul Leon said, who backed the measure. Despite the county's size, he said it "gets a pittance” when it comes to state and federal aid for roads, courthouses and transit.

The city of San Bernardino, population about 220,000, anchors the third largest metropolitan area in the state, behind L.A. and San Francisco. Beyond the urban centers, its communities range from placid suburbs crisscrossed by freeways, mountain towns framed by towering pines and isolated desert havens like hippie Joshua Tree. Inflation and economic stress are challenging many communities. Before the pandemic, the county's unemployment rate was already 9.5% in 2019, with 12.2% of households living below the poverty line.

“I tend to be very skeptical of these secession maneuvers,” said William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

“The state’s problems are not likely to be addressed by the jurisdictional chopping block,” Deverell said in an email. He's wary of the “hubris” of: “If only this part of the state could go its own way, as we aren’t the root of the problem.”

Since the proposal passed, the county's next step is to form a committee — likely comprised of public and private sector members — that will conduct an analysis of funding that will compare San Bernardino to other counties.

Many Inland Empire communities are struggling financially even though California's economy — by itself — may soon become the fourth largest economy in the world, up from fifth. The state announced last month it had recovered all of the 2.7 million jobs it lost at the start of the pandemic. However, there are projections for a $25 billion budget deficit next year and signs of an unsteady economy, as even the historically powerful tech industry has seen layoffs.

From 2018 to 2021, 352 companies moved their headquarters from California to other states from California, according to a Hoover Institution study. After decades of growth, the state population of 39 million has been shrinking, partly because residents are leaving for states that offer affordable housing and lower taxes.

Because of decreased population, the state is even losing a congressional seat in 2023, dropping from 53 to 52.

Housing prices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other metropolitan hubs frequently top $1 million and are sharply increasing. Billions of dollars in spending statewide has made no visible difference in the homeless crisis in many cities. This has all fueled a reckoning with the direction of the state, which has long been mythologized as a land of opportunity.

“A lot of Californians are unhappy in many ways,” said Claremont McKenna College political scientist Jack Pitney, citing record gas prices, the rising cost of living, and real estate prices that make home ownership unattainable for many working-class families.

“The vote on secession was like smashing the china. It’s a way of getting attention but in the end it doesn’t accomplish much,” Pitney said.

Even Hagman said he doesn’t want to see his home state broken apart, though he sees approval of the measure as an important statement on frustration with Sacramento.

“I want to remain part of California right now,” he said. “I’m proud to be a Californian.”