Will Golden State split for greener pastures?
Californians ponder creating their own country, writes Terry McConnell.
A lot of Californians are mad as hell. Some even say they’re not going to take it anymore.
“It” is the result November’s presidential election. What these Californians are doing is organizing a secessionist movement — as in, taking California out of the United States.
Their movement is called #Calexit, as in #Brexit. Their inspiration is the growing gulf that separates them — politically, culturally, demographically — from the rest of the Union. Hillary Clinton outpolled Donald Trump by a two-to-one margin here. “Without California, Trump would have won the popular vote,” tweeted conservative pundit and Trump critic David Frum.
The Golden State has a population of 39 million people, more than any other state in the Union, and more people than in all of Canada. Metro Los Angeles alone is home to close to 19 million, a total greater than in Ontario and Alberta combined.
As Frum points out, those are numbers that come with economic clout, and therein lies the rub for many Californians. The U.S. without California, he writes, would be world’s second-ranked technology power instead of the first. California boasts the world’s sixth-largest economy, greater than France, Italy, South Korea and India. It’s also a global technological giant, home to the Silicon Valley and companies like Google, Apple, Cisco, Intel, Oracle and SpaceX.
California is also culturally distinct from much of the rest of the U.S. It’s synonymous with liberal causes, from environmental protection to gun control to health care, and that has other Americans judging Californians, and not in a flattering way. It’s a reality not lost on Marcus Ruiz Evans, one of the movers and shakers behind #Calexit. “California,” he admitted to the Washington Post, “(is) seen as weird.”
If California is weird, then that weirdness extends to politics beyond the presidential variety. The Senate election in the state last November was contested by two Democrats, each of whom defeated all comers — Democratic and Republican alike — in the primaries. Gov. Jerry Brown has vowed to ensure Californians have health insurance coverage, offered through the staterun health exchange called Covered California, even if the Trump Republicans repeal Obamacare.
But where the state most hears a different drummer is on the issue of immigration. Californians are decidedly in favour of it, and it’s easy to see why. California has the largest immigrant population in the Union, approximately 10 million in total, a quarter of those undocumented. If you’re not an immigrant in California, you know one. Or two. Or more.
In response to President Trump’s ambitions to engage in large-scale deportation of illegal immigrants, the state legislature is considering a bill that would declare the entire state a “sanctuary” for illegal immigrants. Lawmakers have even hired former Obama attorney general Eric Holder to battle the Trump administration on the issue.
That step earned the enmity of the new president. “Trump claims California is ‘out of control,’” writes columnist George Skelton in the Los Angeles Times, though the irony of that statement is undoubtedly lost on the president.
Trump has threatened to cut off federal funds to California. “We’ll defund,” Trump told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. “We give tremendous amounts of money to California.”
The problem for Californians is that, like residents of Canada’s “have” provinces, they contribute more money to the federal treasury than what comes back. There has been much grousing about the Trump administration ever since the threats were levelled, fertile ground for the #Calexit movement. The secessionists even have the support of two Silicon Valley billionaires, Peter Thiel and Shervin Pishevar. Companies like Google have expressed concern about their ability in an anti-immigrant climate to recruit foreigners for jobs that not enough Americans are qualified to fill.
In January, the group “Yes California” was given permission to circulate a petition with the intention of putting the sovereignty question on the 2018 ballot. If the petition is successful — close to 600,000 signatures are required for that to happen — a special vote to decide the state’s future would follow in 2019. The secessionists have 180 days to compile the necessary signatures. Evans says they have recruited 7,000 volunteers to get the names.
The #Calexit movement does have its skeptics (“Canadians know you don’t escape the shadow of your giant neighbor (sic) by drawing a border,” wrote Prof. Timothy William Waters in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece.) Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said he believes secession is a bad idea.
Still, such opinions are far from universal. According to a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll taken in California, onethird of respondents support the state’s “peaceful withdrawal from the union.”
As one tweeter wrote: “We’ll just take our avocados and legal weed and go.”
Without California, Trump would have won the popular vote.