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Tim Draper Gives Details on Initiative to Split California into Six States
- jliptzin 13y agoSplit into 6 parts? Why not start with 2 and see where you get?
- protomyth 13y agoStarting with 3 would be a lot more interesting. Los Angeles metropolitan area (Southland), San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area, and then the rest.
- TrainedMonkey 13y agoI really doubt GOP will just lie down and let five more extremely democratic states happen.
- dragonwriter 13y agoI haven't done a detailed analysis of the political impacts, but just looking at the map and having some knowledge of the political geography of the State, it looks like it would probably be a win for Republicans in the Senate and Presidential elections -- going from one solid Blue state to a either a 3/3 or 2/4 split of Blue and Red states; the Blue regions of California are largely concentrated in "Silicon Valley" and "West California".
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoNot sure about that. Breaking it down, I think that all six areas would go Democrat - the Republican bastions of San Diego, Inland Empire, Central Valley, and Greater SLO are all jerrymandered into the larger Democratic areas of LA, Sacramento, and Santa Barabara. Silicon Valley: Strong Democrat West California (Santa Barabara, right?): Medium/Light Dem Jefferson (Humbolt?): Strong Dem South California: Strong Dem Central California: Medium Dem (because of Sacto) North California: Solid Dem (?)
- buckbova 13y ago> South California="Strong Democrat" This is not true. Orange County and San Diego County can go Republican and drag LA County with it. > North California: Solid Dem (?) There are plenty of libertarians here as well. > West California (Santa Barabara, right?): Medium/Light Dem They call this "Central Coast". It's moderate.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> > South California="Strong Democrat" > This is not true. Orange County and San Diego County can go Republican and drag LA County with it. Well, except for LA being in West California. Which makes "South California = Strong Democrat" even less true.
- ojbyrne 13y agoIf you look at the more detailed map (in a pdf on this article): http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/19/tim-draper-six-californias-secede-silicon-valley-ballot-initiative/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/19/tim-draper-six-californias-... you can see that is not the case. LA is included in West California separate from SD/Orange County/etc. South California would be Republican. Sacramento is included in North California, not Central California. Central California would be Republican. At the very least, 2 of the 6 would be Republican leaning.
- dubfan 13y ago> Jefferson (Humbolt?): Strong Dem Humboldt may be strongly Democratic but the rest of the proposed state of Jefferson is quite conservative. The proposed "state of Jefferson" has actually been around for quite a while and includes some conservative areas of southern Oregon as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_%28Pacific_state%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_%28Pacific_state%29
- dragonwriter 13y agoThe State of Jefferson in the Draper proposal only includes parts of California, despite its naming inspiration.
- protomyth 13y agoTechnically, going from the voting records, the split could result in some deeply red states. Cut SF and LA and their blue surroundings into states and their are a lot of traditionally red counties left. Some county splits would result in an even greater political split. [edit] the map given in the proposal is not really that good based on voting / land use - industry. California is more vertical than horizontal and coastal / interior divides.
- 001sky 13y agoThis would be "dark pattern" approach to load the Senate. Yeah it would be great for the squaky wheel, but at the federal level CA needs no more resources.
- thuuuomas 13y agoAnyone want to explain the significance of their chosen boundaries to a non-Californian?
- pedalpete 13y agoMy best guess as a non-Californian. Top Blue - I believe this is a mountainous region, not much industry. Purple - Massive forest area (on the coast at least), also small population and not much industry Yellow - North Bay, San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Sacramento. Lots of industry, technology and money. Large population as a whole spread out fairly evenly across the region, so lots of medium sized towns and small cities (S.F, Oakland, San Jose, Palo Alto, etc.etc.). Industry includes the big names you know, Google, Facebook, Apple, as well as large research facilities (I believe NASA has a large centre there). Lots of Universities as well. Red - Some farm-land, mountainous further inland. I believe cattle, cheese, and some fruit orchards. Green - Great farmland. Grapes and wine region, orchards, lots of cattle land. Moderate populations, towns like San Luis Obispo (great part of California if you haven't visited). Orange - Massive populations of Los Angeles also medium sized cities of San Diego, Palm Springs/Desert. Massive industry throughout the area serving the population and the industries of Los Angeles. LA is a massive manufacturing hub (clothing, automobiles, the list goes on and on). Massive sea port at Long Beach (there may be others too).
- Railroadcar9 13y agonorth of sac is not blue at all
- dmckeon 13y agoFor the political side, here is a per-county view: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/in-california-growing-diversity-first-made-its-mark/?_r=0 http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/in-calif... On the practical side, a division into 6 parts avoids the usual North/South argument, or the less frequent North/Central/South version, and could be walked back to a 5, 4, or 3-way split. That said, I recall a survey not long after Prop 13 that had Californians liking a 2-way split, as long as the part that each respondent lived in 'got' Disneyland, and the other part got Sacramento. This proposal seems about as likely to happen as that one.
- adamnemecek 13y agoIncomplete list of things that most certainly won't happen: this.
- jyzzmoe 13y agoThis will amount to exactly nothing.
- Railroadcar9 13y agono this is about over regulation massive corruption and complete lack of any in sac or southern to address the real issues facing the people here, its about lack of representation and those who wish to free themselves from the out of control government, liberals = ignore corruption because they worship the institutions of government . The Jefferson State lives here. http://youtu.be/MMnRZXz51WE http://youtu.be/MMnRZXz51WE
- gametheoretic 13y ago"Blank is about blank" statements have no real meaning; you'll rarely find them in use outside politics, where they enjoy extreme popularity due to the difficulty of their conversational negation.
- martinjones 13y agoThis is just an attempt to get attention. States can't just decide to split themselves into multiple states, it requires federal legislation. The only state that can split itself up is Texas, which was part of the agreement to bring the Republic of Texas into the union. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_divisionism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_divisionism
- chimeracoder 13y agoNate Silver did an interesting analysis of this ability back in 2009 (before joining the New York Times): http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/04/messing-with-texas.html http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/04/messing-with-texas.ht... Puerto Rico already voted in favor of becoming a state in 2012. The only thing stopping it from happening now is a simple majority vote of Congress[0]. Personally, I think giving Puerto Rico, a territory that already must obey federal laws, the ability to vote on said federal laws is a much higher priority than splitting up the states that we already have. ...which is to say, of course, that I imagine that none of these will happen anytime soon. [0] As best as I could tell, the threshold for statehood really is this low.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> This is just an attempt to get attention. States can't just decide to split themselves into multiple states, it requires federal legislation. It requires both State action and federal legislation. But the State action is clearly a required step. > The only state that can split itself up is Texas, which was part of the agreement to bring the Republic of Texas into the union. As your own link notes, that agreement specifically cited that it could only be done subject to the requirements of the Constitution, which would seem to mean that Texas can do it exactly as much as any other state can -- that is, with action of the State legislature and the federal Congress.
- jasonwocky 13y ago> The only state that can split itself up is Texas As your link indicates, a more accurate telling is "The only state that some proponents argue can split itself up is Texas".
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- vonskippy 13y agoGuess he can't let Bezos and his dorky drones get all the media attention.
- Railroadcar9 13y agorubbish it is possible but require a simple majority vote in both the state legislators and congress
- goggles99 13y ago>federal authorities will have to buy more chairs for the Senate floor Oh the irony of this statement...
- codex 13y ago“The status quo is just not going to work,” said draper. “The existing breadth of industry and various interests in California is untenable.” Are there specific examples of problems that splitting CA would fix? It seems that a split would make many of these new states more extreme than the average of old CA, but perhaps that is a good thing.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> “The status quo is just not going to work,” said draper. “The existing breadth of industry and various interests in California is untenable.” If true, that makes the proposed state of North California a problem, since, while much smaller, it includes much of the breadth of industry and interests of the whole existing State -- the whole Urban-suburban-rural spread, the whole coastal-interior spread, etc. I don't agree with his assessment of the problem, but if I pretend for a moment that I did, I can't see how his proposal solves it.
- 001sky 13y agoAnd by "breadth of industry" he means 'Hollywood' vs 'Silicon Valley'. Everything else is just a bunch of plebian service and food industries. The military industrial base is also not a single-geographic location, but instead rather spread out and wide ranging.
- prostoalex 13y agoGovernment spending across California could be prioritized differently. Central California farm communities would get more money diverted to waterways and agricultural projects. Northern Californians could finally get the school and public transportation spending up to the level that they're craving for. Southern California would probably build more highways and give more incentives to tourism and entertainment industries. Status quo is nobody being quite happy with the status quo because those jerks from <insert region where you don't live> lobbied enough for <some cause you don't care much about>.
- wwweston 13y ago
- jrochkind1 13y ago> He expects the citizens to crowdsource many of the ideas around water rights… Does that even mean something?
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoI've thought for years, California needs to be two states, split at Monterey (everybody would want to keep Monterey so split it). The politics of Southern California (ok LA) is completely different from regular California, especially regarding water rights.
- memracom 13y agoThose are the Ecotopia borders I believe. It would not be a bad idea to hand over an area east of Sacramento to be joined with Nevada. As far as naming goes, Silicon Valley sucks. Silicon Valley is too small to be a viable state economically. A state needs some diversity in it. A coastal chunk from Monterrey Bay north up to and including Napa would be more realistic but that is not Silicon Valley.
- jmspring 13y agoI'm curious how much agriculture propped up the California economy during the last few tech busts. As a California native, the divisions are naive bordering on idiotic. A state of Silicon Valley that were to have a tech downturn would have serious problems with a lack of diversity in industry. But, hey, Tim Draper has way more money than I do and California has a history of letting those with lots of money float silly ideas.
- mblakele 13y agoAgriculture in California is relatively unimportant, according to 2008 BEA statistics cited at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gross_Domestic_Product_of_California_2008_%28millions_of_current_dollars%29.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gross_Domestic_Product_of_... - just 2% of California's notional GDP. I think I have read 4% from another source, but either way it is marginal. I tend to think that the comments on electoral statistics have this right. It is an attempt to tilt the Senate and Electoral College.
- gte910h 13y agoIt may be economically not significant, but its a huge pile of food. I live on the east coast, and much of my food is still from California farms.
- cphoover 13y agoThere is a reason Washington, D.C. Does not have voting rights or substantive representation in congress and that is that republicans don't want to give more votes to democrats. Republicans would never let something like this happen
- stevewillows 13y agoAny chance us Cascadians can get a piece?