New California: breakaway state declares independence from California

A secessionist movement in California has announced plans for a ‘CalExit’ which would split the state in two.

New California officially declared its independence at a press conference in Marysville on Monday.

“It’s been ungovernable for a long time,” one of the movement’s “founding fathers”, Robert Paul Preston, told CBS Sacramento. “High taxes, education, you name it.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

On its website, the secessionist movement claims that California is currently ruled by “a tyrannical form of government” and promises that New California “will restore liberty and rights”.

Under their plan, most of the existing state would be carved away to form New California, leaving “old California” only a narrow strip of coast running between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

California’s politics have long been marked by tensions between the conservative-leaning rural counties and the overwhelmingly liberal urban coast.

Despite a comfortable Republican majority in most of California’s northern, central and eastern counties, the left-leaning cities along the densely populated coast have kept California a cast-iron blue state since 1992.

However, the group is not planning to march into Sacramento and overthrow the California legislature.

New California's plan for statehood is modelled after that of West Virginia, which peacefully seceded from Virginia during the US Civil War due to state divisions on the issue of slavery.

The New California movement claims to have sub-committees in 21 of the state’s 58 counties, and estimate that it will take “10 to 18 months” before they are ready to approach the California state legislature to request a formal separation, CBS reports.

"The effort remains, to be clear, a long shot," adds USA Today.