December 16, 2022 10:55 AM UTC

State of Berdoo? Even More Secession Crackpottery

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• by: Colorado Pols

Almost ten years ago, a small number of rural Colorado counties led by conservative stronghold Weld County tried and mostly failed to pass ballot measures that would have, in theory, kicked off a process to secede from the state government in Denver. Since that time, secessionists in Oregon have enjoyed somewhat greater success, with a number of counties in the relatively unpopulated eastern half of the state having voted over the past few years to join “Greater Idaho,” while secessionists in Colorado shrank their aspirations to Weld County unilaterally seceding to join the state of Wyoming.

It’s unlikely to the point of absurdity that these movements will actually succeed in their goal of reshaping any state’s boundaries, requiring the consent of all the state legislatures involved as well as Congress. And despite Weld County secessionista Barb Kirkmeyer’s insistence on the campaign trail this year that the 2013 secession campaign made ruling Democrats in Denver “take rural Colorado more seriously,” we not aware of any tangible way in which that is, you know, true.

But they were the butt of an awful lot of jokes.

As AP reports via ABC News, the latest secession movement to spring up is in southern California, where the nation’s largest county by geographic area–remember, we’re talking dirt not people–voted by a thin margin last month to secede from the state government in Sacramento:

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.

San Bernardino County covers some 20,000 square miles of mostly desert in inland SoCal, and for a variety of reasons has not historically enjoyed the same degree of economic prosperity as the rest of the southern California region with persistently high unemployment and crime rates. If the county were to secede successfully, it would immediately boost economic statistics for the rest of California. It’s a situation not too dissimilar from what would have awaited Barb Kirkmeyer and “North Colorado” had their secession movement somehow succeeded–the hard realization that hinterlands and urban areas need each other in order to survive.

But for the purposes of this discussion none of that matters, because secession is so unlikely a remedy for any problem that it’s a distraction from real solutions. It’s not that there aren’t legitimate grievances about fair distribution of revenue in a state as diverse as California. The point is that unserious remedies like secession don’t help anybody, and it’s why the people who propose them rightly find themselves discredited. Or at least they should.

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.”

After this latest crackpot movement has run its course and goes nowhere, San Bernardino County will be right back where it started, with the same problems it will need help from outside its impoverished borders to solve. No one in Sacramento is impressed, even if they pay momentary lip service otherwise. The best San Bernardino can hope is that like majority Democrats in Denver, Democrats in Sacramento won’t hold it against them.