“We’ve got more bounce in California”, says the lyrics of a Soul Kid #1 song and also more problems too.

There was a low power effort in 2017 for California to secede from the rest of the rest of the United States titled, “Calexit”. It did not get very far, only producing many petitions and funny jokes but it did illuminate some advantages that California would have by themselves. Some Californians lamented that they would be better off on their own.

“We’ll just take our avocados and legal weed and go,” @LeasLame said on Twitter.

Where “Calexit” was about separating California, a state that went mostly blue for Hilary Clinton and were agitated that that she did not win the election, from the rest of the U.S., this new campaign is about dividing the state into two based on dramatically different political views: Democratic and Conservative.

A bid for statehood was submitted in early January. It’s credo is, “A more perfect union”. This new state would be called, “New California” and the other portion, “Old California”. “New California”, would have an estimated 25-27 seats in the US House of Representatives,” and would become, “the sixth largest State behind New York (bigger than Illinois and Penn)” according to: https://newcaliforniastate.com/

This is branched off of an old idea called the, “Jefferson 51st state” where people who were fed up with being in California and Oregon would form to make a new state.

“What is the disagreement about,” you might be wondering. And of course, it is political. Some of their qualms include illegal immigration as well as infrastructure woes.  Many right-wingers disagree with the generally liberal leaning political views that go along with living in the vicinity of the Bay Area and various subsections of California, and the growing opposition, enough to want to throw in their petition to become the 51st state of America.

How this this benefit them? The map that they drew out does contain a large amount of land which is mostly rural, and will give them the house seats, and the swinging power that they are no doubt going after.

Although California certainly does have the audience for it, the campaign does not seem to be gaining much traction. Of course, there is the fact that many people in the cities that they are proposing would not want to even be part of the campaign. San Diego, for example, which they claim in their territory map does house a lot of Liberal voters, as I am sure many of the other cities they picked do.

There is another option though, for these people: they are welcome to leave.

California has the sixth largest economy in the world and with that comes infrastructure, income disparity, welfare and poverty-based problems. Putting a flag on a new territory will not ease said problems. What I see here is a smaller scale of larger government issues. One can always try to come up with new ways to solve old problems, such as giving more money to non-profit organizations, to alleviate the pressures of city living, and help get the junkies get off the San Francisco streets, and off of businesses’ doorsteps, but they’re trying to tackle a problem that is happening nationwide.

Another solution, is to soldier up. If you think that creating a new state so you can have more representation is the solution, it is not. If your ideas are solid and  your solutions are productive, instead vie for attention in traditional Californian legislature.  If your representation is not strong, and your fan base prefers the passive act of playing telephone with conspiracy theories instead of acting,  perhaps it is time to yield and try to fix  the state that you live in instead of abandoning it.