California county votes to study secession from state

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.

Still, it’s significant that the vote came from a racially and ethnically diverse county that is politically mixed, as well as the fifth-most populous in the state and the largest in the nation by area. San Bernardino’s 20,000 square miles is comprised of more land than nine states.

The votes speaks to the alienation that some voters feel from a statehouse long dominated by Democrats who have made little progress on the growing homeless crisis, soaring housing costs and rising crime rates while residents pay among the highest taxes in the country.

There is “a lot of frustration overall” with state government and how public dollars are spent — with far too little coming to the county, said Curt Hagman, chairman of the Board of Supervisors that placed the proposal on the ballot. The county will look at whether billions of dollars in state and federal funds was fairly shared with local governments in the Inland Empire.

From record inflation to friction over long-running state pandemic policies, “it’s been a rough few years” for residents, Hagman said.

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.” In San Bernardino County, Democratic voters now outnumber Republicans by 12 points. Still, in November Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom lost in the county by 5 points. He easily defeated a recall last year driven by opposition to pandemic health orders that shuttered schools and businesses.

Democrats dominate the California Legislature and congressional delegation, and the state is known as an incubator of liberal policy on climate, health care, labor issues and immigration, and the vote could be seen as partly a reaction to the state’s priorities. Once solidly Republican terrain, with recent population growth San Bernardino County has become more diverse and Democratic, similar to changes in neighboring San Diego and Orange counties.



American flags adorn a fence of a home in Chino, Calif., Thursday, Dec. 8, 2022. Voters in one of Southern California's largest counties have delivered a pointed if largely symbolic message about frustration in the nation's most populous state: Officials will soon begin studying whether to break free from California and form a new state. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)