RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. (AP) — 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.
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
Rain clouds hover over Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., Wednesday, Dec. 7, 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.
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 (51,800 square kilometers) is composed 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.
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
Curt Hagman, chairman of San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, stands for a photo outside his office in Chino Hills, Calif., Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2022.
From record inflation to friction over the state’s long-running COVID-19 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. California was among the first states to close schools and turn to online learning, and also among the last for students to return to in-person teaching.
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
Campaign sigs supporting former President Donald Trump hang on the gate of a home in San Bernardino, Calif., Thursday, Dec. 8, 2022.
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, much like San Diego and Orange counties.
Throughout its 172-year history, California has weathered more than 220 failed attempts to dismantle the state into as many as six smaller states, according to the California State Library. Earlier breakaway efforts sought to carve out a new “State of Jefferson” from nearly two dozen Northern California counties, though they were largely rural, conservative-leaning and sparsely populated.
Competition between mining and agricultural interests, as well as opposition to taxation, have driven some of these secession efforts. There have been proposals to divide the sprawling state into north and south sections, as well as splitting it lengthwise to create separate coastal and inland regions.
“Everybody outside this county thinks we are the wild, wild West,” said Ontario Mayor Paul Leon, whose city is one of the largest in the county. Despite the county’s size, it “gets a pittance” when it comes to state and federal aid for roads, courthouses and transit, said Leon, who backed the measure.
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
Children play soccer at the Ontario Soccer Park in Ontario, Calif., Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2022.
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
Shoppers enter the Ontario Mills shopping center in Ontario, Calif., Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2022.
The city of San Bernardino, with a population of about 220,000, anchors the third largest metropolitan area in the state, behind L.A. and San Francisco. Beyond the urban centers, its communities range from placid suburbs crisscrossed by freeways, mountain towns framed by towering pines and isolated desert havens such as hippie Joshua Tree. Inflation and economic stress are challenging many communities. Before the pandemic, the county’s unemployment rate was already 9.5% in 2019, with 12.2% of households living below the poverty line.
“I tend to be very skeptical of these secession maneuvers,” said William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
A homeless person's tent sits in an empty lot next to a parking structure in San Bernardino, Calif., Thursday, Dec. 8, 2022.
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
A building with graffiti sits in a commercial lot for sale in San Bernardino, Calif., Thursday, Dec. 8, 2022.
“The state’s problems are not likely to be addressed by the jurisdictional chopping block,” Deverell said in an email. He’s wary of the “hubris” of: “If only this part of the state could go its own way, as we aren’t the root of the problem.”
Since the proposal passed, the county’s next step is to form a committee — likely composed of public and private sector members — to conduct an analysis of funding that will compare San Bernardino to other counties.
Many Inland Empire communities are struggling financially even though California’s economy — by itself — may soon become the fourth largest in the world, up from fifth. The state announced last month that it had recovered all of the 2.7 million jobs it lost at the start of the pandemic. However, there are projections for a $25 billion budget deficit next year and signs of an unsteady economy, as even the historically powerful tech industry has seen layoffs.
From 2018 to 2021, 352 companies moved their headquarters from California to other states, according to a Hoover Institution study. After decades of growth, the state population of 39 million has been shrinking, partly because residents are leaving for states that offer more affordable housing and lower taxes.
Because of decreased population, the state is even losing a congressional seat in 2023, dropping from 53 to 52.
Housing prices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other metropolitan hubs frequently top $1 million and are sharply increasing. Billions of dollars in spending statewide has made no visible difference in the homeless crisis in many cities. This has all fueled a reckoning with the direction of the state, which has long been mythologized as a land of opportunity.
“A lot of Californians are unhappy in many ways,” said Claremont McKenna College political scientist Jack Pitney, citing record gas prices, the rising cost of living, and real estate prices that make home ownership unattainable for many working-class families.
“The vote on secession was like smashing the china. It’s a way of getting attention but in the end it doesn’t accomplish much,” Pitney said.
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
Small American flags adorn a fence of a home in Chino, Calif., Thursday, Dec. 8, 2022.
Even Hagman said he doesn’t want to see his home state broken apart, though he sees approval of the measure as an important statement on frustration with Sacramento.
“I want to remain part of California right now,” he said. “I’m proud to be a Californian.”
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So long, California: Major county votes to study secession
Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times/TNS
I’ve been here three or four times and it’s always been gorgeous, but never the same way twice. On the most recent visit, last fall, I got up early to shoot sunrise photos, steered through bursts of rain to Inspiration Point above the bay, then watched the clouds part. The sunbeams came flooding in, the bay began to glow and a rainbow arched above. The scent of wet forest hung in the air. At that moment, besides me, there were two families at the point and some of the kids were dancing around in the tiny parking lot. I looked at the parents and they looked back in silent triumph. Nobody wants to get up early in the rain, but sometimes it pays off big.
Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times/TNS
I’ve been here three or four times and it’s always been gorgeous, but never the same way twice. On the most recent visit, last fall, I got up early to shoot sunrise photos, steered through bursts of rain to Inspiration Point above the bay, then watched the clouds part. The sunbeams came flooding in, the bay began to glow and a rainbow arched above. The scent of wet forest hung in the air. At that moment, besides me, there were two families at the point and some of the kids were dancing around in the tiny parking lot. I looked at the parents and they looked back in silent triumph. Nobody wants to get up early in the rain, but sometimes it pays off big.
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So long, California: Major county votes to study secession
Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times/TNS
I’ve been eating in the Ferry Building since its redevelopment in 2003 as a food-focused retail-and-restaurant complex — oysters from Hog Island, comfort food from Gott’s Roadside, neo-Vietnamese at the Slanted Door (which is supposed to reopen late this year).
Elsewhere along the waterfront, I’ve nodded along to live jazz at Pier 23, pedaled a bike out to Fort Point, savored the Golden Gate view from Torpedo Wharf and bought many snacks at the Warming Hut along the San Francisco Bay Trail bike path. And just about every walk by the water takes me back to an uneasy memory: One May day in 1987, some buddies and I walked out onto the Golden Gate Bridge to join its 50th-anniversary celebration. Way too many other people had the same idea. About 300,000 of us were stuck in pedestrian gridlock for hours and the bridge actually sagged under the weight. Even when it’s not cold, seeing that bridge makes me shiver a little at first. Then I perk up. I think that’s the upbeat orange paint job at work. (Thank you, Sherwin Williams.)
Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times/TNS
I’ve been eating in the Ferry Building since its redevelopment in 2003 as a food-focused retail-and-restaurant complex — oysters from Hog Island, comfort food from Gott’s Roadside, neo-Vietnamese at the Slanted Door (which is supposed to reopen late this year).
Elsewhere along the waterfront, I’ve nodded along to live jazz at Pier 23, pedaled a bike out to Fort Point, savored the Golden Gate view from Torpedo Wharf and bought many snacks at the Warming Hut along the San Francisco Bay Trail bike path. And just about every walk by the water takes me back to an uneasy memory: One May day in 1987, some buddies and I walked out onto the Golden Gate Bridge to join its 50th-anniversary celebration. Way too many other people had the same idea. About 300,000 of us were stuck in pedestrian gridlock for hours and the bridge actually sagged under the weight. Even when it’s not cold, seeing that bridge makes me shiver a little at first. Then I perk up. I think that’s the upbeat orange paint job at work. (Thank you, Sherwin Williams.)
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So long, California: Major county votes to study secession
Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times/TNS
The valley’s Swinging Bridge Area (whose bridge doesn’t swing at all) is one of my favorite spots for pictures of Yosemite Falls. But I am also a big fan of the Wawona Swinging Bridge, 27 miles south and still inside park boundaries. And this one actually does swing, over a swimming hole. That’s where our friends Ed and Mona brought me, my wife, Mary Frances, our daughter, Grace, and a gaggle of my college buddies several years ago for an afternoon of snacking and soaking in the south fork of the Merced River. No tourist masses, just a bunch of old friends and their kids, flopping on the sun-dappled rocks.
Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times/TNS
The valley’s Swinging Bridge Area (whose bridge doesn’t swing at all) is one of my favorite spots for pictures of Yosemite Falls. But I am also a big fan of the Wawona Swinging Bridge, 27 miles south and still inside park boundaries. And this one actually does swing, over a swimming hole. That’s where our friends Ed and Mona brought me, my wife, Mary Frances, our daughter, Grace, and a gaggle of my college buddies several years ago for an afternoon of snacking and soaking in the south fork of the Merced River. No tourist masses, just a bunch of old friends and their kids, flopping on the sun-dappled rocks.
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So long, California: Major county votes to study secession
Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/TNS
I don’t believe I’ve ever visited Big Sur without dropping by Nepenthe restaurant. Not because of the food, which is fine. And not exactly because of the view, which is more than fine. Because of the way its neo-Bohemian, global-nomad vibe brings those elements together.
Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/TNS
I don’t believe I’ve ever visited Big Sur without dropping by Nepenthe restaurant. Not because of the food, which is fine. And not exactly because of the view, which is more than fine. Because of the way its neo-Bohemian, global-nomad vibe brings those elements together.
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So long, California: Major county votes to study secession
NPS photo
I’ve caught sunrise from Zabriskie Point and the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes — both great, golden memories. But neither matches the end-of-the-world feeling you get standing on the crusty salt floor of Badwater Basin as the sun drops, the sky darkens and awed tourists whisper in half a dozen languages. I listened to pianist Keith Jarrett’s “The Koln Concert” in my car on the way to one of my first sunsets there. Now every time I hear that album, I can close my eyes and see long shadows at Badwater.
NPS photo
I’ve caught sunrise from Zabriskie Point and the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes — both great, golden memories. But neither matches the end-of-the-world feeling you get standing on the crusty salt floor of Badwater Basin as the sun drops, the sky darkens and awed tourists whisper in half a dozen languages. I listened to pianist Keith Jarrett’s “The Koln Concert” in my car on the way to one of my first sunsets there. Now every time I hear that album, I can close my eyes and see long shadows at Badwater.
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So long, California: Major county votes to study secession
Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times/TNS
In May 2020, when the first round of pandemic closures eased and several national parks abruptly reopened, thousands of Californians went rushing to camp somewhere, anywhere. I came to Hidden Valley. Pretty soon every campsite was full. I hopped from campfire to campfire with my notebook, mask and camera, listening to city people and their kids tell how they dropped everything so they could take a few free breaths among these big boulders and beseeching trees.
Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times/TNS
In May 2020, when the first round of pandemic closures eased and several national parks abruptly reopened, thousands of Californians went rushing to camp somewhere, anywhere. I came to Hidden Valley. Pretty soon every campsite was full. I hopped from campfire to campfire with my notebook, mask and camera, listening to city people and their kids tell how they dropped everything so they could take a few free breaths among these big boulders and beseeching trees.
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So long, California: Major county votes to study secession
Bureau of Land Management
When I was 10, my family and I joined an outfitter’s two-day rafting-camping trip on this stretch of river. I remember loving the tumult of the rapids, the idea that right around here, someone saw something shiny, started the Gold Rush, changed the world. I also remember being awed by the worldly wit of two older TV writers (in their 20s) who were part of our group. Almost 50 years later, I joined another outfitter on the same route. No witty TV writers. But between bouts of white water, the young woman behind me (in her 20s) told me how she’d just kicked heroin and rejoined her family. As the saying goes, you never step into the same river twice. Maybe that’s why these waters call to me the way they do. And even though the rapids look a lot smaller now, they’re still a thrill.
Bureau of Land Management
When I was 10, my family and I joined an outfitter’s two-day rafting-camping trip on this stretch of river. I remember loving the tumult of the rapids, the idea that right around here, someone saw something shiny, started the Gold Rush, changed the world. I also remember being awed by the worldly wit of two older TV writers (in their 20s) who were part of our group. Almost 50 years later, I joined another outfitter on the same route. No witty TV writers. But between bouts of white water, the young woman behind me (in her 20s) told me how she’d just kicked heroin and rejoined her family. As the saying goes, you never step into the same river twice. Maybe that’s why these waters call to me the way they do. And even though the rapids look a lot smaller now, they’re still a thrill.
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So long, California: Major county votes to study secession
Grand Central Market
Since the Los Angeles Times building was a few blocks from here for about 25 years, I’ve seen this food hall from every angle in bad times and good. Now the market is livelier and more prosperous than ever before — but since I no longer work downtown, I only get the occasional glimpse and taste. I do love the weighty combination plates from Tacos Tumbras a Tomas, but I miss the steady relationship.
Grand Central Market
Since the Los Angeles Times building was a few blocks from here for about 25 years, I’ve seen this food hall from every angle in bad times and good. Now the market is livelier and more prosperous than ever before — but since I no longer work downtown, I only get the occasional glimpse and taste. I do love the weighty combination plates from Tacos Tumbras a Tomas, but I miss the steady relationship.
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So long, California: Major county votes to study secession
Visit California
As a teenager down on the beach below, I used to throw Frisbees and body-surf for hours. Nowadays, visiting from out of town, I head for the bluffs, admire the stark design of the Salk Institute on the way in, grab a picnic table and treat my family to $7 sandwiches from the Cliffhanger Cafe. While we chew, the hang-glider pilots run and leap into the wind, 350 feet above the waves. This place always makes me happy.
Visit California
As a teenager down on the beach below, I used to throw Frisbees and body-surf for hours. Nowadays, visiting from out of town, I head for the bluffs, admire the stark design of the Salk Institute on the way in, grab a picnic table and treat my family to $7 sandwiches from the Cliffhanger Cafe. While we chew, the hang-glider pilots run and leap into the wind, 350 feet above the waves. This place always makes me happy.
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So long, California: Major county votes to study secession
SanDiego.org
For years, I zoomed over Chicano Park on the bridge to Coronado, even though I knew there were supposed to be cool murals down below. This was partly because Barrio Logan had a reputation as a tough neighborhood, but mostly I was just lazy. Still, I did get there eventually, and loved all that infrastructural concrete filled with bright colors and Chicano imagery. Now the neighborhood has sprouted so many cafes, galleries and restaurants that some people are nervous about gentrification, and all sorts of visitors come. A few years ago, I joined a few dozen tourists, almost all seniors, who had come straight from a Princess cruise ship, bypassing the rest of San Diego’s visitor attractions, to eye the murals and eat tacos. Here’s to destinations that never stand still. Neither should we.
SanDiego.org
For years, I zoomed over Chicano Park on the bridge to Coronado, even though I knew there were supposed to be cool murals down below. This was partly because Barrio Logan had a reputation as a tough neighborhood, but mostly I was just lazy. Still, I did get there eventually, and loved all that infrastructural concrete filled with bright colors and Chicano imagery. Now the neighborhood has sprouted so many cafes, galleries and restaurants that some people are nervous about gentrification, and all sorts of visitors come. A few years ago, I joined a few dozen tourists, almost all seniors, who had come straight from a Princess cruise ship, bypassing the rest of San Diego’s visitor attractions, to eye the murals and eat tacos. Here’s to destinations that never stand still. Neither should we.
