There’s a campaign to split California into two separate states

Olivia Harvey
Updated

Robert Paul Preston and Tom Reed are fed up with living within what they call the “ungovernable” state of California. To reform high taxes, poor housing, education, and law enforcement, Preston and Reed are on a crusade to split the existing state of California into two separate states. Their new state would be called New California.

On January 15th, those involved in the New California campaign officially declared their independence, thus taking the official first step to statehood. Preston, Reed, and their supporters want to divide the rural counties from the coastal cities.

“There’s something wrong when you have a rural county such as this one, and you go down to Orange County which is mostly urban, and it has the same set of problems, and it happens because of how the state is being governed and taxed,” Preston told CBS Sacramento.

If New California is officially granted statehood, it would have its own economy and be governed under a new constitution separate from that of “old” California.

The formation of a new state from an existing one is possible. But in order for New California to be recognized it must receive “consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress,” according to Article IV, Section 3 of the United States Constitution.

This isn’t the first time residents have threatened to divide California. In 2016, the “Six Californias” campaign pushed to have the existing state divided into six separate states, arguing that it would improve economics, education, and other state-funded necessities. However, the campaign lacked the signatures and support needed to make it to the 2016 ballot.

“When a long train of abuses and acts to seize and hold the people’s power without legal authority and pursuing invariably the same Object that clearly demonstrates a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security,” New California’s Declaration of Independence reads.

We’ll be monitoring this one closely, guys.

There’s a campaign to split California into two separate states
There’s a campaign to split California into two separate states