Residents of San Bernardino County have voted to allow their officials to study the possibility of seceding from California, with many of them growing increasingly frustrated over the far-left state’s radical policies.
Skyrocketing crime, soaring taxes spur San Bernardino County to explore secession https://t.co/zjDUYUrNJz via @americanwire_
— Bo Snerdley (@BoSnerdley) December 18, 2022
According to the Associated Press (AP), the county approved the advisory ballot proposal earlier this week after it was voted upon in November.
The next step for San Bernardino’s Board of Supervisors is expected to be the creation of a committee to study whether state and federal public funds were fairly distributed with local governments within the county.
Board of Supervisors chairman Curt Hagman noted that there has been “a lot of frustration” among the residents of San Bernardino toward the far-left governing policies of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and the Democrat-controlled state legislature.
While Californians suffer from skyrocketing crime rates, homelessness, and shockingly high housing costs, they are forced to pay the highest taxes in the nation to a state government that doesn’t appear to be able to fix any of the problems.
Many residents have also expressed anger over California’s authoritarian COVID-19 policies, which forced public school students to learn remotely early in the pandemic. California was also one of the last states to discontinue the policy. Meanwhile, remote learning has been shown to cause significant academic setbacks for K-12 students within the state, and had negative impacts on younger students’ learning skills, according to Breitbart News.
Many California businesses and residents have been fleeing to other states such as Arizona, Texas, Florida and Nevada to escape high taxes and draconian policies. According to California’s Department of Finance statistics, the state lost more than 352,000 residents from 2020 to 2022.
Despite the fact that Democrat voters outnumber Republican voters by 12 points, Newsom lost San Bernardino County by roughly five points in his November reelection campaign. However, as California is a deep-blue state, the incumbent governor still easily won reelection.
According to reporting from Breitbart News, San Bernardino County “is the largest by area in California and the contiguous United States, stretching from the urban regions of the City of San Bernardino to the rural areas bordering Arizona and Nevada. Moreover, it is the fifth most populous county in the Golden State, with more than two million residents.”
The attempt to secede from California and become the 51st state is highly unlikely to succeed, as it would require the approval of the Democrat-controlled state legislature as well as Congress.
Hagman made sure to note that he does not actually wish to secede from California, but says that he understands how voters may feel alienated due to Sacramento’s policies — telling the AP that “It’s been a rough few years.”
There have been other calls for secession within California in the past few years, including in 2017, when activists filed a lawsuit to create the “State of Jefferson” with 21 counties in the northern part of California.
Other states have had secession attempts as well, including 7 rural counties in Oregon that voted for an effort to secede from the blue state and join Idaho. Many Texans have also advocated for their state seceding from the United States entirely and becoming its own country.
