History of the State of Jefferson movement - over 160 years

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State of Jefferson movement - 1941

 

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In California's rural, conservative north, there are big dreams for cleaving the state

By Hailey Branson-Potts
Mar 17, 2018 | 5:00 AM
Anderson, Calif.

The two young, blond women in figure-flattering ball gowns hoisted whiskey and shotguns.

An auctioneer rattled off bids. Above the stage in the banquet hall hung a green flag for the 51st state of Jefferson, with its pair of Xs called a “double-cross” representing a sense of rural abandonment.

Hundreds of people packed into the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9650 hall on this chilly Saturday night, ready to crack open wallets to help fund their dream of carving — out of California’s northernmost reaches — a brand new state.

Someone offered $350 for a state of Jefferson belt buckle. Someone else won a lamb, still in its mother’s womb, that should be born in time to be butchered for Easter. Outside, vehicles bore bumper stickers supporting President Trump and the 2nd Amendment.

“We Okies are fun, aren’t we?” one man quipped.

The scene last month in this small Shasta County city seemed like a perfect we’re-not-in-California-anymore-moment. That is, if you only knew California as the diverse, liberal bastion whose elected officials have tried to stymie the Trump administration’s moves on immigration, legalized marijuana, climate change and so on.

But the so-called Northstate is looking less and less like the rest of the Golden State. The vast, sparsely-populated region is whiter, more rural and poorer than the rest of the state — and residents are more conservative. While California has become the center of the resistance to Trump, a number of Northern Californians are waging a resistance of their own: against California itself.

Inside the banquet hall, the man many see as the founder of the modern Jefferson movement told the crowd that their gun rights, property rights, grazing rights and water rights were under siege by politicians who write them off as “country bumpkins.”

“You’re the ones being exterminated by a lack of liberty,” said Mark Baird, a Siskiyou County rancher.

The breakaway state of Jefferson is a decades-old idea, but it has been revived in earnest in recent years by residents who say they are fed up with their voices being drowned out in Sacramento, where outspoken urban Democrats hold a vise grip on the state Legislature.

Supporters say overregulation has hobbled rural industries such as timber, mining and fishing and that the state’s high taxes and cost of living are driving young people away, quickening the decline of small towns. They chafe under California’s strict gun-control policies and are infuriated by its liberal immigration laws.

They cite California’s new gas tax increase of 12 cents per gallon, saying it has an outsize impact on rural people who drive farther for work and basic needs such as hospitals, schools and grocery stores.

How likely is it that a new state will be broken off, like a piece of Kit Kat bar, from California? Not likely at all, experts say.

Eric McGhee, a political scientist at the Public Policy Institute of California, said that while you can “never say never,” there are too many legal obstacles to overcome.

“It’s easy to think that because there’s this large piece of territory, that it’s a large share of California in terms of the population," he said. “That’s just not the case. … It’s an absolutely minuscule portion of the state’s population.”

Supporters of a breakaway state say they are sorely underestimated and point to the number of passionate people who show up to their events. One man put it this way: “We’re not a bunch of dumb rednecks.”

When we first started ... people would say, ‘What’s Jefferson? ... Now, they’re saying, ‘When are you going to get this done?

Janet Chandler

But some Northern Californians have had enough of talk of breaking away from California. After several county boards began considering Jefferson proposals, Kevin Hendrick, a retired municipal employee from Crescent City, in Del Norte County, formed a political action committee in 2015 called Keep It California to oppose the idea.

“You’ve got a handful of residents that are grumpy and pining for the good old days, but that shouldn’t represent all the good people living in rural counties,” he said.

Hendrick said there are rural issues that need do more attention, such as access to affordable healthcare and the internet, but that separating from California would be financially devastating.

“People need hope, yes,” he said. “They don’t need false hope.”

There has been plenty of talk recently about cleaving California. There was the failed 2014 effort to split the state into six states. There’s a plan to form New California, which includes everything but a sliver of wealthy, urban coastal counties. And there’s Calexit, the movement for the state to secede from the Union entirely, an idea that gained steam after Trump’s election.

Jefferson, which has included some Oregon counties in various iterations, precedes them. In one of the movement’s most colorful eras, armed separatists in November 1941 set up roadblocks along Highway 99 in Siskiyou County. But the movement was halted days later when Pearl Harbor was bombed.

The modern Jefferson movement was kicked off in 2013 when boards of supervisors in Siskiyou and Modoc counties passed declarations of support for withdrawing from California.

Win Carpenter, a Jefferson organizer from Redding, said declarations from 21 counties have been filed with state officials. Some are proclamations by county boards of supervisors; others are collections of signatures by residents.

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Carpenter, 55, a seventh-generation Shasta County resident, quit his job as an appraiser in the county assessor’s office in 2015 to devote his time to Jefferson. Days later, he told the Shasta County Board of Supervisors that, although the board had declined to support the breakaway state, advocates had gathered thousands of signatures anyway.

“As your employers, we have decided you will not be representing us on this issue,” he told the supervisors. “Therefore, we are moving ahead without you.”

If Jefferson became a state, it would have 1.7 million residents, a population bigger than 13 other states. It would be 73% white. Present-day California has roughly the same number of whites and Latinos, at about 14.8 million each.

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Jefferson supporters have their hopes set on a federal lawsuit. Last year, a group called Citizens for Fair Representation — including Carpenter, Baird and other Jefferson proponents along with a Native American tribe, the California Libertarian Party and the city of Fort Jones, Calif. — sued the state, alleging an unconstitutional lack of representation and dilution of vote.

California’s 120 state legislators, the suit states, cannot adequately represent 40 million residents. In Northern California, one senator represents nine counties and parts of two more. The idea, Baird said, is for California to either be forced to add thousands more legislators or that the state would refuse and let Jefferson leave.

Baird had just finished an impassioned speech about Jefferson in Placerville last month when Riley Taresh, 19, stepped up to the microphone, her voice solemn.

“How much longer do we have to wait?” she asked. “I only have a few more years where I can go to school here before I have to leave because I won’t be able to afford to stay in California.”

Taresh, of Shingle Springs, works part time at Payless ShoeSource while attending Folsom Lake College. She can’t afford to move out of her parents’ home. She wants to work in the medical field and stay in Northern California, but “as a working-class poor, it is not possible for me,” she said. She believes her chances at getting into a four-year state university were hindered, in part, because she is white.

“I’m like, excuse me, I have to work my butt off to get anywhere, and you’re going to hand illegals … a driver’s license, you’re going to hand them an education, and I have to work my butt off until I’m in tears and begging for help to get anywhere. No.”

Mike Murray, 32, of Rocklin, said he hates “the perception that it is these old white people that just want to go around and spit their tobacky and shoot their guns.”

Murray has been trying to attract younger, more diverse people. He sees Jefferson as a “reset button.” An uncle of his packed up his business and moved to Texas because of high taxes. His in-laws are frustrated by California’s strict gun laws, which, he said, aren’t feasible for them since they are rural farmers who would have to wait a half-hour for police if someone broke in.

I just like the whole idea of getting back to the Constitution, getting back to the principles that made this country great in the first place.

Sally Rapoza

Just after 7 a.m. on a recent Friday, Terry Rapoza stood before the Sunrise Rotary Club at a Redding Best Western explaining the case for Jefferson while his wife, Sally, handed out pamphlets.

A stout, mustachioed man with a booming belly-laugh, Rapoza said there was “no rule of law in the state of California.” He recently called a White House hotline to say Gov. Jerry Brown had repeatedly violated the Constitution.

A gregarious couple in their 60s, the Rapozas, of Redding, helped start a local tea party group shortly after President Obama took office. A 2009 tea party protest at Redding’s Sundial Bridge drew some 2,000 people, and their son, Clayton, a labor organizer and Civil War reenactor, dressed as a Revolutionary War minuteman and led protesters across the walkway.

“I just like the whole idea of getting back to the Constitution, getting back to the principles that made this country great in the first place,” Sally Rapoza said of Jefferson.

For the Rapozas, California’s sanctuary policies are emblematic of the unchecked power of the state Democratic party. They were thrilled when the Shasta County Board of Supervisors approved a non-sanctuary resolution last month.

“Why are we allowing illegal aliens to come into our country?” Sally said. “I mean, that’s an invasion. … It feels like our rights are being diminished and their rights are being exploited, actually, because the Democrats want votes and the Republicans want cheap workers.”

Sally, whose organizing skills earned her the moniker Rally Sally, uses her Facebook page to live-stream events and drum up Jefferson support. The official State of Jefferson website lists her as a social media organizer. She also shares political posts on her page, including Breitbart articles and a meme calling Hillary Clinton “the Russian spy who hacked our primaries.”

Terry co-hosts a weekly AM radio show, “Jefferson State of Mine,” with Carpenter. It opens with a country song about Jefferson: It’s a wave on a dusty road. It’s a logger’s heavy load. It’s the cattle on the hills. It’s the ridge full of thrills.

In the small mountain town of Burney, Harold and Janet Chandler live on a quiet street among the pine trees. They have a Jefferson sign in their yard and Jefferson coffee mugs in their cupboards.

The couple — she a retired school teacher, he a retired California Highway Patrol officer — moved to Burney in 1991, when it was a bustling logging town with two clothing stores, two shoe stores, two grocery stores, they said. But the timber mills cut back. The families left. Now, shuttered storefronts line Main Street.

Janet, who unsuccessfully ran for county supervisor in 2016 and openly supported Jefferson, said regulations would be eased in the new state, bringing back jobs — and hope. She and Harold are on a committee that recently finished writing a 29-page Jefferson constitution.

“When we first started handing out brochures and carrying signs at parades, people would say, ‘What’s Jefferson?’” Janet said. “Then, the phrase became, ‘Oh, it’s a good idea, but it’s never going to happen.’ Now, they’re saying, ‘When are you going to get this done?’”
 

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Are some states headed for Splitsville? Movement grows to allow sections of states to break away

Are some states headed for Splitsville? Movement grows to allow sections of states to break away | Fox News

By Steve Kurtz | Fox News

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New secession movements in California, and elsewhere in America, are getting genuine attention from political pundits. (newcaliforniastate.com)

When Donald Trump was elected, a lot of people in California signed a petition supporting the state’s secession from the U.S. It was hard to take the movement seriously—didn’t we fight a war over this?

But there is another secession movement in California, and elsewhere in America, that is getting genuine attention from political pundits. While it may be unlikely to succeed, the idea of intra-state secession—a section of a state splitting off to form its own state—has been growing in popularity. And there’s even a Constitutional procedure for doing it.

In recent decades, the political differences between rural areas and metropolitan areas seem to have become more severe. This has caused political splits in certain states, where, often, those rural areas, with lower populations, feel stifled by their city brethren.

As Joel Kotkin, a fellow at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. and author of The Human City: Urbanism ForThe Rest Of Us, tells Fox News, “The worst thing in the world to be is the red part of a blue state.”

He looks at his home state of California and sees numerous clashes between the coastal cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles, and the more conservative counties in the interior. This has led to the New California Movement, already organized in 35 counties, seeking to create two states where there was one. Other plans have California splitting into three states, or even six. It should be noted that these new states would still be bigger than many on the East Coast, and more populous than many in the West.

Kotkin feels this movement is driven by policies like the $15 minimum wage, “which makes sense in San Francisco, but doesn’t make sense in Fresno.” He adds those running California are “fundamentally authoritarian” with “not a lot of tolerance for any kind of economic or political diversity.” As he puts it, their attitude is “’We know the truth, we know what’s right, and it has to apply to everyone.”

Kotkin further notes it’s not just California where this blue versus red battle is brewing, but up the West Coast, where eastern Oregon battles against the policies of Portland, and eastern Washington against Seattle. For that matter, there’s Chicago against downstate Illinois, and New York City versus upstate New York. And the policy divisions are not just economic, but often traditional versus progressive politics regarding issues such as marijuana, gun control and the environment.

This is why there’s a movement in New York for upstate to split from downstate. As Republican state senator Joseph Robach puts it, “We’re completely overwhelmed...by the policies of New York City.” In 2009 and 2011 he introduced bills to hold a referendum on secession. And in 2015 there was a rally in favor of carving out a new state, supported by more than a dozen groups frustrated by the policies of Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo.

All this secession talk has captured the notice of University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, who recently put out a new paper, “Splitsylvania: State Secession and What to Do About It.”

He notes that Article IV, section 3 of the Constitution allows for new states to be admitted into the union, though no new state can be formed within an old state without the consent of the state legislature as well as Congress. That’s a pretty high hurdle. But, as Reynolds told Fox News, not insurmountable.

It’s been done before, but long ago. For example, Vermont split from New York in 1791, Maine split from Massachusetts in 1820, and West Virginia split from Virginia during the Civil War in 1863. There haven’t been any states formed by secession in modern U.S. history.

What’s more, Americans seem to have gotten used to the idea of 50 states, with Hawaii the last admitted to the Union in 1959. As Reynolds points out, “for most of the country’s history we added a new state every couple of decades...now we act as if 50 is set in stone. There’s a plausible argument that we would be better off with more states. It would be more representative.”

While it would seem that state leaders wouldn’t want to give up power, Reynolds offers a scenario where politicians might greet the formation of a new entity. “If you’re a California politician, you spend a lot of time trying to fight your way to the top. And the trouble is it’s a really big state—there are a lot of other people trying to fight their way to the top...[If the state splits, there’s] a smaller pond, but you’re a big fish.”

More important than forming new states, however, Reynolds feels we should address the disputes that make citizens support secession. Part of the problem, he believes, goes back to the Supreme Court case “Reynolds v. Sims” (1964), which declared state legislatures (as opposed to the U.S. Senate) have to be apportioned according to population, not geographical area. As Reynolds explains, “under the old system, rural areas got more representation, and under the new system they got much less.” This has helped lead to the present-day situation where rural areas feel underserved.

Reynolds hopes there can be less dramatic solutions than secession, such as Congressional statutes (or in some cases executive orders) to ease the pressure. Reynolds thinks they have the Constitutional authority to remedy the situation, particularly under the Guarantee Clause, which states “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”

Reynolds points to civil rights laws, passed to protect unfairly treated minorities, as a model for how Congress might take action. He notes “most federal laws...are written to leave states the power to make stricter regulations, but if it seems like the burden...is falling disproportionately on a minority in a state that has no real political power...then I think it’s fair for the federal government to step in and protect them.” To Reynolds, this could mean laws limiting how far states can go regarding “the environment, firearms, wages and...things that people in rural areas are unhappy about.”

This may seem like extreme intervention to some, but it’s a lot less extreme than secession.

As Reynolds puts it, “when you have people talking about wanting to split from their state, and form a new one, there’s obviously some significant unhappiness, and if we can do things that are relatively low cost...to remedy it, I think probably we should. At least we should think about it.”
 

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The state of Jefferson also included Southern Oregon from Ashland To Roseburgh. My family homesteaded the Illinois valley west of Grants Pass. If not for WWII breaking out there was considerable momentum due to similar economics ranching, timber, and mining.
 

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Billionaire Tim Draper Petitions for California to Be Broken Into Three Smaller States

Billionaire Tim Draper Petitions for California to Be Broken Into Three Smaller States | Breitbart

by Nate Church 13 Apr 2018

Billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper believes that to better represent its citizens, California should be divided.

Draper has been pitching the “Cal 3” plan for years, but 2018 has given it the sort of traction it needs to get onto the November ballot. He has gathered almost twice the required number of signatures for its inclusion — roughly 600,000 as opposed to the minimum 365,880 he had struggled to amass in 2014 and 2016.

The three states would be configured as follows: Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey and San Benito counties would make up the central Californian state; Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Imperial, Kern, Kings, Fresno, Tulare, Inyo, Madera, and Mono counties would form the southern one; finally, the 40 remaining counties would be lumped into a single northern California state.

“I think that these three new states are going to empower people to realize what’s possible in government,” Draper said in an interview on Tucker Carlson Tonight. He believes that these divisions will enable a more accurate representation of the diverse populations congregated against the Pacific.

Further, to his mind, the division may enable California to solve some of its most pressing issues; namely, education. “The education system is just about the worst in all 50 states, and it’s the biggest state,” Draper said. “So it really does need sort of a revamp and a restart. And I think this is a good start to doing that.”
 

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Never gonna happen, and if it did the "3 State Split" doesn't make sense as to boundaries chosen!
 

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In California's rural, conservative north, there are big dreams for cleaving the state

By Hailey Branson-Potts
Mar 17, 2018 | 5:00 AM
Anderson, Calif.

The two young, blond women in figure-flattering ball gowns hoisted whiskey and shotguns.

An auctioneer rattled off bids. Above the stage in the banquet hall hung a green flag for the 51st state of Jefferson, with its pair of Xs called a “double-cross” representing a sense of rural abandonment.

Hundreds of people packed into the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9650 hall on this chilly Saturday night, ready to crack open wallets to help fund their dream of carving — out of California’s northernmost reaches — a brand new state.

Someone offered $350 for a state of Jefferson belt buckle. Someone else won a lamb, still in its mother’s womb, that should be born in time to be butchered for Easter. Outside, vehicles bore bumper stickers supporting President Trump and the 2nd Amendment.

“We Okies are fun, aren’t we?” one man quipped.

The scene last month in this small Shasta County city seemed like a perfect we’re-not-in-California-anymore-moment. That is, if you only knew California as the diverse, liberal bastion whose elected officials have tried to stymie the Trump administration’s moves on immigration, legalized marijuana, climate change and so on.

But the so-called Northstate is looking less and less like the rest of the Golden State. The vast, sparsely-populated region is whiter, more rural and poorer than the rest of the state — and residents are more conservative. While California has become the center of the resistance to Trump, a number of Northern Californians are waging a resistance of their own: against California itself.

Inside the banquet hall, the man many see as the founder of the modern Jefferson movement told the crowd that their gun rights, property rights, grazing rights and water rights were under siege by politicians who write them off as “country bumpkins.”

“You’re the ones being exterminated by a lack of liberty,” said Mark Baird, a Siskiyou County rancher.

The breakaway state of Jefferson is a decades-old idea, but it has been revived in earnest in recent years by residents who say they are fed up with their voices being drowned out in Sacramento, where outspoken urban Democrats hold a vise grip on the state Legislature.

Supporters say overregulation has hobbled rural industries such as timber, mining and fishing and that the state’s high taxes and cost of living are driving young people away, quickening the decline of small towns. They chafe under California’s strict gun-control policies and are infuriated by its liberal immigration laws.

They cite California’s new gas tax increase of 12 cents per gallon, saying it has an outsize impact on rural people who drive farther for work and basic needs such as hospitals, schools and grocery stores.

How likely is it that a new state will be broken off, like a piece of Kit Kat bar, from California? Not likely at all, experts say.

Eric McGhee, a political scientist at the Public Policy Institute of California, said that while you can “never say never,” there are too many legal obstacles to overcome.

“It’s easy to think that because there’s this large piece of territory, that it’s a large share of California in terms of the population," he said. “That’s just not the case. … It’s an absolutely minuscule portion of the state’s population.”

Supporters of a breakaway state say they are sorely underestimated and point to the number of passionate people who show up to their events. One man put it this way: “We’re not a bunch of dumb rednecks.”

When we first started ... people would say, ‘What’s Jefferson? ... Now, they’re saying, ‘When are you going to get this done?

Janet Chandler

But some Northern Californians have had enough of talk of breaking away from California. After several county boards began considering Jefferson proposals, Kevin Hendrick, a retired municipal employee from Crescent City, in Del Norte County, formed a political action committee in 2015 called Keep It California to oppose the idea.

“You’ve got a handful of residents that are grumpy and pining for the good old days, but that shouldn’t represent all the good people living in rural counties,” he said.

Hendrick said there are rural issues that need do more attention, such as access to affordable healthcare and the internet, but that separating from California would be financially devastating.

“People need hope, yes,” he said. “They don’t need false hope.”

There has been plenty of talk recently about cleaving California. There was the failed 2014 effort to split the state into six states. There’s a plan to form New California, which includes everything but a sliver of wealthy, urban coastal counties. And there’s Calexit, the movement for the state to secede from the Union entirely, an idea that gained steam after Trump’s election.

Jefferson, which has included some Oregon counties in various iterations, precedes them. In one of the movement’s most colorful eras, armed separatists in November 1941 set up roadblocks along Highway 99 in Siskiyou County. But the movement was halted days later when Pearl Harbor was bombed.

The modern Jefferson movement was kicked off in 2013 when boards of supervisors in Siskiyou and Modoc counties passed declarations of support for withdrawing from California.

Win Carpenter, a Jefferson organizer from Redding, said declarations from 21 counties have been filed with state officials. Some are proclamations by county boards of supervisors; others are collections of signatures by residents.

View attachment 1565644

Carpenter, 55, a seventh-generation Shasta County resident, quit his job as an appraiser in the county assessor’s office in 2015 to devote his time to Jefferson. Days later, he told the Shasta County Board of Supervisors that, although the board had declined to support the breakaway state, advocates had gathered thousands of signatures anyway.

“As your employers, we have decided you will not be representing us on this issue,” he told the supervisors. “Therefore, we are moving ahead without you.”

If Jefferson became a state, it would have 1.7 million residents, a population bigger than 13 other states. It would be 73% white. Present-day California has roughly the same number of whites and Latinos, at about 14.8 million each.

View attachment 1565645

Jefferson supporters have their hopes set on a federal lawsuit. Last year, a group called Citizens for Fair Representation — including Carpenter, Baird and other Jefferson proponents along with a Native American tribe, the California Libertarian Party and the city of Fort Jones, Calif. — sued the state, alleging an unconstitutional lack of representation and dilution of vote.

California’s 120 state legislators, the suit states, cannot adequately represent 40 million residents. In Northern California, one senator represents nine counties and parts of two more. The idea, Baird said, is for California to either be forced to add thousands more legislators or that the state would refuse and let Jefferson leave.

Baird had just finished an impassioned speech about Jefferson in Placerville last month when Riley Taresh, 19, stepped up to the microphone, her voice solemn.

“How much longer do we have to wait?” she asked. “I only have a few more years where I can go to school here before I have to leave because I won’t be able to afford to stay in California.”

Taresh, of Shingle Springs, works part time at Payless ShoeSource while attending Folsom Lake College. She can’t afford to move out of her parents’ home. She wants to work in the medical field and stay in Northern California, but “as a working-class poor, it is not possible for me,” she said. She believes her chances at getting into a four-year state university were hindered, in part, because she is white.

“I’m like, excuse me, I have to work my butt off to get anywhere, and you’re going to hand illegals … a driver’s license, you’re going to hand them an education, and I have to work my butt off until I’m in tears and begging for help to get anywhere. No.”

Mike Murray, 32, of Rocklin, said he hates “the perception that it is these old white people that just want to go around and spit their tobacky and shoot their guns.”

Murray has been trying to attract younger, more diverse people. He sees Jefferson as a “reset button.” An uncle of his packed up his business and moved to Texas because of high taxes. His in-laws are frustrated by California’s strict gun laws, which, he said, aren’t feasible for them since they are rural farmers who would have to wait a half-hour for police if someone broke in.

I just like the whole idea of getting back to the Constitution, getting back to the principles that made this country great in the first place.

Sally Rapoza

Just after 7 a.m. on a recent Friday, Terry Rapoza stood before the Sunrise Rotary Club at a Redding Best Western explaining the case for Jefferson while his wife, Sally, handed out pamphlets.

A stout, mustachioed man with a booming belly-laugh, Rapoza said there was “no rule of law in the state of California.” He recently called a White House hotline to say Gov. Jerry Brown had repeatedly violated the Constitution.

A gregarious couple in their 60s, the Rapozas, of Redding, helped start a local tea party group shortly after President Obama took office. A 2009 tea party protest at Redding’s Sundial Bridge drew some 2,000 people, and their son, Clayton, a labor organizer and Civil War reenactor, dressed as a Revolutionary War minuteman and led protesters across the walkway.

“I just like the whole idea of getting back to the Constitution, getting back to the principles that made this country great in the first place,” Sally Rapoza said of Jefferson.

For the Rapozas, California’s sanctuary policies are emblematic of the unchecked power of the state Democratic party. They were thrilled when the Shasta County Board of Supervisors approved a non-sanctuary resolution last month.

“Why are we allowing illegal aliens to come into our country?” Sally said. “I mean, that’s an invasion. … It feels like our rights are being diminished and their rights are being exploited, actually, because the Democrats want votes and the Republicans want cheap workers.”

Sally, whose organizing skills earned her the moniker Rally Sally, uses her Facebook page to live-stream events and drum up Jefferson support. The official State of Jefferson website lists her as a social media organizer. She also shares political posts on her page, including Breitbart articles and a meme calling Hillary Clinton “the Russian spy who hacked our primaries.”

Terry co-hosts a weekly AM radio show, “Jefferson State of Mine,” with Carpenter. It opens with a country song about Jefferson: It’s a wave on a dusty road. It’s a logger’s heavy load. It’s the cattle on the hills. It’s the ridge full of thrills.

In the small mountain town of Burney, Harold and Janet Chandler live on a quiet street among the pine trees. They have a Jefferson sign in their yard and Jefferson coffee mugs in their cupboards.

The couple — she a retired school teacher, he a retired California Highway Patrol officer — moved to Burney in 1991, when it was a bustling logging town with two clothing stores, two shoe stores, two grocery stores, they said. But the timber mills cut back. The families left. Now, shuttered storefronts line Main Street.

Janet, who unsuccessfully ran for county supervisor in 2016 and openly supported Jefferson, said regulations would be eased in the new state, bringing back jobs — and hope. She and Harold are on a committee that recently finished writing a 29-page Jefferson constitution.

“When we first started handing out brochures and carrying signs at parades, people would say, ‘What’s Jefferson?’” Janet said. “Then, the phrase became, ‘Oh, it’s a good idea, but it’s never going to happen.’ Now, they’re saying, ‘When are you going to get this done?’”

Don't forget southern Oregon, from Bend south and the Cascade mountains eastward. We were originally included in this movement.
 

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It would have happened in 1941 except for the advent of WWII.

We've a president who would look favorably to the split. Please, this should not be about political subjects. I loved my time in San Luis Obispo in the late 80's. It's a subject for our friends there.
 

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DeepseekerADS

DeepseekerADS

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California 'three states' plan OK'd for November ballot

California 'three states' plan OK'd for November ballot | Fox News

By Amy Lieu | Fox News

An initiative to divide California into three states has received enough signatures to qualify it for the November ballot, the California secretary of state's office confirmed Tuesday.

The three-states campaign, dubbed “Cal-3,” submitted more than 600,000 signatures.

Tim Draper, a billionaire Silicon Valley venture capital investor, sponsored the ballot measure to divide America’s most populous state into three jurisdictions, the Mercury News of San Jose, Calif., reported.

-- California would be made up of six mainly coastal counties, including Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

-- Northern California would include 40 counties from Santa Cruz to the Oregon border, including San Francisco and Sacramento, the state’s current capital.

-- Southern California would comprise 12 counties, including Fresno, Kern, Orange and San Diego counties.

“California government has rotted,” Draper told the Mercury News last month. “We need to empower our population to improve their government.”

However, the ballot measure faces long odds.

A SurveyUSA poll found that 72 percent of registered California voters opposed the proposal, while only 17 percent support it, the report said.

Even if voters approved the plan, it would still require approval from the California Assembly and Senate, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Then the plan would have to overcome likely court challenges -- and still win approval from Congress, the Hill reported.

Steven Maviglio, a Democratic political consultant who opposes breaking up the Golden State, told the Mercury News that Draper’s initiative was taking the wrong track.

“Splitting California into three new states will triple the amount of special interests, lobbyists, politicians and bureaucracy,” Maviglio said in an email. “California government can do a better job addressing the real issues facing the state, but this measure is a massive distraction that will cause political chaos and greater inequality.”

If passed, it would be the first division of a U.S. state since 1863 when West Virginia was created, the Times reported. California, admitted to the Union on Sept. 9, 1850, has faced more than 200 attempts at boundary reconfiguration, divisions and even secession over the course of its history, the report said.

Draper previously proposed splitting the state into six separate states in 2012 and 2014, but election officials invalidated many of the signatures his campaign collected, the Hill reported.

Last summer, Draper formally submitted the three-states proposal.

“Three states will get us better infrastructure, better education and lower taxes,” Draper told the Times in an email. “States will be more accountable to us and can cooperate and compete for citizens.”

Analysts from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics predict that the new California and Northern California would be Democratic-leaning, while Southern California would be a swing state.

"This measure would cost taxpayers billions of dollars to pay for the massive transactional costs of breaking up the state, whether it be universities, parks, or retirement systems,” Maviglio told the Times.

Meanwhile, Shaun Bowler, a political science professor at the University of California at Riverside, told the Mercury News that “this isn’t as easy or straightforward as its supporters want to make out.”

But Draper remains optimistic.

“These three states,” Draper told the Mercury News last month, “create hope and opportunity for Californians.”
 

SeabeeRon

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Thanks DeepseekerADS! This most recent proposal in no way addresses "The State of Jefferson" by the way he has it divided.

For the record, I would be against any division on the state.
 

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DeepseekerADS

DeepseekerADS

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Thanks DeepseekerADS! This most recent proposal in no way addresses "The State of Jefferson" by the way he has it divided.
For the record, I would be against any division on the state.

Thanks Ron!

Really, I have no horse in this race, but do find it entertaining. But then there is the serious argument of outlying areas of the state on the losing end of the finances - i.e. the taxes going to urban centers and rural areas left without financing of local improvements.
 

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