Secession Movements Unjustified Despite Government Overreach

In one of the lesser-covered stories at the close of 2022, San Bernardino County voted to allow its citizens to consider seceding from California. Years of progressive misrule and rising prices have led to civil and social discontentment with the California state government in this diverse county of 2.2 million people.

The actual likelihood of San Bernardino County becoming a new state is comically small. Most of its citizens see the ballot proposal as an unserious publicity stunt. So does Kristin Washington, the local Democratic Party chairwoman. “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,” she said. She’s right about that, and probably right about the proposal being a form of partisan electioneering that has little to do with actual secession. After all, secession proposals aren’t anything particularly new in California. The state has seen 220 proposals for secession in some form or another come and go; none of them got very far or were treated very seriously. San Bernardino’s proposal isn’t likely to be any different.

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Miles Smith IV

Miles Smith IV is a professor in the history department at Hillsdale College.

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In one of the lesser-covered stories at the close of 2022, San Bernardino County voted to allow its citizens to consider seceding from California. Years of progressive misrule and rising prices have led to civil and social discontentment with the California state government in this diverse county of 2.2 million people.

The actual likelihood of San Bernardino County becoming a new state is comically small. Most of its citizens see the ballot proposal as an unserious publicity stunt. So does Kristin Washington, the local Democratic Party chairwoman. “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,” she said. She’s right about that, and probably right about the proposal being a form of partisan electioneering that has little to do with actual secession. After all, secession proposals aren’t anything particularly new in California. The state has seen 220 proposals for secession in some form or another come and go; none of them got very far or were treated very seriously. San Bernardino’s proposal isn’t likely to be any different.