ShareThisThey don't care how you slice it: Californians think the idea of splitting up the state is still baloney.
In fact, they are less in favor of bisecting the Golden State than at any time since 1981. And it doesn't matter much whether the proposal to make two states out of one is proposed along longitudinal or latitudinal lines.
At least that's what the Field Poll results say. A survey taken during the last week of February found that a whopping 82 percent of those polled disapproved of splitting the state into Eastern California and Western California.
A hefty 71 percent didn't like the idea of formally dividing Northern California from Southern California.
"It's a crazy idea," said Terry Nguyen, a 38-year-old Santa Ana resident who was standing just outside the state capitol, where the occupants are intimately familiar with crazy ideas.
"How would you divide up the water or the roads? How would you decide where the borders would be? It's just crazy."
Maybe so, but not if you raise chickens, or are concerned that those who do raise chickens should be allowed to raise those chickens as they see fit.
See, this former California Assembly member named Bill Maze has come up with the idea of splitting the state roughly along the lines of those who raise chickens and those who just eat them.
Maze proposes spinning off 13 coastal counties from Los Angeles to Marin into one state, while the remaining 45 counties would, well, remain.
According to Maze's "Downsize California" Web site (www.downsizeca.org), the split is necessary because the state has become ungovernable. Apparently, this became apparent to Central Valley farming interests after voters approved Proposition 2 last November.
Rosalie Grassi concurred with that sentiment, if not the chicken-based reasoning.
"I believe people that live in cities have a different thought pattern," said Grassi, a 66-year-old California homemaker." I think they tolerate more crime, they oppose the death penalty. I'd definitely like to see a split."
Grassi also said she would like to live in a California without San Francisco in it and that she thought California was just "about average" as a place to live.
This demonstrates a differing thought pattern than 61 percent of those in the San Francisco Bay Area, who rated California as "one of the best places to live," presumably in the whole universe of places to live.
Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll, said he thought Bay Area people were so happy with California because their part of it was grandly located, diverse in population and lifestyles, and "was much more upscale in terms of education."
In 1993, the last time the Field Poll asked the split-state question, 60 percent disapproved the north-south split. In 1992, it was 67 percent, and in 1981, it was 72 percent.
This is the first time the Field Poll has asked about an east-west split.
Crazy or not, the idea of multiple Californias has been around almost as long as the state itself. In 1850, the gold-mining burg of Rough and Ready split from the brand-new state for three months, over a mining tax dispute. The Nevada County town reportedly came back after bartenders in surrounding communities refused to serve beverages to "foreigners."
E-mail Steve Wiegand at swiegand(at)sacbee.com
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit Sacramento Bee
