Rural counties vote to break away from California in new secession push

Momentum is building behind a Republican leader’s proposal for rural California areas to split off from the rest of the Golden — as two counties are set to vote Tuesday to support the proposal.

Yuba County supervisors adopted a resolution to back the split in Tuesday morning, and Sutter County supervisors had it on their agenda approve in the late afternoon. Both counties encompass rural swaths of land north of Sacramento.

Last year, as Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom engineered an anti-Trump gerrymandering of the state’s congressional districts, then-state Assembly GOP Leader James Gallagher pitched a map of his own: splitting California into two states so conservative and rural areas would feel more represented.

“This morning, I’m saying, ‘Gavin, let my people go.’ We would like a better way forward, and we can no longer abide a government that gives us no voice,” Gallagher said at a press conference introducing the pitch.

Under Gallagher’s legislative resolution, California’s 35 inland counties — covering most of Northern California, the Sierra Nevada, the Central Valley and the Inland Empire — would become a new state. Yuba and Sutter counties would be included.

The measure by Gallagher, who is currently running for Congress, will likely go nowhere in the Democrat-controlled state legislature. The votes by the two counties are also largely symbolic.

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Still, their frustration with Newsom and California Democrats is real, supporters of the resolution said.

“If you look at the funds Governor Newsom has wasted, both on the train to nowhere…homelessness… the amount of corruption in this state is unbelievable,” said Yuba County Supervisor Andy Vasquez Jr. “We’re ruled by San Francisco, Los Angeles. We don’t have any choice.”

Another supervisor, Renick House, said he’s been lobbying for rural counties to get their fair share of state tax revenue.

“The representation would be great if we could actually have a state that represented the rural counties without having to spend millions and billions of dollars on lobbying for things that we should already receive,” he said.

Newsom has dismissed the idea of a split as a nonsensical political ploy.

“A person who seeks to split California does not deserve to hold office in the Golden State,” Newsom’s office previously said. “This is a stunt that will go nowhere.”