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T-wo Califomias The Truth About the Split-State Movement TWO CALIFORNIAS Michael DiLeo & Eleanor Smith Island Press Covelo, California Copyright© 1983 by Michael DiLeo and Eleanor Smith All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Address: Island Press, Star Route 1, Box 38, Covelo, California 95428. Edited by Bruce Colman Designed by Nancy Austin Cover drawing by Bill Oetinger Cover photo by Frank Wing Copy edited by Mary Lou VanDeventer Composed in lTC Italia and Paladium by Ann Flanagan Typography, Berkeley, and Patrick Miller, Berkeley. Printed and bound by Consolidated Printers, Berkeley. Library of Congress Cataloging In Publication Data DiLeo, Michael, 1946- Two Californias. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Decentralization in government-California. 2. California-Politics and government. 3. Regionalism California. 4. Water resources development-California. I. Smith, Eleanor, 1954- II. Title. JS45l.C25D54 1983 320.9794 83-307 ISBN 0-933280-16-5 (pbk.) Printed in the United States of America. Contents Foreword 1 Barbara Dean Preface 3 Chronology of Split-State Movements 6 1 The Golden State, 1820-1914 9 2 Los Angeles Rising, 1914-1982 45 3 A Tale of Two Cultures 73 The Two Califomias Photo Quiz 94 4 Water Politics and the Third California 109 5 Imagine Two Californias 159 6 California Fusion-Healing the Golden State 199 Notes 229 Bibliography 233 Index 239 Fore-word hen Jeremy Joan Hewes, a long time contributing editor to Island Press, suggested that we do a book on the concept of two Cali fornias, the idea spun through our editorial offices provocatively. At the time (spring '82), California was gearing up for a vote on building the Peripheral Canal, and splitting the state in two was a possibility that appeared with increasing frequency (and seriousness) in the media. It popped up even more often around Covelo, the small, Northern California town that is the site of the Island Press editorial offices. If California voters approved construction of the canal, which seemed likely at the time, the Press offices stood an excellent chance of joining the rest of Round Valley at the bottom of a lake. California water interests' next move would almost inev itably be to build a dam on the Eel River at Dos Rios, in order to keep the canal full. Split the state? Not a bad idea, from the standpoint of a frustrated and seemingly powerless Northerner. We were fortunate that Eleanor Smith and Michael DiLeo came forward to write Two Californias. Both are talented researchers and agreed to keep an open mind about splitting the state while they wrote the book. Eleanor, who was born in Orange County, spent most of her childhood on rural Long Island. She moved back to Newport Beach for junior high school, high school, and college. After graduating from the University of California at Irvine, in 1976, she moved to the Bay Area and worked as managing editor of Not Man Apart, published by Friends of the Earth. She left FOE in 1981, and has since done investigative reporting for a variety of regional and national magazines. She now lives in Berkeley. A native New Yorker, Michael graduated from Duke University in North Carolina in 1968 and migrated to UCLA, where he received his MA in history. After that, he moved north to the Bay Area and on, for a time, to the rugged North Coast mountains, where he was active in environmental work. He cur rently lives in Marin County and writes history and government text books for Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Although an affirmative answer to the split-state question had intriguing appeal, we felt it was premature. Discussions that went beyond the obvious one-liners and utopian scenarios had quickly uncovered a startling complexity of serious issues. We didn't expect Michael and Eleanor to be unbiased (who, 1 2 TWO CALIFORNIAS having lived in this complicated state longer than three weeks, could genuinely have no opinion on the questions involved?), but we did hope that their biases would work creatively. As you will see, that is just what happened. The authors have brought the extraordinary range of their own experiences to bear. Both have lived long periods in both parts of California (or, if you will, in both Californias); both have hands-on experience with some of the difficult environmental issues that face the state; and both have, in addition, points of view influenced by time and residence in other parts of the country. These qualities became increasingly important as the book took shape. An idea that, on its surface, captures the imagination, became a multi-faceted metaphor with echoes back into California's history and forward into our collective future. The urge to split the state raises some very basic questions about the ways we choose to live together. Or about the ways we choose to live apart. These questions always remain, in the most fundamental sense, open. Barbara Dean Executive Director, Island Press Covelo February 1983 Preface [!] wo Californias: the idea that a deep rift exists between Northern and Southern California permeates the folklore of this sprawling state. Millions of people believe wholeheartedly that there are two Californias (they are talking about culture). Millions of other people are convinced that there should be two Californias (in political terms). Of course, there are countless others who think nothing of the kind. California as it is and as it should be is something that, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Both of us began this book with a strong sense that splitting the state might actually solve California's problems. In our early research we uncovered a spate of similar secession movements around the land. Canada, of course, is besieged by separatist forces in Quebec, where a question of cultural integrity is involved, and to a lesser extent in the western provinces, where money and natural resources lie at the heart of the problem. In the United States there may be a dozen such efforts. Separatism seems to have become a full-blown craze. In the Florida keys, fishermen have proposed forming a new state called the Conch Republic. Their biggest gripe appears to be a roadblock placed on the highway to slow the influx of illegal aliens. This, say the fishermen, slows only the flow of traffic and the hauling of seafood to market. In Alaska, some real estate developers have proposed secession to escape annoying restrictions placed by environmentalists from the Lower 48. Chicano radicals in the Southwest want to form the state of Aztlan from the area between San Diego and the Platte River. In Texas a movement led by former state senator Bob Gammage and state representative Dan Kubiak seeks to create five modestly sized states out of one big one. The idea here is to quin tuple Texas's relatively meager representation in the US Senate. (This move ment may technically be the most feasible of all; see chapter 5.) Among the other proposed new political entities are the Republic of South Jersey, the Republic of Nantucket, the Republic of Martha's Vineyard, and the Superior Republic, in the far upper Midwest. What's going on here? we asked ourselves. Is secession a cop-out, a fad, a cheap publicity gag, an American atavism left over from the Civil War, or is it an important political current? Though unqualified to speak on situations in other states, we have concluded that the North-South split in California is serious business. We have three reasons for this opinion. 3