ELECTIONS ’92 : STATE ROUNDUP : Rural Voters’ Bid to Divide State Seen as Quixotic Cause

The message rumbling out of the rural north on Election Day was loud and unmistakably clear: We have had it with California, and we want out.

Thirty-one counties voted Tuesday on an advisory measure to chop the state in two, and 27 approved of the idea--with gusto.

So what happens now? Not much, most observers agreed.

Giddy with victory, the rebellious secessionists vowed Wednesday to push legislation to split the state. But the reality of California politics makes their quest decidedly quixotic: The poor, sparsely populated territories yearning for divorce are outmatched by the power of the cities, which have shown little interest in breaking up.

Still, lots of people were contemplating the tea leaves Wednesday, and some predicted the divisionist movement might at least beam a spotlight onto rural California’s problems.

“I view it as a bargaining chit,” said Bruce Cain, associate director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley. “And with term limits bringing all sorts of new people into the Legislature, maybe it will work.”

In other widely watched contests around the state, San Jose voters refused to ante up taxpayer money to build a stadium for the San Francisco Giants, and Sacramento became the first big California city in recent memory to elect a Latino mayor, picking Councilman Joe Serna Jr. from a field of 10 candidates.

Tobacco interests, meanwhile, lost four bitterly fought campaigns to overturn anti-smoking laws--in Visalia, Placerville and Sacramento and El Dorado counties. Voters in Oroville, meanwhile, tossed out a local restriction on smoking in public places.

Perhaps the most intriguing--and to some, innocuous--question facing many Californians this June was the measure gauging support for a plan to split the state. The advisory measure faced voters in 31 mostly rural counties between the Oregon border and the Owens Valley.

The only urban areas voting on the secessionist issue--San Francisco, San Mateo and Solano counties--declared it a bad idea, as did one of the most southern, Mariposa.

It was heartily embraced, however, in California’s most remote reaches. Modoc and Glenn counties voted by a whopping 4-to-1 margin to break away, while Yuba, Shasta and Trinity counties also gave the idea overwhelming support.

“People up here have felt mistreated and not a part of California for quite some time,” said Supervisor Patti Mattingly of Siskiyou County, where 81% of the voters clamored for a divided state. “It’s only natural, I think, that we all spoke so loudly on this.”

Republican Assemblyman Stan Statham of Redding, who engineered the secessionist proposal, said the results “will add immense momentum” to the divisionist effort. Statham plans to introduce legislation June 16 to carve California into two--and possibly three--states.

Other lawmakers, however, warned such a move was doomed to fail and might rankle the powers that be in Sacramento. In addition to winning approval in the state Legislature, Statham would need the consent of Congress.

“I think it would be seen as a mischievous move made at a time when we can ill afford to be divided,” said state Sen. Barry Keene (D-Ukiah).

But Keene added that he and other legislators would do well to heed the cries of disillusionment spilling out of California’s most isolated corners.

“What it tells me is that the problems out there are sufficiently awesome that people are looking for enemies, for somebody to blame,” Keene said. “We need to pay attention to that.”

State Sen. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), chairman of the Senate’s rural caucus, agreed:

“What is most important is that we see this as a wake-up call,” said Thompson. “We have to address the reasons that would lead people to want to split up California.”

Theories abound as to just what those reasons are. There is, undoubtedly, a bit of what political scientist Cain calls “Ross Perotism” at work--a sense that anything but what we have would be a welcome improvement.

Author Ernest Callenbach--who wrote a fantasy novel called “Ecotopia” about a secessionist movement rooted in Northern California, Oregon and Washington--has another theory.

“I see these mysterious secessionist, or regionalist movements as a sort of backlash against the trend toward globalization,” Callenbach said in an interview Wednesday. “We can talk to people in Timbuktu by satellite, and that’s good. But I think it also makes people feel alienated . . . and creates this yearning for smaller entities.”

In the Bay Area, meanwhile, it was not the future of California but the fate of a baseball team--the Giants--that was the hot topic Wednesday.

San Jose Mayor Susan Hammer had hoped voters would approve a plan to raise the local utility tax to pay for a $265-million ballpark to woo the Giants south. But opponents argued that spending taxpayer money on a sports facility was inappropriate in a time of recession, and 55% of the voters agreed.

On Wednesday, Hammer said she believed “that San Jose has lost a significant opportunity” to achieve civic greatness by refusing the Giants. But Kathy Napoli, a leading foe of the project, said voters realized “San Jose has a lot of problems and the stadium is just not a priority.”

The outcome sparked a flurry of activity Wednesday in San Francisco, where the Giants have played since 1958. Mayor Frank Jordan, fearful of being remembered as the mayor who let the Giants get away, formed a committee to explore sites and funding for a downtown ballpark.

Team owner Bob Lurie, who has threatened for six years to move his team out of the Bay Area to escape windblown Candlestick Park, said he planned to confer with baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent and others before determining the Giants’ future.

Splitting the State?

Voters in 31 counties on Tuesday considered an advisory plebiscite asking whether California should be split into two or more parts; Even if voters support the idea, splitting the state would still require approval by the Legislature and Congress.

Divisionists’ position: The Golden State has become unmanageably large and is governed by a system that is unresponsive to its people.

Opponents’ position: Chopping up California will not solve its problems.

Here are the counties that approved and disapproved the question: Approve Alpine Amador Butte Calaveras Colusa Del Norte El Dorado Glenn Inyo Lake Lassen Mendocino Modoc Mono Napa Nevada Placer Plumas Shasta Sierra Siskiyou Sutter Tehama Trinity Tuolumne Yolo Yuba Disapprove Mariposa San Francisco San Mateo Solano