Three New Yorks: A Good Idea With Room For Improvement

Last year, a billionaire named Tom Draper proposed splitting up the mega-state of California into three distinct states.  He had previously tried to force a proposal to split California into six states onto the ballot.  Both efforts failed.  I wrote a blog describing why I saw three Californias as a bad idea.  Three Californias would have succeeded in the effort of making the gargantuan California smaller but as for giving the disaffected Californians in the northern and eastern part of the state a voice, it failed miserably.  Under the proposal, conservatives in Northern California would have had to watch their votes get cancelled out by liberals in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, the ultra-liberal Mecca that would have comprised the largest population center in the proposed state of North California.  The same would have applied in the proposed state of South California, where the more conservative voters in Central California would have had their votes effectively nullified by the more numerous Democratic voters in San Diego and the surrounding border communities.  If the proposal had passed (and Congress agreed to it), conservatives would not have started out with an advantage in any of the three Californias.

This year, State Assemblyman David DiPietro has proposed splitting the mega-state of New York into three regions; “each controlled by its own governors and legislatures.”  DiPietro represents Western New York, which has “the most population loss with 18 to 35 year olds.” I have long supported an autonomous upstate New York but DiPietro’s proposal takes the partition a little bit further.

DiPietro spearheaded the proposal following the 2018 election, where Democrats retook control of the State Senate; effectively making New York a one-party state, even though New York City has had an outsized influence on New York politics for quite some time. DiPietro’s proposal calls for a skeleton of the state government to remain intact but it would cede much of its authority to regional governments.  Section 3e of the bill outlines the powers that will remain in the hands of the state government; which include sales taxes, and statewide and Federal elections.  DiPietro’s proposal also means that the dynamics of the Electoral College and the makeup of the United States Senate, and likely the United States Congress, will not change.  America will still have 50 states and New Yorkers in all three regions will likely have to put up with Senators Schumer and Gillibrand for the foreseeable future, assuming that the latter does not achieve success in her Presidential bid.

Newly elected New York State Senator Daphne Jordan explained the justification for splitting the Empire State up into one or more states: “whether it’s the issue of gun control, the DREAM Act, taxes and spending, parity in school or infrastructure funding, or even the choice for governor, the deepening divide – cultural, economic, and political – between upstate and downstate has grown more pronounced every year.” She forgot to mention the radical abortion bill and fracking, which would cause at least a modest economic winfall in the largely economically depressed Southern Tier.

The roll call vote of the radical abortion bill known as the “Reproductive Health Care Act” definitely proves Jordan’s point. Of the 38 Senators who voted “aye” on the bill, 34 represent districts located at least partially in the heavily populous New York City metropolitan area while only four of the Senators who represent districts located entirely in upstate New York voted for it.

DiPietro said that he hopes that his proposal will spark a nationwide debate about whether or not the rural parts of states with politics dominated by major cities should follow his lead: “My goal is to take this nationwide because a lot of other states are dealing with these problems where the big city dominates the rest of the state, which wants nothing to do with them.”

The New Republic released a map shortly after the 2012 Presidential Election called the “61 States of America.”  The map chronicles how the election might have turned out if several state partition proposals had succeeded.  The new states in this map include Upstate New York, Washington, D.C, West Maryland, Northeast Ohio, Baja Arizona, North Colorado, and an Illinois separate from the rest of Chicago.  In addition, the map splits up California into South California, California, and lumps in Northern California with Southern Oregon to create the new state of “Jefferson.”  The Upper Peninsula of Michigan would become the state of “Superior” while the eastern half of Washington would become “Lincoln.” The map concludes that Romney would have done better but still come up short if all of these new states existed. Under the 50-state map, President Obama won 332 electoral votes while Romney only won 206.  The new map would have enabled Romney to win 247 electoral votes; still short of President Obama’s 310. 

The New Republic used outdated population figures for the states, likely taken in between the 2000 and 2010 censuses, which make it difficult to calculate exactly how President Trump would have done under this map.  Under the New Republic map, President Trump would have won the states of Western Maryland, North Colorado, Illinois, Jefferson, Superior, and Lincoln while losing Baja Arizona, the newly configured version of Michigan, and Northeast Ohio.  Considering the fact that President Trump won the Electoral College under the existing map, his totals would have only increased under the New Republic map, since many of the new states would favor Republicans.

Several other state partition proposals exist that the New Republic map does not take into account, including merging Delaware with the eastern shores of Maryland and Virginia to create “Delmarva,” splitting up North and South Florida, and partitioning Texas. 

If conservatives do not take advantage of these partition ideas, then liberals surely will. Political scientist David Faris has proposed splitting California up into seven states in addition to granting DC and Puerto Rico statehood.  Faris believes that his master plan will lead to more than a dozen new Democratic Senators.  Faris outlines his power grab in detail in his book It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. 

Partition may enable Republicans to enjoy a lasting majority in American politics.  The New Republic map also took a look at how the makeup of the Senate would change if each of the partition proposals in it became reality.  Based on its calculations, this “bizarro United States” would have 60 Democratic Senators and 62 Republican Senators.  That number assumes that every state that voted for Romney would have two Republican Senators while every state that voted for Obama would have two Democratic Senators. Following the 2012 Presidential Election, the Democrats had 55 Senators while Republicans had 45 Senators.  While technically, the Senate consisted of 53 Democrats, 45 Republicans, and 2 Independents; the independents always caucused with (and voted with) the Democrats and The New Republic’s calculation seems to take that into account.  In reality, the Republicans’ share of Senate seats would have likely come out to 57; a few seats short of a majority.  Following the 2012 Presidential Election, Republicans held Senate seats in Obama-won states unaffected by the partitions of the New Republic map: Florida, Iowa, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin while Democrats held Senate seats in a handful of untouched Romney states; Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and West Virginia. 

DiPietro’s proposal comes across like a divorce but in reality, an annulment might actually make more sense.  Governor Cuomo has already made it perfectly clear how he feels about a large share of the New York State electorate, whom he describes as “right-to-life, pro-assault weapon (and) anti-gay” because they believe in the sanctity of life, respecting the Second Amendment, and traditional marriage. According to Governor tax-and-spend, these “extreme conservatives” have “no place in the State of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”

For most, if not all of the people he demeaned in the aforementioned statement, the feeling is mutual.  Three independent New Yorks, which DiPietro’s proposal does not call for, provides everybody with a win-win situation.  Liberals in New York City will no longer have to put up with the detestable “extreme conservatives” that they so despise. Upstate New York will no longer have to watch its residents flee the state for economic opportunity because of no jobs and high taxes.  While the virtue-signallers downstate can continue pardoning immigrants at risk of deportation, performing gay marriages, and taxing their residents to death, Upstate New York can set itself up as a business haven and roll out the welcome mat for Amazon, which pulled out of building a new headquarters in New York City thanks to objections from the new leader of the Democratic Party, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. While opponents of the “Three New Yorks” plan argue that an independent upstate New York would suffer financially since it would lose the tax revenue from the wealthy counties surrounding New York City, DiPietro feels otherwise. According to DiPietro, “without New York City, the rest of this state will take off like a rocket. We’ll control our own resources, we’ll control the unfunded mandates that come from Albany on education, welfare reform, taxating, everything that’s geared toward New York City.”

As for the chances of “Three New Yorks” passing, it definitely looks like an uphill battle.  No state has successfully seceded from an existing state since 1863; when West Virginia split off from the mother state during the Civil War. Liberals, especially those living in New York, see power as everything.  They seem very unlikely to let bygones be bygones and give up their power to “regional governments.”

Nonetheless, I still see the “three New Yorks” bill as a positive force and at the very least, a conversation starter. As The New Republic so aptly pointed out, “the electoral map divides the country neatly into blue states and red states. But blue states include vast conservative stretches; and most red states harbor liberal enclaves, too.” Even if the mass secession as envisioned by The New Republic does not become a reality, maybe other states and jurisdictions will take a look at DiPietro’s idea and give it some thought; especially as modern liberalism has come to rely on the centralization of everything.  Decentralization may serve as the only antidote to the mass centralization of power in state capitals, Washington, D.C, and even power-hungry supranational organizations such as the European Union and the United Nations.  Liberals want unelected bureaucrats and/or elected officials far removed from they people they supposedly represent making decisions about healthcare, education, and other personal issues which the founders of this country never wanted the Federal government to dabble in. 

Regardless of whether or not DiPietrto’s proposal ends up taking off, it remains perfectly clear that the battles between big cities and small towns, conservatism and liberalism, and establishment and anti-establishment will continue at the state, national, and even global level.  These battles will take place as part of the broader culture war that has engulfed America and western civilization as a whole for the past half-century.