There can be no doubt that the relatively few Californians strongly interested in becoming an independent country have had high hopes that President Donald Trump’s “War on California” would drive many new adherents to their camp. So far, it’s not happening at a level that can be taken seriously. That’s the upshot of a new poll taken by the YouGov survey service for the Carlsbad-based Independent California Institute (ICI).
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Let’s list a few things Trump has done to harm California: He’s eliminated the state’s unique ability to make smog rules for the state’s vehicles, once thought securely written into the 1970 Clean Air Act. He’s invented a series of Los Angeles “riots,” which at most were a few incidents of vandalism, and used it to send thousands of soldiers into Southern California. He’s also eliminated funding to bring English-learning schoolchildren and migrant kids into the academic mainstream.
These are just a few anti-California measures he’s taken, besides ordering the region to undergo the nation’s most intensive deportation drive ever, claiming to go after seriously criminal illegal immigrants but mostly picking up undocumented workers who broke no other laws. Apparently, all this has not yet had a huge negative impact on mainstream Californians.
The new poll does say Californians’ confidence in the federal government has nosedived since Trump took office, with 50% of Californians saying they now trust Sacramento more than Washington, D.C., and just 23% holding the opposite view. Those numbers are significantly changed from February, when only 34% trusted Sacramento more while 18% trusted the feds.
When asked if they’d vote for a peaceful secession ballot initiative, though, only 44% were in favor, with 54% against. Is it possible Californians could shift radically to the side of secession in the foreseeable future?
“It would probably take something quite direct,” says Coyote Codornices Marin, the ICI’s director. “For instance, if Trump were to say something like ‘We don’t need California,’ that could seriously drive secession. But I strongly doubt he would ever be stupid enough to say that.”
Even without such a seminal event, 71% of Californians believe they’d be better off if California somehow gained special autonomous status within the United States, something that seems ever less likely under the Trump administration, which seems bent on allowing California less autonomy, not more.
This reality does not faze the 60% of Californians who said they want California’s 52-member House delegation in Congress to back autonomy with “hardball tactics” like refusing to vote for federal budgets as long as California receives billions of dollars less in federal spending than it pays in federal taxes.
Other significant findings in the poll of 500 Californians included 71% wanting a new state law enforcement division focused on violent extremism and hate crimes, rather than leaving such enforcement strictly up to local police and sheriffs.
A similar 72% want California police to have authority to arrest federal immigration officials who “act maliciously or knowingly exceed their authority under federal law.” Also, 80% want California to control its borders “more like a country,” checking for illegal firearms and other types of contraband, rather than merely seeking out perishable fruit.
“Californians are ready to govern themselves and are focused on pragmatic solutions,” says Timothy Vollmer, the ICI’s vice chair.
That leaves out the Trump factor, though. The president wants exactly the reverse from California, and seems most compliant with California desires when they are addressed to him with abject obsequiousness.
“Yes, our poll numbers for secession are at a record high,” said the ICI’s Marin, who added, though, that the numbers also indicate a steep uphill climb would still be required, especially without special autonomous status as a step in that direction.
“Many people just don’t think it’s possible to be sovereign in the immediate future,” said Marin.
That could change, though, if Trump’s steadfast irritation with California becomes more active and focused on depriving Californians of basic rights.
Email Thomas Elias at [email protected], and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.