When Gavin Newsom was elected governor of California in 2018, he won San Bernardino County, which lies east of Los Angeles, by a three-percentage-point margin. However, when he was reelected, he lost the county to Republican candidate Brian Dahle, who defeated him by a five-percentage-point margin. The shift in Newsom’s fortunes in San Bernardino County, a predominantly Hispanic region with 2.2 million residents and the largest county by area in the United States, reflects poorly on his ability to appeal to working-class Californians outside progressive cities. And the dissatisfaction has gotten even worse during Newsom’s second term in office. In November, the county voted to explore measures “up to and including” seceding from California in order to secure increased funding. (READ MORE: Gavin Newsom Is Not Having a Good Time) The ballot measure, which passed with 50.6 percent of the vote, asked: “Do the citizens of San Bernardino County want the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors to study all options to obtain its fair share of state and federal resources, up to and including secession?” The man who proposed the ballot measure, San Bernardino County developer Jeff Burum, said upon suggesting it that the county would be known as “Empire” were it to become its own state. It would be all but virtually impossible for the county to become its own state, as both the California Legislature and the U.S. Congress would need to agree. That makes the call for considering secession more an expression of discontent than a genuine policy pursuit. The county’s supervisors, who voted 4-0 to include the measure to consider secession on the ballot, said as much. For example, Supervisor Janice Rutherford said, “I don’t believe it’s feasible politically or financially to secede from California. However, I absolutely join with my constituents who have a growing, palpable anger about everything from high gas prices to burdensome taxes.” But for others, the prospect of secession is serious. Burum argues that, since San Bernardino is forgotten by California’s centralized government and deprived of its “fair share” of resources, secession is the best political solution. In speaking to CalMatters this week of his effort to split off the county into the state of Empire, he compared San Bernardino’s stance toward California to colonial America’s rebellion against the British. “People are revolting because they can’t relate to the purpose of government when we were created,” he said. “When the government doesn’t realize it’s become one of the bad actors, it’s time to speak up.” As a result of the vote in favor of the ballot measure regarding secession, the board approved a plan to hire a consulting firm to “determine whether and to what degree San Bernardino County is not receiving its fair share of support,” said the county’s spokesperson, Martha Guzman-Hurtado, according to the San Bernardino Sun. The spokesperson said that some of the consultants’ tasks will include quantifying what a “fair share” of state resources would look like for the county, recommending strategies “that could impact the county’s ability to capture future available resources at both the state and federal level,” and researching “the viability and requirements of the county to seek approval to form a new state.” The Board of Supervisors says it will release a report by Tuesday evaluating the finances of that plan. (READ MORE: Is California Trying to Kill Its Tech Economy?) The likelihood that the vote will not lead to secession does not diminish its significance. The fact that a working-class county that once supported Newsom is now so dissatisfied that it voted to consider leaving the state bodes poorly for how Newsom’s governorship will be remembered — and for his future political ambitions. After all, no other state in the union had a county vote to consider secession last year, let alone a mega county with 2.2 million people. Of course, California does have a long history of secession proposals that stem from its many distinct and divergent regions as well as its vast size. The most well-known of the endeavors is the plan to create the state of Jefferson out of northern counties in California and southern counties in Oregon. But dissatisfaction with Newsom is not isolated to San Bernardino County. Amid anger over his focus on raising his national profile and California’s unprecedented budget deficit crisis, which is forcing major cuts, his approval rating has plummeted to levels significantly lower than after the French Laundry scandal. In late October, just before the Nov. 8 election when San Bernardino voters threatened secession, a Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll found that only 44 percent of voters approved of Newsom’s performance as governor, while 49 percent disapproved. In more recent polls, the outlook for Newsom has slightly improved, but it remains well below where he stood for the majority of his governorship. For example, a February 2024 poll from the Public Policy Institute of California found that 47 percent of voters approved of Newsom’s job performance while 50 percent disapproved. This is in a state that President Joe Biden won by a 29-point margin in 2020. (READ MORE: Newsom Picks Pontificating Over Governing) Newsrooms’ low approval rating likely also stems from California’s numerous crises, many of which appear to result from poor policy decisions. The state’s housing prices are higher than in any state except Hawaii. Shoplifting in Los Angeles nearly doubled last year. In 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, 817,669 residents left California. The state has experienced the highest post-pandemic food inflation costs in the nation. Its homelessness crisis is unmatched, with more than 181,000 Californians living on the streets. Companies are also fleeing the state, with at least 358 major companies having left since 2005. Additionally, California struggles in education, ranking 29th in educational attainment. It’s evident why dissatisfaction with Newsom’s leadership has grown to the point where a county has voted to explore secession. The post Proposal for State of Empire Shows Dissatisfaction in California appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.