SACRAMENTO, California — The top Republican in the California Assembly will propose splitting the state in two amid the state’s feud over redistricting, calling his proposal a ““two state solution.”
Assemblymember James Gallagher plans on Wednesday to brief reporters on legislation that would create a new state in response to Democrats’ efforts to redraw congressional maps in California — a measure designed to counter a Republican-led redistricting effort in Texas.
“The people of inland California have been overlooked for too long,” he said in a statement. “It’s time for a two state solution.”
Longshot efforts to split California into two or more pieces — often proposed by conservatives in this heavily Democratic state — have flared up any number of times over the years, never successfully.
Gallager’s proposed “two state solution,” a phrase more commonly used in reference to conflict in the Middle East, would include most of Northern California, the Sierra Nevada, the Central Valley and the Inland Empire, splitting coastal, deep-blue California apart from more inland, GOP-heavy swaths of the state.
Before now, Gallagher and other prominent Republicans had focused their campaign against redistricting on claims about “good government.”
“I don’t think Texas should do it. I don’t think any state should do it,” Gallagher said in an interview earlier Tuesday, prior to his announcement.
