Another California movement seeks to create a 51st state

The proposed New California map

The difference between rural and urban areas in a state can be striking, and California has seen several separatist movements, mostly to break off the rural north. The latest one goes farther, "separating rural areas in California from the state's coastal cities and Sacramento, with supporters saying the state has become 'ungovernable,'" Julia Manchester reports for The Hill.

The conservative-oriented movement says California is a "failed state" because of its high taxes and declining health care. "There’s something wrong when you have a rural county such as this one, and you go down to Orange County which is mostly urban, and it has the same set of problems, and it happens because of how the state is being governed and taxed,” founder Robert Paul Preston told CBS Sacramento.

"Unlike other separation movements in the past, the state of New California wants to do things by the book, citing Article 4, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution and working with the state legislature to get it done," CBS reports. "The group is organized with committees and a council of county representatives, but say it will take 10 to 18 months before they are ready to fully engage with the state legislature." Abby Hamblin of the Los Angeles Times writes that the effort is a long shot, to say the least. But it could be a barometer for rural sentiment.