AHC: Change California's socio-political culture

JJohnson

Banned
Given any PoD from 1900 onward, if possible, the challenge is to make California as business-friendly and culturally conservative as Texas, North Dakota, South Dakota, or Montana, so that by 2013, the state has either no income tax or very low income tax, minimal business-stifling regulations, and if the movie industry is still in the state, it works more like 30s/40s Hollywood and not the modern Hollywood in that movie stars are very private and not as publicly self-destructive of themselves.

Where could such a divergence take place?
 
California's surprisingly conservative away from LA and SF. If you go inland, it's as conservative as OKC, and the 'burbs skew GOP too.

However, for the climate you want, heavily unionized high-tech defense contractors and Hollywood would have to be elsewhere and the California economy be dependent on mining, timber, and other industries.

Basically, you'd have to butterfly the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, WWII mobilization, and establishment of the UC/CSU college systems for California to be what you want. In 1920, it was as you described.
 
Maybe the movement to divide the state into a Northern and Southern half succeeds - the Southern half would, aside from LA, be dyed in the wool red, and with some more defense contractors, migrants to the sunbelt and less interchange between San Fransico and LA, you could well get a Southern California that meets your parameters.
 

JJohnson

Banned
If it were dividing California, where's a good place to do it, assuming that's done in 1850 when it became a state? If this is an accurate map of 1850, would you suggest San Diego county plus Baja California would be an ok-sized state? Or the 37th parallel/San Bernardino's northern border?
 

JJohnson

Banned
California's surprisingly conservative away from LA and SF. If you go inland, it's as conservative as OKC, and the 'burbs skew GOP too.

However, for the climate you want, heavily unionized high-tech defense contractors and Hollywood would have to be elsewhere and the California economy be dependent on mining, timber, and other industries.

Basically, you'd have to butterfly the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, WWII mobilization, and establishment of the UC/CSU college systems for California to be what you want. In 1920, it was as you described.

I was thinking to avoid LA growing via the aqueduct, possibly due to some political shenanigans of some kind and leaving the Owens Valley alone, as part of the alteration. That might help a bit there. I don't know how to alter SF unless I alter immigration perhaps. Hollywood, maybe it can have multiple points for different studios.

How'd the Dust Bowl era and Great Depression affect California? And the UC/CSU system?
 
Avoid turning immigrants away from the GOP and don't close all the bases in Cali. California used to be a rather safe red state,until Clinton.
 
@JJohnson- read The Grapes of Wrath and tell me California wasn't affected by the Great Depression or the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck as a whole did a lot to show how California changed from a mostly rural state to an industrial, urbanized juggernaut from 1930 on.
That's why even Cali GOP pols such as Earl Warren and Richard Nixon were very liberal by modern standards b/c they saw things go swirly vision right on their doorstep for people they knew and cared about in their lifetimes.

WWII injected a note of affluence for all with the defense plant buildups
drawing hundreds of thousands of black and white migrants from across the country to work in them. The UC/CSU system educated a ton of folks (for free or dirt cheap) after WWII that laid the groundwork for a lasting liberal consensus.
 
You can start changing it by killing Thomas Edison off as early as you can. LA wasn't an amazingly important and huge until after Hollywood settled there. Hollywood formed because LA was literally the only place in America willing to protect filmmakers from Edison's thugs (who would straight up murder film makers using European made film equipment). The movie industry stays in New York. This also prevents the Hollywood monopoly of the 20s/30s.

LA is still going to become a major city, but maybe not the most culturally significant city in America barring NYC.
 
Is Eddison that much of a super villain? I've heard that he is the cause of everything from the music industries hatred of online downloads to the suppression of free energy.
 
Is Eddison that much of a super villain? I've heard that he is the cause of everything from the music industries hatred of online downloads to the suppression of free energy.

Edison is probably up there with Joseph P. Kennedy Sr on historical figures that were evil enough to be comic book villains. There's a video out there of someone who survived an attack by Edison's thugs in the early days of film making, when film makers ran to Arizona instead of California (Edison sent thugs on horses, dressed up as cowboys and everything). He also personally stole A Trip to the Moon from the original French owners and got exclusive rights to screen it in America, despite never aiding in it's production at all.
 
The socio-political culture of California was basically formed in the 1840s and thru out the late 1800s as the US population moved west. The social safety value of the East was the West - after California the weird, wacky, wild and colorful can't go much further west.

Los Angeles' first leg up to regional dominace was that it persuaded the Union Pacific, IIRC, to build its railway to them and not to Santa Monica. Santa Monica makes much more sense since it has access to the sea.
 
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