The Commonwealth of Zion on Puck was created as part of a comprehensive, omnibus compromise. The Republican-controlled Senate had been dragging its feet for years at admitting new states because they could very well lose control of the chamber due to the inherent Democratic-advantage in many of those new states. But they agreed to create and admit the Commonwealth of Zion and it's three states (and two territories) as part of a compromise package that included the withdrawal of certain judicial nominees, the approval of certain other judicial nominees and the extension of Gibbs era tax cuts for another ten years. The three new states (Providence, Bemidji and Sequoyah) would go onto elect 5 Democrats and 1 Republican to the Senate.
Puck itself is a strange world. The closest moon to Uranus, it is quite warm during the day but extremely cold at night. It rotates slowly, with three weeks of day followed by three days of night--The Long Night. It's home to an aboriginal species known simply as the Tripods, one of the most alien of all aborigines that humans have so far encountered. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about 5.1% of American adults nationwide have a serious mental illness (a mental, behavioral or emotional disorder that results in serious functional impairment, which substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities). But on Puck, that number is much higher, with NIMH estimating that nearly 22% of all adults in Zion suffering from a serious mental illness, largely depression, anxiety and PTSD. Likewise, the suicide rate is much higher. The nationwide rate is 10.46 suicides per 100,000, while on Zion, it's at 34.6 per 100,000. It's not just the United States, with other nations reporting much higher levels of mental illness and suicide than normal.
Despite this, Zion's population has grown, especially after its accession into the Union. The
2133 Zion premier election was the first of its kind on Puck, and was of particular interest because the commonwealth decided on a jungle primary system. There were five major Democratic candidates and one Republican. Leading the way for the Democrats was Milton Maynes, Jr., a Mormon and labor lawyer who had previously been the Attorney General of Montezuma and Solicitor General of Xanadu before he settled on Puck as legal counsel to the Federal Representative and later the AFL-CIO chapter. Julius O'Hara was the favored candidate of the unions, having served as President of the International Longshoremen's Association in Bemidji and also in the Bemidji Territorial Legislature. Telfair Gomez was the Territorial Secretary (now Secretary of State) of Bemidji and had the backing of the state's large black population. Elizabeth Scrivener was a professor of history at the Layola Nautiulus School, a Jesuit institution, and had the backing of the Christian Left and the party's liberals. The final Democrat was J.K. Kinsey, a former Minuteman general with the backing of the neo-fascist Pioneer Alliance. All five of them ran on broadly similar platform of gun rights, worker's rights and overwhelming response to the abo threat, with many of them trying to come up with the most overwhelming, most violent response to the Tripods to ensure American safety. Meanwhile, the only Republican in the race--business owner Nancy Renner of Providence--tried to talk about gun control and mental health. There had been 7 school shootings in Zion in 2133 that had left 47 dead, but she was mostly ignored.
In the first round, the five Democrats all finished within 60,000 votes of each other, with the top three (Maynes, O'Hara and Gomez) finsihed within 22,000. O'Hara squeaked by Gomez to make it into the run off. As with the primary, there was very little that actually separated the two. Maynes had the backing of the Catholics and Columbianists, while blacks and orcs supported O'Hara. What few Republicans there were mostly sat out, while Kinsey and the Pioneer Alliance dithered until the very end. Maynes won another close election in the runoff, making him the first Premier of Zion.