Right-leaning California

JJohnson

Banned
What would happen if California were split in twain, with all counties north of San Luis Obispo as "North California" and all south of it, including Baja California, as "South California" with regards to presidential elections? I couldn't change the title of this thread, so apologies there, but how do you think these two Californias would evolve? Would they still have the budget issues OTL California has? Which parties do you see controlling these two states?

(I'm assuming a USA that took California, New Mexico, Texas, Republic of Rio Grande, Sonora, Chihuahua, and Baja after the Mexican-American War)


A side question is, if we keep California as in OTL, which PoD would be necessary so that the state legislature would be fiscally conservative, or fiscally conservative Republican, a majority of the time since 1959? The state currently has a multiple billion dollar deficit for a variety of reasons, so my question would be how to prevent that on a state level.

Admins, this should be moved to "before 1900" if possible. Thanks!
 
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To make it Conservative really depends on the political evolution and just what elements you want to have be Conservative. Modern Conservatism is based on fusion: it combines traditionalist conservatism, fiscal conservatism, and libertarianism and/or neoconservatism. That's how it managed to come back after the Liberal Consensus came crashing down (and it partly helped to bring it crashing down), and how you have things like small town farmers who barely make a living wage protest against social welfare and fight for tax cuts for the wealthy. Modern Conservatism is, oddly, a big tent in the post-big tent era, containing elements which should not really have a concern for one another and often don't (what concern does a fiscal conservative in New York City have for banning gay marriage as anti-Christian, and what concern does a social conservative in Nebraska have for the wealthy getting a tax break), but who are united under the idea of "Conservatism". So it depends on how you have Conservatism evolve.

An initial idea I had for making California more Conservative was a worse Dust Bowl forcing even more people to migrate, or one wherein even more people affected by the Dust Bowl fled to California, but keeping that in mind, the above paragraph is an asterisk on that thought.
 
You essentially would need to prevent the growth of major Urban centers and keep the population living in more subruban style small towns without any big industries outside of Agriculture and resource extraction, without doing that California will stop being Conservative relatively fast as Urban areas are by nature more liberal in nature.
 

d32123

Banned
Have the Mormons move to California instead of Utah. Might be slightly ASB but that's basically the only way I can see this happening.
 
Have the Mormons move to California instead of Utah. Might be slightly ASB but that's basically the only way I can see this happening.

Maybe not even that. Maybe a mass immigration of Mormons into California from Utah would help it. Not removing them all from Utah, but having many from Utah spread into California. They may already be there in great numbers, I really don't know. I do know Nevada has quite a lot of Mormons.

The key here, on all fronts, seems to be based on immigration. Have the right elements (no pun intended) move into the state for this scenario, keep the more left wing elements limited (not even necessarily by a great number if you can outweigh them with Conservatives), and have the Conservative groups breed more families and children on and on through the generations to keep and increase influence and power in the state.
 
Maybe not even that. Maybe a mass immigration of Mormons into California from Utah would help it. Not removing them all from Utah, but having many from Utah spread into California. They may already be there in great numbers, I really don't know. I do know Nevada has quite a lot of Mormons.

Their actually is a notable long standing Mormon minority population in California and, like in much of the rest of the Western states, Mormons are presnt in noticable numbers* (IE more than 1% of the population) in all but three of California's counties and comprise 2% of the state population overall.

Now, unless they basically depopulate the Mormon core you can't really get Mormonism to be a significan force in California, since it was already at the periphery of the main areas of settlemnt and, more importanly would be down out by the massive amount of immigration over time.


*California is one of only two states (the other being Idaho) outside of Utah that had a county in which Mormons are the majority.
 
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For one (pre-1900) possibility stop the Chinese Exclusion Act. The issue of Chinese immigration into California was reaching the point of race riots and near race-riots. One example of a near-riot was one that would increase the original Emperor Norton of San Francisco's (not Emperor Norton the poster on AH.com :p) popularity and reputation. During an anti-Chinese demonstration that was turning ugly he stopped a white-Chinese race-riot by kneeling down between the two sides and constantly repeating the Lord's Prayer until the crowd dispersed.

Crazy awesomeness aside if you get rid of the Chinese Exclusion Act that would lead to increased immigration into the American West, especially California. With anti-Chinese sentiment likely to rise with an increasing Chinese population I could see the California government instituting some form of Jim Crow but aimed at the Chinese population instead of blacks. When the Civil Rights movement comes to a head (and it will as long as WWII still happens on schedule) California would have been living under a similar system to that in the South for over two generations. This, when added to the Okie flight during the Dust Bowl, would inevitably lead to a California that would be much more likely to side with the South, in sentiment as well as among the leaders, during the desegregation battles further pushing the state to the right.

Assuming the Civil Rights movement achieves similar successes to OTL and desegregation is enforced by federal troops and officers as OTL this would make California low-hanging fruit for Nixon, also a Californian himself, and his Southern Strategy. Combine this with the substantial Mormon influence in the state (Prop 8 was heavily bankrolled and spearheaded by the Church itself) and you have the right conditions to make California a major element in the new conservative coalition.

You could also have PODs post-1900 where the oil, cattle, and agricultural barons of California all get together and work to effectively take control of the state government sidelining the bankers and shippers on the coast. This one would be tricky to pull off but if you did you'd have a California that looks a lot more like Texas.
 
On another note, you could make the American Right less socially conservative, which might make it easier to bring the Hollywood types on board on economic grounds.

California did go for Bush 1.0 in 1988, after all.
 

Delta Force

Banned
If California maintains effective governance and a stable economy it would likely cause the West overall to be more conservative. A large number of people from California (including those with political aspirations) have left the state to find work in Oregon, Washington, and Nevada. Many important people associated with politics in Oregon were originally from California. Since some studies have found Oregon to have both the most liberal and the most conservative voters in the country, that could result in Oregon becoming known as a testbed for conservative ideas instead of liberal ones.

As for California itself, you should be able to do it without splitting the state. California has been the home of three presidents, all of them Republicans, and prior to the 1990s it was at least a swing state. If California is more welcoming to Hispanic immigration or at least avoids coming up with radical laws it might prevent Hispanics from abandoning the Republican Party.
 
As for California itself, you should be able to do it without splitting the state. California has been the home of three presidents, all of them Republicans, and prior to the 1990s it was at least a swing state. If California is more welcoming to Hispanic immigration or at least avoids coming up with radical laws it might prevent Hispanics from abandoning the Republican Party.
As far as I know, most Hispanics actually support the Democrats based on their economic policies, not because of Republican Party racism. Of course the racism doesn't help, but the Republican Party without racism wouldn't get many minorities on board anyway, as the minorities are well aware that their economic policies screw them over. They're basically less politically blinded than many poor whites in the US.

There is of course always the Cubans, whose anti-Communism throw them into the arms of the Republicans. If Communism had a greater hold on Mexico, maybe that would make California more conservative as a response? Not talking about Mexico actually falling, just another player in Mexican politics/street violence.
 
There is of course always the Cubans, whose anti-Communism throw them into the arms of the Republicans. If Communism had a greater hold on Mexico, maybe that would make California more conservative as a response? Not talking about Mexico actually falling, just another player in Mexican politics/street violence.

The drug boom picks up earlier and the Mexican cartels go FARC in the 90s?
 
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