Those accustomed to the traditional entity of a state of California got a shock (or at least some sweaty palms) this week, when the state got one step closer to breaking up. Timothy Draper, billionaire co-founder of the Silicon Valley Venture Capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, announced that he had gathered enough signatures to get a measure on the ballot in two years that would split the nation’s third-largest state into six separate, smaller ones. A discrete political entity called Silicon Valley would include the famous tech territory and the San Francisco Bay area, the state of Jefferson would comprise the northernmost region, and so on and so on.
Draper and other proponents say that the current size of the state makes it too unwieldy and unresponsive to the needs of local communities. Breaking it up into more bite-sized chunks, they say, would not only improve political responsiveness, but foster business growth and solve many issues now facing the state–like traffic and water distribution. Says opponent and democratic political strategist Steve Maviglio: “It has zero chance of passing.” If Maviglio’s wrong, it will ruin a lot of songs.
