The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch

Archives | RSS

« A Valley in Ruins | Mayor's Race 2011: Walkup's Out, As… »

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Politics / Blogislature When in the Course of Human Events: Is Pima County Ready to Secede?

Posted by Jim Nintzel on Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 7:02 PM

The Start Our State movement is underway:

Start Our State (SOS) has been formally established as a political committee registered in Pima County. SOS is dedicated to creating the 51st American state in Southern Arizona, separating us from the extremists in Phoenix. Our mission is to establish a new state in Southern Arizona free of the un-American, unconstitutional machinations of the Phoenix-controlled Arizona legislature and to restore our region's credibility as a place welcoming to others, open to commerce, and friendly to its neighbors. Our first and immediate goal is to place a referendum before the voters of Pima County on the 2012 ballot on the question of statehood.

We welcome other Arizona counties that wish to join this effort. In the meantime, we shouldn’t forget that, with a population of 1,020,200 (2009), Pima County has more people than Montana, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming. With an area of 9,189 square miles, Pima County is bigger than Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island. There is legal precedent for the separation of a portion of an existing state from the original state in order to form a new one. In 1820, Maine split off from Massachusetts and was admitted to the Union as the 23rd state.

Find ’em on Facebook here.