Alt.Geography: Breaking Arizona?

[dewline]

Baja Arizona map, a photo by Lost States on Flickr.

You know me: I love a good bout of speculative geopolitical mapping as much as the next map collector. This one got my attention today, thanks to loststates.com, and I've got a question for anyone from Arizona reading this:How serious is this argument right now?

Comments

[mariness.livejournal.com]

I'm not from Arizona. But, from what I understand, yes, people are actually trying to gather signatures for this.

The problem is that even assuming this a) gets on the ballot, b) passes in Puma County, it still has to pass c) the Arizona state legislature and d) (the real problem) the U.S. Congress. So I don't think it's that serious, more of a "Hey, would you stop that crap," sorta statement from people in Tuscon.

[mariness.livejournal.com]

Pima, not Puma County. And on that mispelling, time for bed.

[wyldemusick.livejournal.com]

Actually, the AZ lege would be a real problem too. Those people hate Pima County with a serious paint-blistering passion, and if you did a poll of Maricopa County 85% of the responses would indicate that they thought Pima County was occupied by nothing but unwashed hippie freaks, drug addicts, and undocumented brown people.

[wyldemusick.livejournal.com]

The proposal was originally kicked out there as a joke, but it turned serious suddenly. While it might not have the impetus to actually carry all the way through, there are some people around here seriously hacked off to the lege and at the entirety of Maricopa County (we're not too happy with Pinal either.)

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

The territory covered by the "Baja Arizona" proposal is almost the same as that included in the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsden_Purchase) from Mexico. The only major exception is a slice of land that is now part of the state of New Mexico.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Which may explain why "Gadsden" is being suggested in some quarters as an alternative name for this proposed state.