Or not.
Secession movements have a rich history in New York State. Alexander Hamilton, a politician who made no small plans, began by threatening to push for New York City’s secession from the broader state during the New York’s ratifying convention in 1787-1788, a means to undermine the power of anti-Federalist governor George Clinton. Since then, figures ranging from Fernando Wood, colorful Confederate-sympathizing mayor during the Civil War, to Norman Mailer during an idealistic counterculture-fueled bid for the mayoralty in 1969, have pushed to pull New York City out of New York State. More recently, pushes for secession have come from the upstate side. In the 1990s, a state senator from western New York named Randy Kuhl began to push for upstate secession, and the cause has been taken up in the early twenty-first century by tea party and libertarian types who frame it as an appropriate response to the perceived political and economic domination of the New York metro area. Read more
