The 51st State? - NYTimes.com In 1969, Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin ran for mayor and City Council speaker of New York City on a platform of making the city the 51st state. The movement went nowhere. But at least it made some sense. New York City is huge, bigger than many other states in terms of population. What makes no sense is the current movement by 10 counties in northern Colorado and a few in Nebraska and Kansas to band together to make a new state called North Colorado. Their reasons are fairly ridiculous - they want to make a state that doesn't regulate oil companies or guns or promote alternative energy industries. They would be forming a state without a major city - and no, I don't count Greeley, which is the seat of Weld County, the leader of this secession movement. It would be a state without a functioning economy and without many actual people. The Weld County commissioners said rather grandly that their county is bigger than Delaware and Rhode Island, which is not saying much. They're the two smallest states. It also has a population of 252,825, which makes it only the ninth most populous county in Colorado, which only has a handful of counties with populations of any serious size. The other nine range from 2,379 residents to 28,159, for a grand total of 333,741. That's like a medium-size outdoor rock festival in the Northeast. It would also make North Colorado - you guessed it - the 51st most populous state. It's not like the would-be founding fathers of North Colorado are completely obsessed with oil drilling and concealed carry permits. They have other major complaints - like the quality of Interstate 76, which is definitely not in as good shape as, say, Interstate 25 or Interstate 80, which serve the Denver metropolitan area (population 2.7 million). They gripe that the rural areas of Colorado (which is pretty much everywhere except the Denver metropolitan area) are not given enough attention at the statehouse in Denver. That's certainly true. It's also not a reason to create a state. There has long been a separatist movement in Quebec that makes about as little economic or political sense as the North Colorado movement. At least the people there speak French.