uniform statewide property tax. New Jersey In 1980, a non-binding referendum to partition the state was passed by several counties in southern New Jersey. New York In the New York City mayoral election of 1969, writer Norman Mailer ran in the Democratic Party primary on a ticket with columnist Jimmy Breslin, who ran for City Council President. Part of their joint platform was a proposal that New York City should secede from New York State and become the 51st state. At around the same time, a public-affairs series on the local educational TV station, WNET-TV, channel 13, was called The Fifty-First State. In the 1990s, Randy Kuhl, from rural upstate Hammondsport, had advocated secession by regularly proposing bills to that effect while he was a state senator. His 1999 bill would have New York City, Long Island, Westchester and Rockland Counties become a separate state of New York, while the rest of the counties would be grouped as West New York. From 2007 to 2009, Long Island residents discussed secession on the grounds that their tax money is not used to fund programs in their counties. Proposals were made for the entire island (Kings, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk counties) and for just the two suburban counties (Nassau and Suffolk). State senators Joseph Robach, Dale Volker, and Michael Ranzenhofer, all Republicans from western New York, proposed a nonbinding referendum to gauge support for dividing the state in November 2009. The referendum was again proposed by Stephen Hawley in 2013 and 2015, with members of the Long Island delegation to the state legislature also backing the 2015 bill. 2010 gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino's supporters, Rus Thompson and James Ostrowski in the Buffalo region, have supported secession of western New York from New York City and its nearby counties. Fred Smerlas, in discussing a potential platform for a 2010 Congressional run from western New York, stated that he would make the separation of New York City and upstate a top priority: "My first act if I ever got elected would be to take a big saw and cut New York City off." Fifteen towns in the Southern Tier of New York proposed potential secession in 2015 to join Pennsylvania. North Carolina In 1784, the western counties of Greene, Washington, Sullivan, and parts of Hawkins County, formed the provisional State of Franklin, with Revolutionary War hero John Sevier as governor. However, since the state