He's the man behind the campaign that has set Twitter alight – to give Californian voters a referendum on going it alone in the wake of last week's election.

Along with thousands of social media mentions, 30-year-old Louis Marinelli now also has the backing of some of Silicon Valley's heaviest hitters – Iranian-born billionaire venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar, 42; entrepreneur David Morin, 36, whose fortune is estimated at $100m; and Orange County-based Google designer Marc Hemeon, 41.

But while the rest of the US was glued to their TV screens as last week's drama unfolded, Marinelli, a former Republican voter from Buffalo, New York, wasn't even in the country.

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Louis Marinelli (left) is the former English teacher behind Yes California, which aims to give the state its independence from the United States. Marinelli is pictured campaigning for his cause on his Facebook page

Marinelli, who was born in New York, needs to collect a million signatures in order to propel an independence referendum onto the ballot in 2019

Instead, he was in Russia's capital, Moscow, where he wants its first embassy. 'I need to get away sometimes,' Marinelli, who now calls San Diego home, told DailyMail.com.

'I don't like living under the U.S. flag and it's not healthy for me to be around all the negativity that you see in the country, in the politics, every day.

'For my own personal development, I sometimes just need to get away.'

But by his own admission, Marinelli's trip to Moscow wasn't all about time off. The 30-year-old former English teacher is also in the process of setting up an international office for Yes California! – the separatist campaign he spearheads – in the Russian capital.

'For now, it will house [campaign] representatives,' he explains. 'Then hopefully, when we get independence, it will become an embassy instead.'

Marinelli's journey from Republican New Yorker to Californian independence campaigner is an interesting one – one that, unsurprisingly, has its roots in Russia.

It was to Russia he traveled in 2007 after finishing high school for a stint as an English teacher, working first in Samara in the west of the country and then Kazan, in the semi-independent republic of Tatarstan.

In 2009, he moved to Russia's historic capital St. Petersburg and studied at the university there, which counts both President Vladmir Putin and his predecessor, Dmitry Medvedev, among its former students.

Although he returned to the U.S. to live in California in 2011, it was in Putin's heartland that he realized that 'not everyone thinks Americans are good guys'.

'I hadn't realized before then,' he continues, 'that the way the world sees America isn't the same as how we see ourselves.'

Inspired: The Calexit campaigner studied at Vladimir Putin's alma mater and found living in Russia 'that the way the world sees America isn't the same as how we see ourselves.'

Along with thousands of social media mentions, 30-year-old Marinelli now also has the backing of some of Silicon Valley's heaviest hitters – including (right) entrepreneur David Morin, 36, whose fortune is estimated at $100m, and billionaire venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar, 42 (left)

Orange County-based Google designer Marc Hemeon, 41, is also a Calexit supporter

So enamored of the former Soviet Union's largest member state was Marinelli that he briefly contemplated citizenship and is now married to a Russian woman named Olga.

But Russia aside, Marinelli has another passion, albeit one he says he wishes he didn't - politics.

Although originally a registered Republican, he was immersed himself in the Democratic Party as a teenager, volunteering for the 2004 primary campaign of John Edwards.

Later, he became an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage but ultimately concluded he was wrong, resigned from the National Organization for Marriage. In April 2011 he apologized to the LGBTQ community for his years of activism – much of it done remotely from Russia – against them.

While largely unsuccessful, Marinelli's early political experiences did have the result of sharpening his acute disappointment in the U.S. system of government.

By 2014, by then back in America for three years, Marinelli had concluded that the way forward for California, his adopted home state, was United Kingdom-style devolution – and ultimately independence.

San Diego-based Marinelli was in Moscow on election night, taking time off - but also laying plans for a Californian embassy

Home to just over 39 million people according to the most recent figures, California is the most populated state in the U.S. and one of the wealthiest.

If it became independent, it would, in terms of GDP, become one of the world's top 10 richest countries – displacing France which currently occupies sixth place.

California is also a Democrat stronghold, last plumping for a Republican presidential candidate in 1988, and voting for Hillary Clinton in this year's contest by a margin of 28 percentage points.

Unsurprisingly, the election of Donald Trump has been greeted with howls of outrage – and protests in nearly all of its major cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland.

Since the election results were announced, interest in 'Calexit' – as the independence movement has been nicknamed – has shot up, with 13,000 new voters joining the Yes California! Facebook group, the same again following the campaign's official Twitter, and 10,000 new volunteers pledging their support.

The campaign needs a million signatures in order to propel a referendum onto the ballot in 2019

Since the election results were announced, interest in 'Calexit' – as the independence movement has been nicknamed – has shot up

Marinelli is hoping to capitalize in anti-Trump dissatisfaction

All of which, as an understandably gleeful Marinelli points out, bodes well for the campaign's stated aim of getting an independence referendum on the ballot for the spring of 2019.

'The first thing we need to do and the thing we're focusing on right now is establishing a mandate from the people of California for independence,' he explains.

The plan includes getting volunteers out on the streets to collect the million signatures required to propel an independence referendum onto the ballot in 2019.

After that, assuming the vote goes in Yes California's favor, Marinelli says the state will declare independence and invoke the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – essentially demanding the right to self-determination and then recognition of the result from other nation states.

'There's going to have to be some kind of a transition period of negotiation where a lot of details are ironed out between Washington [DC] and [state capital] Sacramento,' adds Marinelli.

'But all that is way down the line so first of all, what we're focusing on is getting the ballot measure qualified for 2018, step one, and step two, getting the actual ballot measure passed in 2019.'

The concept of a state withdrawing from the Union is nothing new. Indeed, as recently as April this year, Republicans in Texas overturned an attempt to force a vote on whether the state should secede at a local party convention.

Alaska, New Hampshire, Vermont and Hawaii also have separatist movements, while an outfit called the Cascadia Independence Movement proposes turning Oregon, Washington State and the Canadian province of British Columbia into its own country.

In 1982, Key West, in Florida, declared itself independent as the Conch Republic – motivated by a Border Patrol roadblock across Highway 1, the road from Miami to Key West, aimed at stopping illegal immigrants from Cuba reaching the mainland.

The new 'country' immediately declared war on the U.S., symbolically broke a loaf of stale Cuban bread over the head of the nearest Marine, and then surrendered one minute later.

It then went on to demand a billion dollars from America in 'foreign' aid.

In 1982, Key West, in Florida, declared itself independent as the Conch Republic after the Border Patrol set up a roadblock aimed at stopping illegal immigrants from Cuba reaching the mainland. This sign greets arrivals at the Key West International Airport

In this 2006 picture Peter Anderson, left, self-appointed Republic of Conch secretary general, raises stale Cuban bread while charging toward the Old Seven Mile Bridge in Marathon, Florida in a symbolic seizure of the historic structure

Now back in the arms of the Union, the Conch Republic still issues souvenir passports but ran into trouble in 2001 when it transpired that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta was in possession of one at the time of the attacks.

But the checkered past of American separatist movements to date isn't enough to put off Marinelli who says California is a different prospect entirely.

'We are a separate nation already,' he insists. 'It's clear in our mentality, it's clear in our culture, it's clear in our history. Those are things that make us different from the Americans.

'It's not that we disagree with the Americans on everything but there is certainly some gap between an American and a Californian.

'There's a geographical gap [in the deserts and mountains west of the Mississippi River] but also there's a state of mind that's different.

'In California, we support things like diversity, tolerance and equality and then the Americans go ahead and elect someone like Donald Trump – I think there's a huge gap there between our two states of mind.'

Nonetheless, Trump's election, which precipitated the latest round of calls for independence in California, as well as in neighboring Oregon, isn't seen as entirely bad thing by Marinelli.

He agrees with Trump on the question of maintaining good relations with Russia and says that as a businessman, the president-elect is more likely to be able to strike a deal.

Hillary Clinton, he says, suffers from a 'Cold War, antiquated mindset' and would have gone into the White House seeing Putin as an adversary from the outset.

But in all other respects, he says that Californians have little in common with the newly minted leader of the free world.

'We are open to immigration into California, it's a very diverse place, and it's a very important part of our culture and our economy – I'm talking about immigrants themselves,' he says.

'An independent California will be a place that welcomes immigrants from other places around the world, a place that welcomes refugees from places around the world. I think that's kind of exciting.'

Under Marinelli, California would become a 'progressive' paradise along the lines of Denmark - a constitutional monarchy famous for its well-funded welfare state - where money would be lavished on healthcare, education and quality of life, but diverted away from the military.

Other measures would include the use of the U.S. dollar and a 'gold card' system for immigrants from within and without the United States.

Cooperation with other countries, including Trump's America, is also important. 'Donald Trump may not be the President by [the time California becomes independent] but if he is, then we're willing to work with and be friends with any country in the world – even the Americans,' says Marinelli.

'What we don't want to do is follow the Americans into every war that they start. I know there's a couple of countries that follow America into every war that they start and we're not going to do that.

'We're going to stand by and protect and preserve our principles as Californians and among those would be the idea of peace and cooperation between countries.'

Marinelli, who says he will renounce his U.S. citizenship and become exclusively Californian if the independence referendum goes his way, says Trump's election is indicative of a problem 'with the soul of the country'.

But for all that, he isn't totally sorry that the Democrats' worst nightmare has come about. 'We believe in our hearts that independence for California is the best result and the best thing we could do in the long run for California,' he says.

'So if it takes the election of Donald Trump to convince Californians to get on board with this campaign, then from that perspective, we say, OK, maybe it's a good thing that Donald Trump was elected.