{"id":87454,"date":"2022-11-08T13:28:23","date_gmt":"2022-11-08T19:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=87454"},"modified":"2022-11-08T13:28:23","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T19:28:23","slug":"87454","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=87454","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Gun laws, abortion, taxes: Why Eastern Oregon is voting to join Idaho<\/a><\/p>\n

Republican voters in Eastern and Central Oregon are so fed up with liberal lawmakers that they want to break rank \u2014 and state lines \u2014 and become part of Idaho.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, two Oregon counties, Morrow and Wheeler, are set to vote on a ballot measure about whether to explore leaving the state. Since 2020,\u00a0nine counties in Eastern Oregon<\/a>\u00a0have already voted to join the\u00a0Greater Idaho movement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople in Eastern Oregon\u00a0are\u00a0just different and have different views on crime, the Second Amendment, abortion, taxes and minimum wage [from the western portion of the state],\u201d Matt McCaw, spokesman for Greater Idaho, told The Post. \u201cThe polarization with the western part of the state is real. When I meet with people and host meetings, there are a lot of complaints about the lack of representation. Eastern Oregon is just very conservative and has its own culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Greater Idaho movement is made up of residents in Eastern and Central Oregon who are so fed up with liberal lawmakers that they are pushing for the region to break state lines and become part of Idaho.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Matt McCaw, spokesman for the Greater Idaho movement, told The Post: \u201cEastern Oregon is just very conservative and has its own culture\u201d compared to the state\u2019s more liberal western region.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So he and a group of fellow disgruntled Oregonians in the small city of La Pine began to hash out a plan to secede because they no longer felt represented by the liberal lawmakers in the state capital, Salem. The solution: Join Idaho, where the Republican Party is firmly in control.<\/p>\n

\u201cEastern Oregon, where we all live, could get state-level government from Idaho that matches their values,\u201d McCaw said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a radical proposition that would see nearly two-thirds of Oregon\u2019s 63 million acres (98,000 square miles), but less than 10% of its population, blend into neighboring Idaho.<\/p>\n

For the first time in 40 years, Oregonians might vote in a Republican governor, as Christine Drazan (above) has a slight lead going into Tuesday\u2019s race.<\/figcaption>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

McCaw, 46, said the movement\u2019s leaders are hoping to attract 15 of the state\u2019s 36 counties and two partial ones to join Idaho.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe asked the simple question, \u2018Would you like your elected leaders to change the border?\u2019 and we\u2019ve won our last six elections with more than 60% of the vote,\u201d McCaw told The Post.<\/p>\n

For McCaw, who owns a small math-curriculum company with his wife, and his supporters, the largely rural and conservative residents of Eastern Oregon have very little in common with their progressive urban neighbors in western cities like Portland, Eugene and Bend.<\/p>\n

The plan to move to Idaho came about because some Eastern Oregonians no longer felt represented by the liberal lawmakers in the state capital, Salem.<\/figcaption>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump dominated Eastern Oregon, receiving nearly 80% of the vote in some counties, but President Biden ultimately won 56.5% of Oregon votes thanks to liberal cities.<\/p>\n

Oregon\u2019s current governor, Democrat Kate Brown, has\u00a0a 56% disapproval rating,\u00a0<\/a>the worst in the US. Brown, whose term expires next year, has been criticized for doing little to stem\u00a0rising crime and homelessness<\/a>\u00a0in the state\u2019s urban centers since she became governor in 2015.<\/p>\n

Some Oregonians are so fed up with spiraling crime, easy access to drugs and homelessness that \u2014 for the first time in 40 years \u2014 Oregon\u00a0may see a Republican become governor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Christine Drazan, 50, a former Oregon House minority leader, has a slight lead over her closest opponent,\u00a0former Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek, a Democrat. Independent Betsy Johnson is also in the race, and some predict she might split the blue vote.<\/p>\n

But even the prospect of a Republican governor would not help the situation for those in the eastern part of the state, said Sandie Gilson, who lives in Grant County, one of the first Oregon counties to vote in 2020 to explore joining Idaho.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if we have a Republican governor, the Democrats still have a supermajority in the legislature,\u201d said Gilson, 56, a fifth-generation Oregonian whose gold-miner great-great-grandfather arrived in the state in the 1800s. \u201cIt will change nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike McCarter, one of the group\u2019s founders, described Greater Idaho as being about \u201cpeople who value freedom, independence and self-sufficiency.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gilson and her husband are small-business owners who say they want to be self-sufficient in a rural region where making an emergency call to police could result in a two-hour wait for help. The couple, who own firearms, say they are not able to defend themselves if faced with an emergency, because of government mandates. Last year, the state enacted a safe storage law that requires the owners of firearms to keep them locked up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would take us more than five minutes to unlock our guns, and in that time a lot could happen,\u201d Gilson told The Post. \u201cThe legislature does things that just don\u2019t make sense for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gilson also said she doesn\u2019t feel safe after Oregon decriminalized personal portions of all drugs in 2020 and, earlier this year, instituted bail reform laws that allows defendants charged with misdemeanors and some felonies to be released without posting bail.<\/p>\n

While Donald Trump won as much as 80% of votes in Eastern Oregon counties in the 2020 presidential race, more populous liberal cities like Portland helped Biden dominate the state.<\/figcaption>
Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cHow does that make me safe in my home?\u201d Gilson said, adding that residents in Eastern Oregon, which has a fraction of the population of the western part of the state, generally get outvoted.<\/p>\n

Like Gilson, Mike McCarter, 75, said residents in Eastern Oregon are almost always getting outvoted by the much more populous western region. McCarter, who lives in La Pine and is one of the founders of Greater Idaho, told The Post that eastern residents voted two to one against recreational drug use, but \u201cWestern Oregon wanted it, and they carried the vote.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, McCarter insists that the movement for a Greater Idaho is not a political one. \u201cWe try to keep the movement away from politics,\u201d he said. \u201cOur movement is a traditional-values type movement of faith \u2014 of people who value freedom, independence and self-sufficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Current Gov. Kate Brown has the country\u2019s highest disapproval rate, at 56%, in part because of a perceived lack of control on crime.<\/figcaption>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2020, Gov. Brad Little of Idaho said he\u00a0welcomed the move<\/a>, adding, \u201cThey\u2019re looking at Idaho fondly because of our regulatory atmosphere, our values. What they\u2019re interested [in] is they would like to have a little more autonomy, a little more control, a little more freedom and I can understand that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although states have had their borders reconfigured in the past \u2014 Maine seceded from Massachusetts in 1820 \u2014 there is no historical precedent for large land masses to leave one state and join another.<\/p>\n

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Ryan Griffiths, a political science professor at Syracuse University who studies the secession of sovereign states, told The Post that \u201cthe bar is pretty high\u201d for state secession in the US.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThis is not the kind of thing that is done unilaterally by people in counties,\u201d Griffiths said. \u201cThey have to get the state of Oregon on board and the state of Idaho, and that\u2019s a very high bar.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gun laws, abortion, taxes: Why Eastern Oregon is voting to join Idaho Republican voters in Eastern and Central Oregon are so fed up with liberal lawmakers that they want to break rank \u2014 and state lines \u2014 and become part of Idaho. On Tuesday, two Oregon counties, Morrow and Wheeler, are set to vote on … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87455,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87454\/revisions\/87455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}