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The leader of east Oregon‘s plan to leave liberal Portland behind and join conservative Idaho is moving fast.
Mike McCarter has a $70,000 budget for lobbyists in the two states, has seen allies introduce legislation in Oregon last month and has a bill ready to go in Idaho that would accelerate discussions for 15 counties to jump the border.
If it works, he says other red counties will have a model for how to dump their urban, Democratic rulers.
‘I think people within the United States are watching Oregon’s movement, hoping that it’ll establish a pathway for them in the future,’ he told DailyMail.com.
The leader of the Greater Idaho Movement runs the campaign from a cramped office in a cabin outside La Pine.
Its walls are decorated with the head of a musk deer and muzzle-loading rifles.
Mike McCarter is president of the Greater Idaho Movement. The campaign is stepping up its push for 15 counties to leave Oregon and join the neighboring state of Idaho
The campaign wants to redraw state lines so that 15 conservative counties in the east would join Idaho. Some 11 counties have already voted in favor of pushing ahead with talks
It could not be further from the image of Oregon as a haven for woke politics, where a majority voted to decriminalize hard drugs in 2020, where coastal valleys provide the perfect climate for the delicate pinot noir grape and where the liberal lifestyle was sent up in the TV comedy Portlandia.
That is Portland, with its homeless encampments outside artisan doughnut stores.
By contrast, central and eastern Oregon is a land of hardy ranchers, loggers and sawmill workers. Where daytime temperatures dropped below zero at the weekend after a snowstorm.
And where locals say they have more in common with next-door Idaho than they do Portland and its $6 caffe lattes.
‘Our movement is based on values,’ said McCarter, 75, a retired nursery worker who runs courses for people who want concealed carry permits
‘You know, the traditional values of faith, family, freedom, and independence.
‘We don’t want to be catered to by the government. In other words, if my power goes down, I have generator, I have water, everything … food storage.’
As America divides between urban and rural, Democratic cities and Republican hiss and prairies, eastern Oregon is at the forefront of reshaping state lines.
Extra tax burdens on businesses, a softly, softly approach to crime, and swingeing COVID lockdowns have all left people here feeling out of step with state leaders.
Signs on the road west out of John Day in eastern Oregon. People here say they have more in common with neighboring Idaho, and its Republican majority, than voters in Portland and western Oregon who deliver Democratic leaders in election after election
Oregon’s moves to tighten gun laws have alienated some voters in the eastern part of the state, where strict COVID lockdowns and new taxes have been deeply unpopular
Fair representation, said McCarter, lay across the border with Boise, rather than Oregon’s state capital Salem.
That remains a longshot. McCarter knows that Oregon is unlikely to give up 15 counties, 400,000 people, about 63 percent of its land without a fight.
But so far 11 eastern counties have voted in favor (or at least in favor of legislation requiring the county to discuss moving).
Last month, lawmakers in Oregon introduced legislation that would require the state to start talks with Idaho, and a similar bill is ready to go in Idaho.
It may be a longshot but McCarter said there are benefits for the counties left behind. West Oregon he said subsidizes the east to the tune of about $500 per easterner per year.
‘So if Oregon, let Eastern Oregon go, they would be much richer right on their side,’ he said. ‘They would not have the conflict and the bickering battle that goes back and forth.’
Democrats would likely also have a super-majority in the legislature, giving them more leeway to pursue their agenda.
Ballot measure 110 was passed in 2020, decriminalizing possession of hard drugs. It is blamed for transforming downtown Portland into an open-air drugs market. Results of the ballot showed the east-west divide, with eastern counties rejecting the measure
A man slumps on the sidewalk in downtown Portland, Oregon. Homelessness, drugs and crime are dominating the contest to elect the state’s next governor. A Republican candidate with a law-and-order message has eased ahead in the polls
McCarter said his movement provided a road map for other parts of the country, where there is a growing divide between urban and rural America
‘Chicago controls Illinois. Atlanta controls Georgia. New York City controls all of New York state,’ he said. ‘And there’s a distinct difference between urban and rural.’
For Sandie Gilson, a small business owner in John Day about three hours to the east past snow-capped mountains, the final straw was the 2018 corporate activity tax, which takes an extra half percentage point of business income to help fund the education system.
She said businesses creating jobs and livelihoods should not have to manage an added burden for the ‘privilege of being part of the state.’
The tax was part of an attitude in Portland and Oregon’s other big cities, she said, that expected the government to solve their problems.
‘We don’t expect the government to answer or solve the problem,’ she said over a cup of tea in the quiet back bar of the Outpost Pub and Grill. ‘We expect us to solve the problem.’
Sandie Gilson, vice president of the Greater Idaho Movement, said residents of eastern Oregon do not expect the government to step in and solve their problems
Gilson said the imbalance was demonstrated by the 2020 election results, when the cities decided which candidate won its electoral college votes. Joe Biden won more than 56 percent of the vote even though 26 of Oregon’s 36 counties backed Donald Trump. Source: Wikipedia
While eastern counties have backed the move, any decision on remaking the border lie with the two states’ legislatures and then Congress.
Getting legislation past Oregon’s Democratic-dominated House and Senate will be a long shot.
But Gilson said if congressional districts can be redrawn why not a state line?
‘This is a little more major, but it is still one of those arbitrary lines drawn on a map,’ she said.
She said she feared that the failure to find a political solution could lead to violence.
‘The political divide between east and west Oregon must be resolved and the Greater Idaho Movement is just offering one solution towards.
‘But we can no longer live with such animosity between the two sides. Or else it will become violent.
‘There are people that have said to me: “Sandie, I’m so tired of this. I’m ready to take up arms.”‘
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