The odds are overwhelmingly against a large swath of eastern Oregon ever being patriated to Idaho. Yet, the idea persists and a lot of urban Oregonians can’t understand why.
And that lack of understanding fairly explains the issue.
For the last several years there has been an organized movement pushed by some Oregonians to extend Idaho’s jurisdiction over the rural, conservative counties of eastern and southern Oregon.
Advocates of the so-called Greater Idaho movement say eastern Oregon has little in common with western Oregon and the state’s dominant liberal politics, and identifies much more with Idaho.
The process of moving territory from one state to another is set out in the U.S. Constitution. It has happened only a handful of times, the last during the Civil War when 25 northwestern Virginia counties separated from that state to form West Virginia.
Nonetheless, factions in 34 states have over the years proposed either moving territory to a neighboring state or splitting off and forming their own state.
The concept isn’t new to Oregon. In 1941, elected officials in several rural southern Oregon counties who felt underrepresented in Salem proposed breaking off and joining northern California counties to form the State of Jefferson.
These efforts make little headway because the process set out makes it a heavy lift. Moving the border requires the approval of the legislatures of the states involved. Factions at odds with the controlling leadership rarely have the clout to pull off such a feat, outside the tumult of civil war. Once the states approve, Congress gets to weigh in.
Even assuming those unlikely approvals could be given, there are hundreds of logistical issues that would have to be worked out. It would be daunting.
And despite the long odds, residents of 11 of 15 eastern Oregon counties have voted to consider the move. Why?
It’s simple. Many people in rural Oregon don’t think their interests are being served in Salem. The politics are governed by the urban centers of the west. The state’s economic, environmental and energy policies are often at odds with the interests of rural Oregon.
Rural Oregonians don’t want only to be heard, they want their very real practical concerns to be reflected in state policy.
Urban and rural Oregon do not stand on their own. They are interdependent with goods and services flowing in both directions. Urban Oregon can’t eat its greater political power, rural Oregon can’t exist without urban markets.
It is probably an exercise in futility to press the Greater Idaho movement as anything more than an elaborate scheme to capture and keep the attention of the state’s political elite. But, it would be an act of extreme hubris to dismiss the concerns of the people living in the vast rural reaches of the state.
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