(Corine Gatti, Headline USA) Residents of rural Oregon are getting closer to joining Idaho after growing fed up with the leftist radicalism dominating urban pockets such as crime-infested Portland.
The Gateway Pundit reported that the three-year-old Greater Idaho movement has gained momentum, with conservative counties taking measures to secede from the blue state, and it has come down to a mere eight votes.
In Wallowa County, those eight votes separated supporters of the Greater Idaho movement from those who oppose it. The election in Wallowa County this year was 1% more favorable than in the same county in 2020, despite the movement having been outspent by far-left opponents, according to the group Move Oregon’s Border for a Greater Idaho.
The Greater Idaho movement has highlighted the stark contrast between rural and urban communities in Oregon, with some residents feeling that their livelihoods are treated like “playground[s]” by coastal urbanites.
Wallowa resident Garrett Mahon told NBC News that when Multnomah County (home to Portland) “votes one way, it vetoes the rest of the state.”
If the initiative were to be successful, it could pave the way for similar movements across the country, causing alarm for those on the Left who view it as a potential threat.
The Oregon State Elections Division was already investigating the “potential violation” of state voter laws by members of Citizens for Greater Idaho.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said if the movement were successful it would stifle Oregonians financially as they would pay a sales tax in Idaho for the first time in their lives, on “top of working in a state with much lower hourly wages on average than Oregon has.”
However, former Oregon Republican House Speaker Mark Simmons expressed his support for the movement in a February op-ed in the Idaho Statesman, arguing that a successful Greater Idaho would liberate rural conservative communities from the constraints of progressive blue-state laws.
The Greater Idaho movement won elections in 2020, 2021 and 2022 in 11 counties of eastern Oregon, and the Idaho House of Representatives passed a bill in favor of the movement in February 2023.
Even if the movement scored another win, moving the state border would require agreements from the Democrat-controlled Oregon legislature, Idaho’s legislature and approval from U.S. Congress.
