Crime remains rampant in Portland. But as it is Oregon's largest city, it dominates the entire state's political scene. So eastern Oregonians with traditional values have started an effort to break away from the left-wing coastal areas of Oregon and join Idaho, as it more closely represents their values.
Matt McCaw is a spokesman for Greater Idaho, the organization working to move the border between the two states, and he says the people are tired of the ruling Democrats pushing their left-wing policies and laws on them.
"Our movement is born out of this idea that the people on the east side of Oregon, rural eastern Oregon, are very different than the people in western Oregon," he explains. "We're different culturally, values wise, economically, and politically on almost every issue up and down the board. But because of the way Oregon's population is, the west side of the state dominates state level politics; they make all the policy, all the laws that then get pushed on people in eastern Oregon, who don't want them."
McCaw says the process for moving the borders between states is "actually fairly simple" and has been utilized in the past.
"It just requires the two state legislatures to come together to agree on where to move the border," he details. "Then it goes to the U.S. Congress, and if the U.S. Congress says, 'Yep, we're okay with that,' it's done -- boom!"
The Greater Idaho spokesman notes that voters in nine Oregon counties have already supported ballot measures to leave the state, and two others may soon follow.
