Idaho House Approves Talks To Annex Oregon Counties

The Idaho House Passed a resolution On Wednesday, talks will be initiated with the Oregon Legislature regarding the possibility of expanding the Idaho border to eastern Oregon.

Such a resolution can be traced back to the Greater Idaho movement, which seeks to absorb 11 Oregon counties, or 63 percent of the state’s landmass, into Idaho. The rationale for such a move is that the leftist residents of northwest Oregon — Portland, Salem, Eugene — control the politics of the state, and therefore rural, conservative residents in eastern and southern Oregon are effectively silenced on matters of state governance.

“The aspirations of Portland-area and northwestern Oregon voters force the state government toward a direction that happens to be incompatible with the values and livelihoods of my town and many in eastern and southern Oregon,” Mike McCarter, President of Citizens for Greater Idaho wrote an article in op-ed Oregon Live.

Idaho’s overwhelmingly Republican legislature would be a good place for conservative Oregonians living in rural areas. Idaho politics are red. Since Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 election, the state has not backed a Democrat as President.

Idaho Rep. Judy Boyle supports expanding because she is concerned about the amount of drugs entering her state. Boyle represents a border district, and because Oregon has moved to decriminalize most drugs, there’s been an influx of drugs into the region. She Telled the Idaho Press she voted to extend her state’s border to “get those drugs away from us.”

Rep. Barbara Ehardt Believes Idaho has a lot to gain from absorbing eastern and southern Oregon’s natural resources and land mass. Proponents can help the Oregon legislature if it is concerned about losing so many state land. Argument The majority of the land involved in the expansion is privately or federally owned. The state government would not lose much.

However, not all Idaho legislators support the expansion.

“We should not be self-segregating by ideology like this,” House Minority Leader, Democratic Rep. IlanaRubel Telled A local news channel. “I think we’re on a path to civil war if we keep going down this path. We have got to learn to get along better and work together better. The answer cannot be to carve up the country and redraw lines that have been in place for a century or more, just so we can only be surrounded by people that perfectly agree with us.”

The measure will now be sent to the Idaho Senate for approval. However, it must also receive the blessing of the Oregon legislature. 11 Oregon rural counties have already approved the measure. Already signed Onto the petition for expansion. Oregon would lose one of its congressional seats and one electoral vote as a result of the population shift.

Victoria Marshall is a staff writer for The Federalist. Her writing has appeared in The Federalist, National Review, Townhall, and the New York Post. Hillsdale College, where she studied journalism and politics, graduated her in May 2021. Follow her @vemrshll on Twitter