Oregon secession movement hopes to inspire national campaign against wokeness trends now
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
