Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire E. Oregon, E. Wa to join with Idaho

Residents in eastern Oregon and Washington have discussed breaking away from their more liberal neighbors to form a new state for years, but a new twist has been added to the conversation: Why form a new state when the rural counties could just join Idaho instead?

Ken Parsons, a 72-year-old farmer from La Grande, said the idea was floated offhand by someone else in a letter to the editor in the La Grande Observer. After thinking about it for a couple of months and discussing it with friends, Parsons said he has decided to try to get input from residents of neighboring counties, including Umatilla and Morrow County.

“It’s an intriguing idea,” he said.

As Parsons sees it, rural Oregon and Washington residents who are tired of being outvoted by the population centers in Portland and Seattle would be better understood by politicians from the more rural, conservative Idaho. Legislators born and raised in the most urban parts of their state “don’t have any idea,” he said, of how environmental lobbyists often hurts farmers, hunters and others in more rural parts of the state.

“The environmental regulations that come out of Salem make it almost impossible to do my work,” he said.

Dr. Jeffrey Dense, a political science professor at Eastern Oregon University, called the logistics of trying to create a new, larger Idaho “largely insurmountable.”

“Given the inability of Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., to effectuate this type of large scale change, disgruntled citizens would be better off to get involved with politics instead of complaining about the state of affairs,” he said in an email.

A state boundary hasn’t been redrawn in the United States since West Virginia was carved out of Virginia in 1863. The idea of seceding from one state to the other is hardly new, however, and various efforts have landed on ballots and on the floor of state legislatures across the country.

Occasionally, those efforts have even come close to fruition. In 2002 the U.S. House of Representatives voted unanimously to allow state legislators to adjust the Nevada-Utah state boundary. The move would have been a minor one, but it would have allowed the economically struggling city of Wendover, Utah, to join the casino-rich city of West Wendover, Nevada, and get rid of what residents called an invisible “Berlin Wall” in the community creating poor infrastructure and schools on one side of the state line and abundant services on the other. The bill ended up dying in the Senate, however, after Nevada Senator Harry Reid opposed it.

According to 2014 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Idaho currently has 1,634,464 residents. That would rise to 3,680,297 people if all 17 Oregon counties east of Hood River County and the 20 Washington counties east of King County jumped ship.

Oregon, meanwhile, would go from 3,970,239 residents to 3,471,709 and Washington would drop from 7,061,530 residents to 5,514,227.

How that would affect each state’s representation in Washington, D.C., would depend on how other states’ populations changed at the same time.

The 435 seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned every 10 years based on population counts in the latest census. If other states’ populations stayed roughly proportionate to their current levels, Washington would likely lose two of its 10 seats, adding them to Idaho’s current two seats, while it would be a close call on whether Oregon would hang on to its five representatives or lose one to another state.

The number of Electoral College votes a state receives is equal to the number of U.S. senators and representatives the state has, which would give Idaho more sway in presidential elections too.

Rep. Greg Smith, R-Heppner, said during his freshman year in the Oregon state legislature in 2001 he tried to introduce the idea of creating a state of Eastern Oregon, but couldn’t even get a hearing on it.

More on the Proposal .

That would make only one port and that one is in ID. Not so sure I want to give the fruitcake liberals all the coast.

I'm sure Idaho would be all over that proposal.

It would be all read that's for sure!

Just drove through Boise and was treated to 30 or 40 miles of sprawl unimagined. I do not like it Sam I Am. I do not like Boise with Ham.

With Portland in our state I would not be pointing any fingers at Boise.

I might consider retiring in my home state. As things sit now...no way in hell.

I am retired in your home state and it is still great.

Not happening.

Nope, it will go nowhere.

You can follow my lead...

I've been lobbying to make Potland and See-addle two island cities of California....

them gone would get rid of about 90% of the problems in WA and OR...

I live fifty miles from Boise, and I get nauseous any time I have to drive over.

I miss the sage brush, and then farm fields, where now are only miles and miles of subdivisions.

I surely sympathize with the residents of E Or and E Wa. But let them split off and form their own states. We certainly do not need Spokane as part of the Gem State, nor Bend.

Not that it matters. The vote is controlled from the W coast of both states. They, the democrats, like collecting taxes from the workers of the E part of the state while having to divvy up little in support to those counties.

A move of this nature has about as much chance of success as N Ca splitting from LA - San Fran. The mooches like their tax earnings too much.

I grew up in Boise but haven't lived there since '70. I remember when Boise & Pocatello were competing to be the largest town in Idaho - both trying to top 50k. We used to drive through farm country between Boise, Eagle, and Meridian. Man, that's LONG gone.

You'd be wrong.....I empathize with and like most of the eastern parts of both states but Spokane's a deal breaker....Moscow's bad enough without adding to the problem....

We'll trade all of Boise, and some 450 square miles of Idaho National Labs for all of Eastern Wa and OR less Hanford...

If you get the dams you have to take Hanford. It's the art of the deal. 😉

Yes I know that.

Yep!

OK, ok...remember that you're getting a conference championship team, and a BLUE FIELD!!!

In addition we'll throw in the "Famous Potatoes" slogan, complete with my personal collection of license plates...

If the map I saw was accurate, the Spokane election results were very much like Boise's. There was a block of blue precincts down town but the rest of the county was red enough to be a majority for the county.