A4 THE BULLETIN • MONDAY, JUNE 21, 2021
Ryan Brennecke/The Bulletin file
La Pine resident Mike McCarter is leading the Move Oregon’s Border effort that aims
to transfer rural Oregon counties to Idaho. Without this effort, he says, “We could
get something like what happened in Burns a few years ago with Ammon Bundy.
We don’t want the guns to come out. That’s not good for anybody.”
Dave Killen/The Oregonian
A tractor moves across a mostly dry field in Klamath Falls. Drought has caused tensions over water policy.
Border
Continued from A1
The culture war that blares on ca-
ble news channels every night, and
the extreme partisanship that feeds
it, certainly plays a major role in
the border-moving votes. It drives
perceptions of the violence and van-
dalism that have accompanied Port-
land protests during the past year. It
encourages political maneuvers like
Baertschiger leading fellow Repub-
lican senators in fleeing Salem to
derail ambitious Democratic legisla-
tive goals, such as a limit on green-
house-gas emissions.
But the longing for Idaho among
some Oregonians is also fueled by
bigger-picture factors. There’s a
nostalgia for the kind of rural life
that’s gone for good or getting more
precarious, thanks to the globalized
high-tech economy, evolving mores
and even persistent drought in the
region.
Gilson, who grew up in Lake
County and once worked in the
timber industry, was a young single
mother in the 1990s when federal
protections for the spotted owl be-
came a flashpoint in what already
was a contentious fight over how
Oregon’s old-growth forests should
be managed.
Since then, she said, “Oregon has
changed into something we no lon-
ger recognize.”
Last year she knocked on doors
to get the border-moving initiative
on the ballot in Grant County.
“Idaho is more into using natural
resources to enhance employment,”
she said. “That’s what Oregon used
to do.”
The goal of Move Oregon’s Border
Even with the success of the non-
binding votes so far — and with
the ballot measure in the works for
more counties — the possibility of
any part of Oregon joining Idaho
remains remote. The initiatives do
no more than show voters’ resolve
on the issue. A border adjustment
would require the agreement of
both state legislatures and ulti-
mately Congress.
But Michael McCarter, a La Pine
resident who launched the citizens’
group Move Oregon’s Border for a
Greater Idaho, believes it’s a worth-
while undertaking regardless of
what the final result ends up being.
“People are frustrated,” said the
retired agricultural nurseryman,
who’s the chief petitioner for the ini-
tiative drives. “If we can vent some
of that pressure with people voting
on this, that gives me a good feeling.
“I’m afraid that if we don’t have
that vent, we could get something
like what happened in Burns a few
years ago with Ammon Bundy,”
McCarter added, referring to when
armed anti-government militants
occupied the Malheur National
Wildlife Refuge. “We don’t want the
guns to come out. That’s not good
for anybody.”
Not that he sees Move Oregon’s
Border as merely a peaceful means
of expressing dissatisfaction with
an entrenched status quo. McCar-
ter, an Air Force veteran and fire-
arms trainer, believes a border ad-
justment can actually happen, if the
political stars align. “It’s a long shot,
but long shots come in,” he said.
Others involved in the effort
have the same attitude, insisting
that anything is possible if they
keep plugging away.
“Our goal is to send a message to
Salem,” said Jackson County resi-
dent and Greater Idaho supporter
David Reece. “But in the long run,
if that doesn’t work, if nothing
changes — and I don’t think it will
— you have to be ready.”
Gilson, for her part, said she’d love
to see the border-shifting movement
make Salem more responsive to ru-
Dave Killen/The Oregonian
Flags fly in Southern Oregon. On the left is an American flag, on the right a modified
version showing the “thin blue line,” which commonly symbolizes police officers or
general support for law enforcement. Many Oregonians who support adjusting the
border with Idaho hope the long-shot effort will cause the Democratic-led Oregon
Legislature to pay closer attention to their concerns.
Maps courtesy of the Move Oregon’s Border campaign
A zoomed-in map provided by the group Move Oregon’s Border shows Bend remain-
ing in Oregon but La Pine becoming part of Idaho.
AP file
A northern spotted owl flies after an elusive mouse jumping off the end of a stick in
the Deschutes National Forest near Camp Sherman in 2003. For some, the fight over
protecting the owl’s habitat became a flashpoint in Oregon’s rural-urban divide.
ral Oregon, though she’s not opti-
mistic that will happen.
“Everything is always better
when a compromise is made,” she
said, adding that she remembers
Oregon as a middle-of-the-road
Republican state for years. “But
there is no compromise in Oregon
right now. There hasn’t been for a
long time.”
‘The internet has made it possible’
Charles Jones loves the way of
life in La Grande, the county seat of
Union County. The retired science
teacher and Navy commander, a
fourth-generation Eastern Orego-
nian, hikes and camps and hunts.
He wouldn’t want to live anywhere
other than “this spectacular moun-
tain valley,” he said.
He also says he’s liberal — at least
more liberal than a majority of his
fellow Union County residents.
He believes the push for a Greater
Idaho comes from people spending
more and more time staring at their
screens, where talking heads and
Facebook posts gin up anger over
issues that are rarely germane to
people’s day-to-day lives.
“Like most crazy movements,
the internet has made it possible,”
he said.
Most of the people who have
voted to change the border haven’t
thought it through, he added. “It’s
just a ‘Screw Portland’ reaction.”
There are some significant neg-
atives to consider when weighing
the proposal to shift up to 22 of Or-
egon’s 36 counties into Idaho, Jones
wrote last month in a guest edito-
rial for the Observer newspaper in
La Grande.
Would Idaho spend billions of
dollars to buy Oregon’s state pris-
ons and other state-owned property
in Eastern and Southern Oregon?
Would it take over bond payments
for projects in those counties? Have
Oregonians on the present border
thought about how much business
they’d lose from Idahoans who
come across the state line to shop
without having to pay sales tax?
Plus, there’s recreational mari-
juana, a meaningful revenue gen-
erator in some rural Oregon areas
— and still illegal in Idaho. And the
minimum wage in Idaho is barely
more than half what it is in Oregon
($7.25 in Idaho, compared to $12 in
non-urban Oregon counties).
This much also is indisputable:
Sparsely populated rural Oregon
has a much lower average income
than the Portland metro region,
which has the bulk of the state’s res-
idents. Eastern and southern Or-
egon depend on tax revenue that
comes from the part of the state it
wants to leave.
“We have a lot of nice highways
and other (infrastructure and ser-
vices) out here,” Jones pointed out.
“We don’t pay for them ourselves.”
But Greater Idaho proponents
don’t believe that tax revenue com-
ing their way from the northwest-
ern hinterland is the issue. They
recognize that Idaho wouldn’t sub-
sidize rural Oregon counties as
much as urban Oregon does now,
and they’re fine with that.
“State government should be
very minimal,” Reece said. “It
should not be involved in local pol-
icy.” He decried “mandates from
Portland that are contrary to our
values,” referring to “hot-button
culture issues.”
A changing culture
Those hot-button cultural issues
— the debate over, say, whether
America is a racist country today
or how schools should address gen-
der identity — lead to raised voices
here and there in rural Oregon,
just as they do in Portland and Eu-
gene. But down deeper, the propel-
lant for this secession movement
comes from the fear that a uniquely
American approach to life is slip-
ping away. That rugged individu-
alism, the foundational mythology
of the winning of the West, is under
relentless attack.
And expansive government,
many rural Oregonians have de-
cided, is more to blame than any-
thing else.
Out in the Oregon backcountry,
said Baertschiger, “they don’t want
streetlights. They want it to be dark.
They have a ‘we’ll-take-care-of-our-
selves’ attitude. They don’t want
government involved in their lives.”
(In the small Josephine County
town of Cave Junction, they’ve long
showed they’re willing to walk that
walk. Over the years, voters there
have rejected attempts to fund law
enforcement, and so there is no po-
lice department. Instead, residents
formed a volunteer “citizen watch
group” to help patrol the town.)
Baertschiger, though he works in
government, said he tends to be of
that take-care-of-ourselves mind-
set himself — and so he’s “enter-
taining” the Move Oregon’s Border
proposal.
“There would be logistical is-
sues to answer for a long time, but
you’ve got to get past the politi-
cal hurdles, then the logistical is-
sues can be figured out,” he said.
“There’s always a way to figure
those things out.”
Of course, not everyone in rural
Oregon worries about the arrival of
government men who say they’re
here to help.
Flipping Oregon counties into
Idaho, Jones said, would only cre-
ate new enclaves seeking dramatic
political change. Americans across
the country are increasingly self-seg-
regating by political viewpoint, but
there isn’t any place that’s a true
ideological monolith. Jones’ Union
County, for example, went strong for
President Donald Trump in Novem-
ber, 68% to 28%. But in La Grande,
the county’s largest city with some
13,000 people, it was a close race be-
tween Trump and Joe Biden.
“All the commissioners (in Union
County) are conservative,” Jones
pointed out. “The more liberal res-
idents have to live with that. Are we
going to secede from Union County
because it’s too conservative? You
can fragment so you have city blocks
seceding. Where does it end?”
Baertschiger, who left the Or-
egon Senate in January, also ac-
knowledges that the urban-rural
divide isn’t just between the Port-
land metro area and the state’s great
open lands. “There’s a difference
here in Josephine County between
people who live in Grants Pass and
people who live outside it,” he said.
“In Grants Pass, they want more
fire protection, more police, street-
lights. And they’re willing to pay for
those services.”
What do Idahoans want?
In the midst of this debate over
the viability of changing the border,
what sometimes gets overlooked is
what Idahoans think about it.
There hasn’t been any real poll-
ing on the subject, but some elected
officials there have expressed sup-
port. When Facebook mysteriously
disabled the Move Oregon’s Border
page early this year, Idaho state Rep.
Ronald Nate joined McCarter in
sending a letter to the social-media
giant seeking the page’s restoration.
The letter noted that Idaho Gov.
Brad Little had said in a Fox News
interview that he understood and
welcomed the border-change ef-
fort, and that the “President of the
Idaho Senate, Chuck Winder, and
the Speaker of the Idaho House,
Scott Bedke, have expressed some
support for the idea.”
Baertshiger said the Move Or-
egon’s Border proposal offered
obvious perks not only for the tar-
geted rural counties in Eastern and
Southern Oregon but also for the
Gem State.
“Look at it from Idaho’s per-
spective,” he said. “It would have
a deep-water port (in Coos Bay).
That would be pretty advantageous
for Idaho.”
McCarter is confident both
Idaho and rural Oregon would
benefit from the border-adjustment
plan he’s pushed for the past cou-
ple of years, but he says he remains
“open to other solutions” as well.
“I’ve heard a lot of people’s opin-
ions on this subject, some negative,
and that’s fine,” McCarter said. “I’m
thankful, because that opens the
conversation.”
Jones agrees that more conversa-
tion is the answer. He believes that
if rural Oregonians upset about
liberal state government stepped
away from their screens more often
and reminded themselves of all the
things that are right in their world,
then maybe those positives would
make them realize they can coexist
just fine with Portland.
“I’m a liberal person in a con-
servative county, and it’s no prob-
lem,” he said. “Great people here. If
you’re on a dark road and your car
breaks down, there’s no better place
to be. People here want to help you.
They’re problem-solvers. I think we
can work out our differences with
the rest of the state if we put our
minds to it.”