Greater Idaho Generates Greater National News Attention
There are people who’ll tell you it’s a waste of time. A fool’s errand. Not possible in our lifetimes.
I beg to differ. The Greater Idaho movement is getting a lot of attention and is far beyond where I expected it would ever get. I think news media and liberal state legislators in Salem, Oregon misjudged the depth of anger in rural eastern Oregon. I recall reading a column in an Oregon newspaper a few months ago. The writer claimed the movement had lost steam. Then a couple of other counties asked for a divorce.
I was pleasantly surprised as I was doing show preparation this morning and looked up at a TV set in the studio. I thought, “Why is Barbara Ehardt on Fox News?” The Idaho State Representative was talking about the potential of moving our state line westward. She has been running point on the matter at the State Capitol. At the end of the interview, she was thanked for getting up early. It was before 5 o’clock our time. I wrote her immediately to tell her she did well. She wrote back and explained she had been up all night!
Could this really happen? Longshot, I know. However, if there was ever a determination made in Salem that it could be economically beneficial to lose the rural counties, I could see Oregon legislators suddenly going along with the idea. Then it’s only a matter of congressional approval.
I’ll mention one other related thing. When I was working in news in upstate New York 30 years ago, there was a constant drumbeat to separate the conservative north from the liberal New York City. Mario Cuomo would always tell me that we got the better of the deal in the northern counties, but money isn’t everything. People want to raise their kids in a traditional way, and not by the diktats of a distant and cold government.