Matt McCaw - Should rural Oregon join Idaho?

Supporters of the Greater Idaho movement say years of frustration with Salem have pushed rural communities to consider leaving Oregon altogether. After one county voted to end relocation talks, is the movement losing momentum or proving its point about political division in the state?

Matt McCaw is executive director of the Citizens for Greater Idaho movement. He joins the show to discuss the latest vote in Wallowa County, why some rural residents feel disconnected from Oregon’s leadership, and whether the push to move the Idaho border still has a future.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome back to the Lawrence Larson Show. It's a pleasure to be with you on a Tuesday after Memorial Day weekend. I've got a simple question. Is the greater Idaho movement now dying, or did Oregon's Democrats just decide to kill it? I thought we'd try to get a solid answer for you on that because I got a little concerned after the election last week when I saw that 60, almost 61 percent of voters in Wallawa County approved a measure to terminate a requirement for county commissioners to discuss shifting the Oregon border so that residents could instead live inside the boundaries of Idaho. Matt McCaw joins me now, who's the Executive Director of Citizens for the Greater Idaho movement. Matt, welcome back to the program. Thanks for having me, Lars. Appreciate it. What does last week's vote mean before I insert my my point of view on that?

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Yeah. So so great question, Lars. And it's important to understand a couple things about the vote that happened out in Wallawa County. So so the measure that was passed in Wallawa County three years ago was close, and it required the uh Wallawa County Commissioners to meet and explore moving Wallawa County into Greater Idaho. So for three years, so voters passed that, which told us they are interested in at least having this conversation and exploring this. So for three years, the commissioners and the people in Wallawa County have been meeting and talking and requesting from action from our legislature that they move this forward. And so you know, and and your listeners know because we've been on many times, and and you guys are well informed about this. It's the state legislature that can actually make a border change happen. So we can vote at the county level, but it's the counties don't have the power to do it. The state legislature has to do it. So Wallawa County commissioners have written a letter asking the Oregon state legislature to move this forward. The representatives, representative Levy, who represents the people of Allowa County, has asked the state legislature to move this forward. Senator Nash, who represents the people of Wallaha County, has asked the state legislature to move this forward. The Oregon State Legislature, dominated by Democrats with supermajorities, has refused to have this conversation at all. Every bill that's been introduced has been killed, never put into committee. We've invited the governor to sit down with us multiple times. She completely ignores us. She acknowledges that she got the invitation and has completely ignored it since. So what happened last week is that the people of Allala County said, this is we've been asking for three years. We've been asking our representatives to take this issue up. We were being ignored. We're not going to continue to require the meeting.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Now, Matt, I don't know how you feel about it, but from a distance, I've been to Allowa County. It's a great place. And I think the people there are very sensible. I would want to keep that request active. I mean, in the same way that, Matt, just today I was telling one of my producers, McKenzie, I said, Will you put a request in for Governor Kotek to come on the program and talk about her run for re-election? And she said, She's gonna say no. And I said, Yeah, I expect that too. But we're gonna put the request in anyway, and we're gonna keep putting it in uh until you know the cows come home. We put in the same kind of request for Barack Hussein Obama, we put in the same kind of request for Joe Biden, we put in a request for both Governor Ferguson, Governor Inslee, Governor Kotek, uh, Governor Brown, you know, we put in requests, and we always get told no, that's all right. We're going to keep on asking. Uh and I guess that's the only thing that kind of threw me. If 60 percent of the voters in Wallaha County said, Oh, just don't bother asking anymore. I worry that that's going to give the anti-uh Greater Idaho movement uh some some traction in saying, see, if we just wait long enough, they'll give up.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Well, and and I'm sure that that's exactly what the the Democratic supermajority in Salem is hoping that we will give up. But but I can tell you, that's not, I don't I think that's the wrong read on the vote that happened. And and you can take our movement as an example. We've been, for five years, we've been asking voters in counties in Eastern Oregon if they want to join Idaho, and the voters keep telling us, yes, we want to do this. So we've been going to the legislature. We've been to the legislature in the last two long sessions with bills, with senators and representatives that represent the people of Eastern Oregon, and they've completely ignored us. Now, can we keep going back to the legislature and and spending our time trying to beg uh Democrats who have no interest in what the people of Eastern Oregon want or think? We can, but as a movement, we've decided we are also pivoting and we're going to start appealing to the federal government. It's obvious to the people of Eastern Oregon that Western Oregon Democrats are are not interested in what we want, what kind of governance we want. They're not interested in what we vote for. And so if that's going to be the case, maybe our our uh we our efforts are better spent petitioning the federal government, petitioning the Trump administration, who at least um does listen to rural people, does uh value what we value and is open to listening, and asking him to get involved, get the federal administration involved in forcing Oregon to the table because it's pretty clear that the Democratic supermajority is not going to do it on their own.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Well, the other thing I wonder about Matt is this seems like one of the most likely years to have Oregon elect a Republican governor. I mean, the current Democrat has failed so miserably. Even her own Democrats don't want to support her. Even the unions have said, many of the big ones, have said we're not supporting her anymore. Uh and and so it seems like a great year for Oregon to elect a Republican governor. Would things then change in January if that happened?

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Oh, absolutely. You know, the people of Eastern Oregon are the most conservative people in in the state by a long way. Uh even the Southern voters, you know, the voters in Southern Oregon that are pretty conservative, they're nothing like our counties out here in Eastern Oregon that vote 70, 75 percent conservative. So the the the people of Eastern Oregon are going to show up in November, and of course, that you know, they're they're most likely gonna overwhelmingly vote for the Republican because that's what we've been doing out here for decades. Um, will that would that change how people view, you know, wanting to join Idaho if we were able to get the kind of government that we actually vote for? Absolutely. Do we believe that if Christine Drazen were to win that we could sit down with the Drazen administration and get more autonomy and get more of a voice and get more of the kind of government we want in eastern Oregon? Absolutely. It would then not necessarily be as necessary to join the state of Idaho, although still in the long run, separating from Portland, separating from from the Portland metro area is in the best interest of people in eastern Oregon. And and most people in eastern Oregon agree.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

By the way, has there been any inclination to move north of the Columbia River and start asking parts of eastern Washington if they'd like to join the movement as well?

SPEAKER_00 7:10

There has. So, you know, one of the things that about our movement is that there's two pieces. The people that live there have to want to join Idaho, and the people of Idaho have to want those people. So it works really well for Eastern Oregon because Eastern Oregon is actually more conservative than Idaho as a whole. Idaho is an incredibly red state, but Eastern Oregon counties are even more conservative than Idaho. So for Idaho, adding Eastern Oregon counties is a no-brainer. You're gonna make your state more conservative, you're gonna add all this land and resources. Eastern Washington isn't quite as conservative. It's not quite uh a natural fit for Idaho because there's a lot of population, it's not as conservative, and and the people of Idaho, you know, that that would make them very nervous about adding that many people. That's gonna make their state more blue and and not as red. So there are select counties in eastern Washington that our movement has considered adding uh to to Idaho, but as a whole, Eastern Washington is gonna have to find a different solution for their problem, their Western Washington problem.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

I would have to agree with you. That's Matt McCaw, executive director of Citizens for Greater Idaho. Back in a moment.