Greater Idaho organizers face a new foe: Growing apathy

In the same place where thousands of voters once affirmed one of Greater Idaho’s first electoral victories, Mike McCarter wondered why more people weren’t continuing to show up to voice their support.

Two years ago, Union County voters approved a ballot measure that mandated the Union County Board of Commissioners meet the second Wednesday of every February, June and October to discuss only one topic: moving Union County from Oregon to Idaho.

More than 7,000 Union County voters approved the measure in the Nov. 3, 2020, election. By the time the commissioners convened on Oct. 12, it was their sixth meeting since the measure passed. McCarter, the president of Citizens of Greater Idaho, spoke to an in-person audience of about a half-dozen people.

“We’ve got a meeting going on this morning,” he said. “And you would think that if this is an important issue that the room would be packed. So there’s some resistance out there.”

McCarter and his group have spent the past several years backing ballot measures meant to build public support for an expanded, “greater” Idaho that would extend its western border to the Cascade Mountains. A divorce between rural Oregon and the Willamette Valley, the thinking goes, would allow Eastern Oregon and parts of central and Southern Oregon to align themselves with a state that shares much of rural Oregon’s conservative politics and culture.