Should Washington be Divided into Two Separate States?

The urge to tinker with our state lines never dies

By Seattle Mag February 9, 2015

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In our bi-monthly Seattlemag.com column, Knute Berger–who writes regularly for Seattle Magazine and Crosscut.com and is a frequent pundit on KUOW–takes an in-depth look at some of the highly topical and sometimes polarizing issues in our city.

The season for secession?

We’ve all been trained to look at the map and regard the lines on it as set in stone, but political boundaries can change. Our corner of the United States was among the last to be set—our border with Canada wasn’t settled until the late 19th century, and Washington Territory once included Idaho and parts of Montana and Wyoming.

Desire to redraw the boundaries is ongoing. Eastern Washington and eastern Oregon were once proposed as joining to form the state of Lincoln; Northern California and Southern Oregon have fantasized about a new state called Jefferson. Writer Ernest Callenbach imagined a new country called Ecotopia extending down the west side of the Cascades from British Columbia to Northern California. Trade-promoters and environmentalists have touted Cascadia, a bio-region extending from Alberta to the Pacific.

It’s not like anything is seriously in play, but the urge to tinker never dies.

It is very evident now in Olympia where five GOP House members from eastern Washington, led by Rep. Matt Shea of Spokane Valley, have proposed forming a task force to actually look at breaking Washington state into two separate states. They argue that their constituents are urging them to do do, and disillusionment with Olympia is strong east of the mountains. In a recent KCTS poll, less than 1% of eastern Washington respondents thought the Legislature was doing a great job.

It’s partly ideological. The state government apparatus has been dominated by Democrats. The last governor from Eastern Washington was Clarence Martin who served from 1933-41. Talk about political droughts!

This is largely a function of population and the economy: the center of gravity is on the wet side, not the dry side. Still, however split we are in terms of climate and political leanings, the two sides of the state are much stronger together. Eastern Washing has hydropower, huge alternative energy potential, robust agricultural production.

We’re also not quite as divided on issues as it seems. Many Eastern Washington precincts supported gun background checks, one county backed same-sex marriage (Whitman). Four voted for legalized marijuana (Okanogan, Ferry, Spokane, and Whitman). Likewise, Western Washington counties have opposed gun background checks (Mason, Cowlitz and five others), and the initiative to reduce K-12 class last year sizes lost in nine Western counties, including heavily Democratic Thurston. The point is that Washington is more complicated on the ground than the Cascade Curtain or Red-Blue divide suggests.

Perhaps this proposed task force would be better spent looking at how to get enlightened leadership that can bring the diversity of the state together and make it a strength, not drawing new battle lines. Another discussion point: How about supporting for full funding of school social studies programs and related activities to teach Washington students more about our state and what binds us geographically, economically, and culturally. Our residents—starting with the original Native American population—have traveled, traded and inter-married across the mountains, deserts and water barriers that form our landscape.

Washington is better having both farmers and software geeks, nuclear engineers and urban planners rather than suggesting that like-minded people simply retreat into their respective, comfy corners.

 

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