The following is part of my continued series of letters on potential candidates for the 51st state in the Union. This letter will continue with the potential states that could form from the current state of Oregon. My previous letter from June discussed the formation of Oregon’s massive 2nd Congressional district into the state of East Oregon. Already several counties in that area are now trying to initiate a process of leaving Oregon and joining Idaho. Whether that comes to any fruition remains to be seen. This letter will briefly go over the Portland-Salem area and Oregon’s 4th district and what could be the formation of two or three states.
1. Portland-Salem - this potential state would have nearly 2.4 million residents in a land area of nearly 9,000 square miles putting in between Connecticut and Delaware in its land mass and between Kansas and New Mexico in terms of population. It consists of the 1st, 3rd and 5th congressional districts.
2. Oregon minus the Portland-Salem area - a possible alternative to rural conservative counties joining Idaho would be for the northwest corner of Oregon to just form its own state leaving nearly the other three quarters of the state intact.
3. Oregon’s 4th Congressional district - is the southern half of Oregon’s coastline. This potential state would have a population around 820,000 residents along with a land area of 17,000 square miles. This would be in between New Jersey and Connecticut in terms of land mass and in between South Dakota and North Dakota in terms of population.
4. Western Oregon - this would be Oregon’s 4th district and the Portland-Salem area combined into one state.
In researching this subject, quite a few potential candidates for the 51st state across the United States involve rural portions of states that are outvoted by the more urban parts in state legislatures when it comes to policies and taxation. The primary cause of this has to do with two Supreme Court decisions from the 1960s that came about because of the malapportioned legislative districts that existed before those decisions. For example, as cited in “State and Local Government: Politics and Policies” 9th Edition, the state of Vermont guaranteed each town equal representation in its lower house. One district with 24 people had equal representation with 35,531 people and about 12% of the overall state population elected “the majority of members in its lower house” of the state legislature. Eight other states had representation in their senates based on county boundaries with widely varying populations in them. Those two Supreme Court decisions Baker vs. Carr (1962) and Reynolds vs. Sims (1964) which established the one person one vote principle will be discussed in a later letter to the editor, along with the possibility of adding a modified one county one vote to those decisions.
