11 ms·
Western Maryland asks West Virginia to 'consider adding us' to their state
- nemacol 5y agoI am not sure I understand the goals here. Gerrymandering 2.0? WV lost a seat in the 2020 census. Would move seats from Maryland to WV. From Blue to Red. I like to idea just to square off WV's eastern panhandle. It would look nice on a map with a flat top.
- ksenzee 5y agoThe article lists several reasons: culturally they feel closer to WV, they want to be able to do things like fracking that MD has outlawed, they don't feel heard by the MD government on issues like gun rights and taxes. Essentially they have a cultural divide that has grown deep enough that they want to secede. It's unlikely to happen while Joe Manchin is in office, though; he would likely pitch a fit and get Democrats in the Senate to kill it.
- Frost1x 5y agoIf there are natural resources that can be extracted, taxed, and create jobs in those counties and WV already supports the avenue of fracking, I'm not entirely sure Manchin would immediately shut down the idea. I'm sure WV would rather have Frederick county MD to extend state boarders closer to DC and grow the state economy from there. It surprises me though that citizens in those counties would want to have the state shift below their feet to WV, one of the poorest states in the union. Maybe taxes are cheaper which would be good for them?
- snarf21 5y agoMy assumption is that some rural Marylanders want to live in a red state without having to move.
- asdff 5y agoThat's true with rural minded people everywhere. All of them dislike their nearby major city and paint it with the same brush, the same exact talking points whether they are describing Los Angeles or Atlanta, even if they visit once in a blue moon to drive to a baseball game. I think people might be surprised how conservative the rural areas of states are that are commonly considered deep blue politically.
- dsizzle 5y agoI would have guessed the seat in western MD is already Red, but it turns out that it's grouped in with Potomac and is D+8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland%27s_congressional_districts#/media/File:Maryland_US_Congressional_District_6_(since_2013).tif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland%27s_congressional_dis...
- throwaway6734 5y agoMaryland has very aggressive gerrymandering
- etempleton 5y agoWestern Maryland, like most states, is already gerrymandered and that is likely their key complaint. It wouldn’t make much of a difference if it wasn’t gerrymandered, but I am sure it feels like they lack a voice politically. Fracking is likely the real motivator. There is rich natural gas reserves that were being fracked in Western Maryland before the state banned it. Fracking was absolutely causing local environmental harm, but it was also bringing in jobs and tax revenue and people vote with their wallets.
- ssully 5y agoThis is pretty common in a lot of blue states. It's been a thing in Illinois for years, and it's been getting louder for the last year and a half. The gist is the rural area's feel underrepresented compared to the metropolitan area's. So in Illinois case, the rural area's feel like the state puts more focus on Chicago.
- fnimick 5y agoWhy shouldn't the state put more focus on Chicago? The rural areas are a net drain on state finances and are kept afloat by the "liberal hellhole" that they hate.
- rplst8 5y agoI don't know... maybe because the rural areas grow their food? Furthermore, I'm not sure your conjecture is even correct. Subsistence farming supported people for centuries before our megalopolises existed.
- 1123581321 5y agoRural IL would say that is only by design, pointing to better-run neighboring states that have implemented reforms, which are impossible to pass in IL, in addition to the financial benefits to the public of smaller, more transparent state and municipal governments.
- softwaredoug 5y agoSame kind of thing happened in Virginia last year. But if this had happened (somehow) then Virginia wouldn't have a competitive campaign for governor this year https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/09/politics/west-virginia-republicans-push-vexit/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/09/politics/west-virginia-republ...
- jnwatson 5y agoArticle 1, Section 2 of the Constitution: “The legislature, in cooperation with the properly constituted authority of any adjoining state, is empowered to change, alter, and redefine the state boundaries, such change, alteration and redefinition to become effective only upon approval of the Congress of the United States.” Essentially they’d need approval from WV, MD, and an act of Congress. Highly unlikely. This issue is one of the many defects in democracies: your power sometimes rests in the way somebody drew a border a long time ago.
- ilamont 5y agoYet people regularly try to push these ideas, from the earliest days of the Union when part of New Hampshire wanted to secede and join Vermont or form a new state in the Connecticut River valley (https://www.flowofhistory.org/the-rebellion-in-western-new-hampshire-and-the-lt-proposed-union-with-vermont-1776-1784/ https://www.flowofhistory.org/the-rebellion-in-western-new-h...) More recently, there was that expensive California idea pushed by Tim Draper, as well as a new country in the Pacific Northwest including parts of Canada and the U.S.
- knubie 5y agoThe Cal 3 proposal actually made some sense as it would have given the people living there more representation in congress in the form of 4 new senators, as well as more local control. You would think that there would be broad support for the proposal considering a lot of people in these large left-leaning states often complain that their vote is not "worth as much" as a vote in a less populated state.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoNobody on either side liked the Cal3 proposal because it just turns one California into three Illinois. You'd still have major urban areas mostly controlling each state but fighting the rest of the state every step of the way. It works from a "keep the number of red and blue senators" fairly constant perspective but it doesn't actually solve anybody's complaints about lack of self-government.
- Macha 5y agoAnyone got a mirror? The Baltimore Sun is one of those US local media outlets that block Europeans because of how much they "highly value" them. EDIT: It's syndicated to msn: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/western-maryland-lawmakers-ask-west-virginia-officials-to-e2-80-98consider-adding-us-e2-80-99-to-their-state/ar-AAPNBZz https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/western-maryland-lawmakers...
- dang 5y agoOk, we've changed to that from https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-md-pol-western-md-wv-20211021-iyugtyt72rfzjlkzt4jigs2wky-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-md-pol-western-md-w.... Thanks!
- umvi 5y agoTangential, but instead of making DC into a new state, why not just absorb it into Maryland? Virginia already absorbed the part of DC rhombus west of the Potomac.
- dbcurtis 5y agoBecause one party wants two more uncompetitive senate seats.
- dane-pgp 5y agoAnd the other party doesn't want people having representation at all. For the record, the popular vote percentages for the Democrats in the past 3 senate elections were: 53.0%, 58.2%, and 47.0%. That averages 52.7%, so gaining an extra two senate seats would still mean the Democrats were under-represented. (I know that the purpose of the senate is not to represent each citizen equally, I just thought it was worth pointing out which parts of the country have the most grounds for complaint).
- knubie 5y agoMost of the people living in DC work for the federal government either directly or indirectly. That represents a huge conflict of interest, and was the reason DC was created in the first place. No one lived in DC before it was created, so the people that have put down roots there did so knowing they wouldn't have representation in the federal government.
- oh_sigh 5y agoI don't think there is much of an ethical point to "Yeah you're disenfranchised but it was your great great great granddaddies choice!"
- belltaco 5y agoNot true, most of the federal workers living in the VA and MD suburbs. >Only about 1 in 6 of the 1.87 million civilian full-time federal employees live in the Washington, D.C. metro area, which includes Northern VA
- panzagl 5y agoThis type of stuff happens all the time- Northern Colorado has asked to join Wyoming, there have been various schemes to join parts of Appalachia together, etc. It all comes down to rural areas trying to combine with other rural areas, or occasionally, urban areas trying to expand.
- eatonphil 5y ago> a media market based in Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA? On a map the western parts of Maryland seem vaguely as close to Pittsburgh as they are to Baltimore. Even if they were closer to Pittsburgh, PA why would media in Pittsburgh, PA cover events in western Maryland (since it's still kind of far away and Pittsburgh isn't that big a city)? I also don't know what they mean by "media market" being in Pittsburgh, again, if they mean PA. I Google and can't find a Pittsburgh, MD so I assume they are talking about PA. But I'm still confused.
- mlinksva 5y agoYes. The westernmost county in MD is considered part of the Pittsburgh PA media market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Media_Market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Media_Market
- eatonphil 5y ago> definition of the reach of the Pittsburgh television and radio media as defined by Nielsen in a prime sense Ah. I never understood anything to do with Nielsen. Makes sense.
- throwaway6734 5y agoPittsburgh is much more culturally rural-white than Baltimore
- rplst8 5y agoInteresting you had to use a throwaway for that comment. Pittsburgh has changed a lot in the last 20 years. The grouping of western MD counties in the Pittsburgh media market is purely one of geography.
- throwaway6734 5y agoThis is my standard account. I live in Baltimore and have visited Pittsburgh many times. Baltimore is a black city with a much different culture than western Maryland or Pittsburgh
- rscoots 5y agoCould be a good trade for making DC part of Maryland, thereby giving DC statehood.
- _bohm 5y agoDC does not want to be a part of Maryland
- nimbius 5y ago"Western Maryland lawmakers have periodically raised concerns in the Maryland General Assembly that their part of the state is different from the rest of the state, with a more conservative political outlook" this type of political huckstering happens periodically between US states, most famously the exhausting routine of Californian politicians demanding the state be carved into a north and south (with Los Angeles curiously a northern city in most maps.) When your brand of political ideal is so toxic or disinteresting to a state that you seek to bifurcate the state itself, you're missing the point of political discourse and abdicating the role of statesman.
- gotoeleven 5y agoYeah east Germany had free housing right? I don't get why people were always trying to cross the Berlin wall.
- mrtranscendence 5y agoFun fact: they would be moving from the state with the highest median household income to the state with the lowest. I suppose this would only make Maryland richer by that metric. Personally, I’d rather cut my own foot off with a rusty steak knife than live in West Virginia, which has basically nothing going for it except some decent wilderness. It doesn’t help that I have relatives there who love the confederate flag and decorate the back of their truck with a few iron crosses. Maybe they’d fit in among the residents of western Maryland.
- oh_sigh 5y agoAll the wealth in Maryland is concentrated around DC, so western Marylanders probably don't feel much connection at all to easterners. I'd imagine it is similar elsewhere - people in upstate NY probably feel a stronger connection to Vermonters than they do to NYC folk.
- patorjk 5y agoWestern Maryland has a pretty low cost of living. I live in the Baltimore/DC area and have co-workers who live in Frederick because they could get a large house for cheap (and 3 the counties being discussed in the article are to the west of Frederick). If the counties were able to succeed and join WV, I wonder how many Marylanders would move out there for the low taxes.
- Breza 5y agoThe Post had a cover story a few years ago on people moving to cheaper cities in the region. I still love living in the District, even though it's not cheap.
- orwin 5y agoMy genetic grandfather live in West Virginia, i'd say it is way more diverse than you think it is. I depends where you go though. People who live there are great, i thought at the time i met the only true left candidate in the US (It was before Bernie was a thing). Back-to-land'er hippies communities are a joy to frequent: they play music every time they're not hiking, brewing, building their home or tending their garden. They also tried to do their own festival. If you want to met some of them, you have to try producer markets and talk to the guys there, or just go to a bar where music is played and talk to the musicians. You can also participate in a home brew contest, you'll taste horrible stuff, pretty good stuff, and meet wonderful people..
- wantsanagent 5y agoEverything west of 522 should be WV and everything east should be Maryland.
- bdirgo 5y agoCurrently, Texas could split into five states. But this would require a cooperation between the two states and congress. It could happen, but not easy
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- neonate 5y agohttps://archive.md/8c6Yk https://archive.md/8c6Yk http://web.archive.org/web/20211021175914/https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-md-pol-western-md-wv-20211021-iyugtyt72rfzjlkzt4jigs2wky-story.html http://web.archive.org/web/20211021175914/https://www.baltim...