Division in Oregon highlights growing political rift between rural and urban areas

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• Geoff Bennett:

  Shifting our focus now to Oregon, Judy Woodruff recently traveled across that state to learn more about the perceived divide between some rural and urban areas in this country.

  It's her latest installment of America at a Crossroads.

• Judy Woodruff:

  For Ian Williams, it isn't just about the caffeine buzz here at Deadstock Coffee located in the heart of Old Town Portland.

  Ian Williams, Owner and Founder, Deadstock Coffee: The reason why this shop exists is for the community to come together.

• Judy Woodruff:

  The sneaker-theme shop reflects 36-year-old Williams' love for basketball, shoes, and the people who gather here.

• Ian Williams:

  We are a city that accepts so many things, whether it be culturally or sexual orientation, whatever it might be. Like, we accept so many things, and it's a beautiful thing.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Williams, sometimes known as the mayor of Portland, is deeply involved in this community and worried about its future.

• Ian Williams:

  Portland, the government, the city has allowed people to make the rules. So, then, when we talk about things being dirty, and people — like, mental health issues and things like that, we're not regulating. We're not on top of whatever's going on.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Rachel Coady, a native Portlander who moved back here in 2018, acknowledges its problems. A consultant by day, she's also worked to help build stronger communities in the city.

• Rachel Coady, Consultant:

  Portland has enough problems to take care of on its own. I mean, obviously, the houselessness for our citizens, support in getting people who are addicted or having troubles with addiction, the services they need, at least off of the streets, feels really evident.

  It's a safety issue now for people. We have a huge violence issue in Portland that's bigger than it's been in decades.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Portland is Oregon's most populous city and is one of the economic hubs of the state. Just 80 miles from the Pacific Ocean, it sits at the northern tip of the Willamette Valley, where the vast majority of Oregon's people live, many in urban areas like Salem and Eugene.

  They have helped turn the state strongly Democratic.

  (Cheering and applause)

  Ronald Reagan, Former President of the United States: God bless you.

• Judy Woodruff:

  A Republican presidential candidate hasn't won here in 40 years.

  But east of the nearby Cascade mountain Range that divides the state, many have different worries and far more conservative views. On the High Desert, it's a constant struggle to keep the cattle healthy, says 58-year-old Lonny Carter, and safe from Mother Nature and from the government.

• Lonny Carter, Rancher:

  I have had wolves right there in that field by my house.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Carter runs this 19,000-acre ranch with a small team of family members and ranch hands.

• Lonny Carter:

  She wouldn't have made it out there by herself.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Chief among their concerns are the uncertainties.

• Lonny Carter:

  Every ranch out here has water rights and the state of Oregon controls that. We don't own the water. If the primary reservoir is low on water, they say they can come take our water without even nothing, just they will take it.

  And they will drain my reservoir and they don't care about my fish. They don't care about fire protection. They don't care about my irrigation.

• Judy Woodruff:

  This ranch not only sits literally at the geographic center of Oregon. The people here find themselves at the center of a passionate debate.

  Increasingly, Americans in rural and urban areas are growing farther and farther apart on critical issues here in Oregon and across the country.

• Suzanne Mettler, Cornell University:

  This is so striking because it did not exist in the American past.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Professor Suzanne Mettler of Cornell University researches the growing divide between urban and rural Americans, which she says has grown dramatically among white Americans.

• Suzanne Mettler:

  It's only beginning of the 1990s that we began to see rural people in all parts of the country line up in one political party. Prior to that, both parties had some supporters in rural places in different parts of the country.

  But since the 1990s, to be a rural person means in so many places that you're a Republican, and it's led to a wider and wider divide. It's enormous and it's growing.

• Matt McCaw, Spokesman, Greater Idaho Movement:

  The rural parts of the state have gotten less political power. People are looking for a solution.

• Judy Woodruff:

  The political divide back in Oregon has been so great that some are calling for drastic changes.

  Matt McCaw is the spokesman for the Greater Idaho Movement, which wants to break off the eastern, more conservative counties in Oregon and join neighboring Idaho.

• Matt McCaw:

  The west side of Oregon is very different than the east side. It's populated. It's green. Its climate's different. The culture's different. You get out here on the east side, and it's high desert. There's very little moisture. It's agricultural. It's culturally very conservative.

• Judy Woodruff:

  The proposed Greater Idaho would encompass all or parts of 17 counties in Eastern Oregon. So far, 12 have passed ballot initiatives in favor of leaving.

  The latest in Wallowa County passed by just seven votes out of nearly 3, 500. The entire area represents roughly 65 percent of Oregon's land mass, but less than 10 percent of the population and just one of its six congressional districts.

• Matt McCaw:

  You could get those people in Eastern Oregon state government from Idaho that matches their values, is the kind of government they want. And that longstanding problem of the urban-rural divide goes away.

• Judy Woodruff:

  It would also allow people like him, McCaw says, to be represented by a government more aligned with his views, favoring more restrictions on abortion rights, lower taxes and fewer limits on guns.

• Kerry Tymchuk, Executive Director, Oregon Historical Society:

  It's partisanship on steroids.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Kerry Tymchuk, the executive director of the Oregon Historical Society, dates the widening chasm between the east and west to the diverging economic fortunes in the state.

  In 1990, the northern spotted owl was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, marking the beginning of the end for Oregon's timber industry and, with it, jobs for many in the state.

• Kerry Tymchuk:

  There were union jobs, family wage union jobs. Many of the union members, most were Democrats. And when the environmental movement happened, the spotted owl especially, and they lost all those jobs, it moved them away from the party.

  That would be equivalent to what happened in Ohio and Pennsylvania with the manufacturing jobs.

• Suzanne Mettler:

  This is the time period when people in rural areas start to feel like the economy is bottoming out once you get into the 2000s, and they feel that these policies are being hoisted upon them.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Urban areas, Mettler says, were able to bounce back more quickly from economic downturns. That fueled resentment from those in rural areas that account for about 20 percent of the U.S. population.

• Suzanne Mettler:

  That's when we start to see this politics of grievance and resentment. People in rural places started to feel that the Democratic Party was run by elites, people who were better off than them, and who were imposing policies on them, without asking them what they would like or without listening to them or without being respectful of their communities and their values.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Tymchuk says, in any event, the political and logistical hurdles for secession are too high. In order for the border to change, both the Idaho and Oregon legislatures would have to sign off, and it would require an act of the U.S. Congress.

• Kerry Tymchuk:

  The economics that that would involve, the legal issues would keep — it would be a lawyer's dream. There's so much going on there. That is just never going to happen.

• Lonny Carter:

  So we got 400 cows.

• Amna Nawaz:

  But for rancher Lonny Carter, it's not an idea he's willing to let go of.

• Lonny Carter:

  My grandkids, the owners' kid, it's their right to have a good life without someone coming in and taxing us to death and telling us we can't do this and we can't do that on our own piece of property. We don't go over there and tell them what they can and can't do. They're destroying their city over there.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Have you tried to have a conversation with some of the folks who have a different view on these issues?

• Lonny Carter:

  Oh, yes. They have been pretty interesting. It's been a couple of years. I met with a couple from Portland. They were like, why would you want to do this? And I said, because we don't win. And they said, well, we don't need ranchers or farmers.

  This lady actually thought you can go to your butcher and tell them what you want, and he pushes a button in a machine and out comes her meat. And that's not a joke.

• Judy Woodruff:

  If the whole country were to say, well, we're going to organize ourselves only by our — where — what our politics are, so some of the country would be red. Some of the country would be blue. Do you think it's healthy that we divide up into our respective beliefs?

• Matt McCaw:

  I do. I think it's very healthy. In fact, I think it's far healthier than having groups of people that have radically different world views and value sets trying to force their world view and value set on another group of people.

  I believe and I think most people in the United States believe that we would be better if we allow people to have government that makes sense for them and policy that their communities actually want, rather than forcing policy on people they don't want.

• Judy Woodruff:

  But Mettler says movements like Greater Idaho go against the grain of our democratic system of government.

• Suzanne Mettler:

  I have heard of some other efforts where bills have been introduced for parts of the state to separate that's even happened here in New York state. We could see the whole country getting divided up and into multiple states or seceding to join other states.

  And this is no way to — it's no way to have a democracy. It's no way to engage in trying to solve large public problems together.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Professor Mettler says divides like this can be bridged by building coalitions and respect.

• Suzanne Mettler:

  I think Democrats in a state like that need to work harder to listen to rural people and finding out why is it that people don't like the way some policy was put together and is there a way to do it that would make people more satisfied?

• Judy Woodruff:

  Despite the challenges, coffee shop owner Ian Williams remains convinced it's possible to learn where others are coming from.

  In 2020 he took a road trip across Oregon and as far away as Texas, documenting it all on social media. He brought his coffee setup in the back of his truck, sneakers and all, served people coffee and had conversations he otherwise never would have had.

• Ian Williams:

  How do we meet in the middle and say, like, I understand what you got going on in your community and your — with your family, with your people? We don't get on the same page. We just start with, you're wrong. We don't do a good enough job understanding.

• Judy Woodruff:

  In Crook County in Eastern Oregon, voters will weigh in May on the next ballot measure to support talks to join Idaho.

  For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Judy Woodruff near Post, Oregon.