Red Counties in Blue States Talking Divorce From Dem Rule

The red-area members of President-elect Donald Trump's America are increasingly disenfranchised by being under Democrat governance in deep-blue states like California, Illinois, and Oregon.

In answer, there is a grassroots effort for rural areas to push for a divorce from the Democrat-run cities that ultimately decide the political leadership and policies of their states against their wishes, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Red counties on the Trump's electoral map that feel strangled and steamrolled by Democrats in the deepest blue states are raising the specter of splitting off.

Outside the coastal counties of California, red districts are open to the possibility of forming their own state — talk that is now entering the minds of red counties in Illinois outside of Chicago, according to the report.

"If you like where you live, but you don't like Illinois, what do you do?" Watseka, Illinois' Phil Gioja, 43, told the Journal.

"There's a lot of people in Chicago, and I think that they make a lot of decisions that affect people downstate. It's just sending a message that, Hey, you know, there's people that would like to be part of the conversation, and often aren't."

The group New Illinois State is joining the effort long discussed in California and other blue states like Oregon, where inland red counties are feeling disenfranchised.

"Leave Illinois Without Moving," New Illinois State's motto declares.

New California State founder Paul Preston is enjoying having a burgeoning voice after Trump's resounding Electoral College and popular vote victories.

"I'm so flipping excited," Preston told the Journal.

Preston's group has boldly "declared all the counties outside of Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Sacramento as independent and named him governor pro tempore," the Journal reported.

The problem with the efforts is that Democrat-held legislatures still hold the power in those states.

And the U.S. Congress under Article IV, Section III of the U.S. Constitution, gives the slim Republican majorities little hope for those red districts seeking freedom from Democrats' reign.

It has happened only a few times in U.S. history, including the formation of Kentucky with the consent of Virginia, the founding of Maine, once a part of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the West Virginia statehood achieved after the Civil War with congressional approval and consent of Virginia's legislature in Richmond, according to the Journal.

California's Democrat majority has created "a one-party communist state, and technically, they have seceded from the Union already," Preston told the Journal.

Forming new states on political ideology remains "far-fetched" but not impossible as much as improbable, according to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign constitutional law professor Jason Mazzone.

"It seems far-fetched, but we live in uncertain times," he told the Journal. "So if you've got the right people in Congress — and I don't think we do have the right people in Congress — you could do it."

The Greater Idaho activist group is seeking to cut off the inland red counties of Oregon to join the red state of Idaho, and its executive director said his constituents feel like Democrat-held hostages.

"The state of Oregon has said we're not going to talk about it and are basically holding people in eastern Oregon captive against our wishes," Matt McCaw told the Journal.

Illinois' effort sees hope in Trump's America and the newly won White House and both houses of Congress, but most importantly it is emboldened by what it sees as the recklessness of a Democrat-run state.

"We always believed that our best opportunity to negotiate our way out of Illinois was when Illinois was approaching that financial cliff — it's been on a path toward it for years," New Illinois State Chair G.H. Merritt told the Journal, seeking a "reckoning" in three to seven years.

"We don’t wish bad on Cook County, we just don't want to be in an unhappy marriage with Cook County."