America: Love It Or Leave It

When three rural Maryland counties recently threatened to secede from the state, citing a cluster of disagreements with the progressive-leaning politics of the legislature in Annapolis, neighboring West Virginia welcomed them with "open arms."

"We'd welcome absolutely these counties and be tickled to death to have them and the great folks of that incredible state," West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice said in response. "We got it going on in West Virginia right now and that's all there is to it."

A group of Republican lawmakers from the three Maryland counties last month sent letters to West Virginia leaders urging them to allow the counties to be absorbed into the Mountain State. Some of the lawmakers who signed the letters have already walked back their support, and the potential swap of what amounts to about 1,500 square miles of Maryland soil to West Virginia's territory is unlikely – just as other attempts have been throughout states like Oregon, California, Colorado, New York, Texas and Washington, among others.

The states are part of a trend with deep historical roots in American politics, occurring for the most part in places where populous metropolitan areas like Baltimore, Maryland, and Portland, Oregon, largely decide the political trajectory of the greater state, regardless of how red and rural its sprawl beyond city limits.

But those long-standing disagreements are running headlong into a growing trend of political partisanship so intense that it's making consensus elusive and disagreements intractable.

The signs of dissension are everywhere. Just this week the Supreme Court heard arguments on two of the most divisive cultural issues in America: abortion and gun rights, while the Biden administration touted coronavirus vaccinations for kids and mandates for U.S. workers as large portions of the population remain deeply skeptical of the shot. And Congress is still hammering out a once-in-a-generation spending bill likely to pass on an entirely party-line vote.

The signs were hard to miss this week in Virginia as well – its rural-urban divide being among the pivotal factors that led to the victory this week of Republican Glenn Youngkin over former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe in the Old Dominion – a state that was itself halved by the secession of West Virginia over Civil War politics more than 150 years ago.

And although Virginians are not seeking secession from the state this time around, Tuesday's results, flipping the governorship of the recently blue state back to red for the first time in a decade, signal an electorate struggling with its identity.

In extreme cases, the divisions are encouraging political leaders to explore breaking boundaries in favor of joining other like-minded states or jurisdictions.

"The fact that partisanship and geography are so closely aligned now, it's a shorthand for worldviews, just like where people see themselves, like where they draw the battle lines, and which side they think they're on," political scientist Katherine J. Cramer says. "There's very much a perception in rural areas that urban areas are soaking up all of the state's resources and spending them on things that are not in line with rural values and rural interests and rural concerns. That's not necessarily the case, but it's a strong perception. And so these secession efforts gain steam because members of the public perceive that if they could just not have to spend their hard-earned money on urban areas, they would be much better off."

In May, a majority of residents in five eastern Oregon counties voted in favor of becoming a part of Idaho to the east, led by a grassroots effort built on the idea that the counties would be better off in Idaho's more conservative political environment. The movement is also looking to gain traction in some of California's northern counties, which have seen support for their own secession in recent years.

In rural parts of Northern California, outside of the coastal metropolises that make the Golden State a progressive powerhouse, residents have threatened to secede into what they call the state of Jefferson for decades. And while the threat to leave is long-standing, the movement has been reinvigorated in recent years as conservative voices opposing the state's politics have grown louder, culminating in Gov. Gavin Newsom's costly recall election earlier this year.

But no state is better known for breakaway efforts than Texas, which has become the poster child of secession – not necessarily on account of intra-state divisions but rather for separating itself from the U.S. altogether.

The Lone Star State has nearly always maintained that it has the right to secede, while the federal government has repeatedly slapped down its secession threats. But in recent years, the movement has gained newfound momentum, as the state's politics have become increasingly separate from the rest of the country – the state's nationalistic tendencies raging so strongly that quarrels between Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and President Joe Biden often appear like disagreements between two competing heads of state.

"Texit," a right-wing movement operating in the state for more than a decade, advocates for the second-most populous state exiting the union, with the goal of controlling its own "destiny." And in January, state representative Kyle Biedermann filed the "Texas Independence Referendum Act," a step toward putting secession on the ballot for Texans.

"For decades, the promises of America & our individual liberties have been eroding," Biedermann wrote in a tweet. "Now is the time for the People of Texas to have the right to decide their own future."

But since the state seceded for the first time in 1861, the prospect has become much more difficult, as the Supreme Court ruled in 1869 that the U.S. is an "indestructible union" from which no state may secede. It's a fact that the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon, drilled home with little subtlety in a 2006 letter.

"If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede," he wrote, establishing a powerful benchmark since many such movements are driven by right-wing actors.

Even if the threats to secede carry little weight, they may be an indicator of heightened political divisions fueled by an increasingly polarized climate throughout the country that has perhaps picked up steam in the aftermath of the presidential election and continued debate over the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

According to Cramer, it's a culmination of trends that have been building for many years.

"Economic inequality has increased over time since roughly the early '70s," Cramer says. "We've also seen a change in the economic fortunes of rural areas and changes in the partisan composition of our state legislatures. There's been sort of a confluence of economic trends and political trends and the nature of the economy. And that has resulted in partisanship overlapping with geography in a very intense way in this moment, so that our rural areas are more Republican and our Democratic areas are the urban areas."

Anthony Pipa, senior fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development Brookings Institution echoed the economic hardship that rural communities in particular have faced in recent years.

"As a group, rural communities have had a much harder time coming back to where things were previous to the 2008 recession than otherside communities," Pipa says. "And so even before COVID hit, the labor participation rates and employment rates in rural communities had not gotten back to pre-2008 levels by 2019. Whereas in metro and suburban areas, not only have they come back, they have grown. So, I do think in terms of economic prosperity and overall well being, there's a feeling of rural communities being left behind."

But according to Pipa, the Biden administration has made a real effort to ensure that rural communities are not left behind, committing to include them in his agenda when he took office in January. Still, Cramer says the divisive political climate may be making things less heal-able at present.

"I lay the blame on our political leaders in large part and I think many political scientists do in that things do feel very divided and very difficult to heal right now," Cramer says. "And in large part that is due to the way we are encouraged to see people on the other side of the partisan line and sometimes even the geographic line as the enemy."

Even so, Cramer says secession is an "extreme" response.

"It's saying, basically, 'We cannot get along with you. We cannot find a way to reconcile our interests or make policy that's in the interest of the broader public good of our state. So we're just going to become our own entity,'" Cramer says. "That's basically admitting there's no way for us to heal – which is very sad."