Leaving Illinois Without Moving?

Photo: Fabien Deglise Le Devoir Frustration in rural Illinois has sparked a movement calling for a redrawing of state boundaries to create a new one.

Fabien Deglise in Chicago

Published at 12:00 am

• United States

Donald Trump's first election in 2016 accelerated the trend, and his return to the race in 2024 will further fan the flames of resentment and division in the United States. A fragile environment where difficulties in dialogue and fear of compromise, coupled with radical and narrow-minded ideological positions, now threaten one of the foundations of the country: the unity of its states.

As she watches tomatoes grow outside her Lake County home in northern Illinois, G.H. Merritt, a recent graduate in sustainable agriculture, is glad she didn't decide to grow them elsewhere.

And yet, not so long ago, after two years spent looking for a job in her new field of study, this former management and finance consultant turned permaculture specialist seriously considered packing her bags and leaving Illinois to set her destiny on new tracks, elsewhere in the country.

“It was inevitable,” says Ms. Merritt, whom we met a few weeks ago in a small café in the village of Antioch, on the edge of Wisconsin. “Living close to the greater Chicago area, I couldn’t find a job. But if I had to leave Illinois—where I grew up, where my great-grandfather who came from Montreal started a new life—it was only because of the poor economic condition of the state. It was the state that was forcing me to leave, to abandon a place where life is good.” And then I had this revelation: I had to get away from Illinois and still stay where I was.”

Leave the state without moving! The phrase may seem contradictory, but not to G.H. Merritt, who made it the slogan of a separatist movement born in 2018 with the idea of ​​redrawing the state’s internal borders to create two: Chicago and its greater metropolitan area, which would thus become a sort of city-state, and the rest of Illinois, which would then enter the Union as the 51st state of the United States under the name of “New Illinois.” An idea that, in the American political climate divided by its extremes, finds a favorable echo throughout the state, where two separatist movements are developing: one from the South, under the name of Illinois Separation; the other from the North, baptized New Illinois.

Although distinct, the two groups are nevertheless moving in the same direction and have been sowing the seeds of their separatist project, county by county, for several years. They cultivate frustrations that are audible in the countryside with the big city, whose ideas and policies are often considered too liberal and progressive.

Finding a voice

“Chicago's influence on state politics is too strong, and we no longer feel represented,” says G.H. Merritt, who maintains that her movement remains nonpartisan, even if it benefits greatly from political fault lines and culture wars over abortion, identity and gun control that are sweeping the country.

According to her, a malicious redistricting of electoral maps — called gerrymanderingin the United States — has for years been diluting rural votes into more urban and suburban areas, giving Cook County, which includes Chicago and is home to 40 percent of the state’s population, the ability to impose its laws on the remaining 60 percent of Illinois.

“The driving force behind our movement is the idea of ​​regaining a voice in our own political authorities,” she continues. “We also want to free ourselves not only from the influence of the city, but also from the endemic corruption in our state and the fiscal catastrophe that awaits us if we don’t make the right decisions to change the state of affairs.”

Illinois’ debt has more than doubled since 2000, despite a population that has remained stable. Nationally, the “Land of Lincoln” has the seventh-highest tax rate in the country and the highest in the Midwest. “The state is collapsing,” says Marty Kelly, a lawyer and adviser to the movement. “And our local government is too dysfunctional to prevent that collapse.”

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“Illinois also has a terrible history of corruption, which has produced the highest number of former governors sent to prison here,” he continues. Since 1961, four of the state's ten governors—three Democrats, one Republican—have actually been indicted for fraud, perjury, bribery, conspiracy, tax evasion… and thrown behind bars.

“The elected officials in [the capital] Springfield don’t seem to be very aware of the malaise that’s being expressed in our movement, because they don’t need to be,” continues the man whose political allegiances are more “libertarian,” he says, and leaning toward the Republican Party. “They are guaranteed the vote and the money to stay in power. But that doesn’t prevent a correction from being made to respect the voice of all. And that correction involves the creation of a 51st state.” »

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Referendum questions

Next November, voters in seven rural counties—Iroquois, Madison, Jersey, Clinton, Calhoun, Greene, and Perry—will have the opportunity to vote on this division plan by answering yes or no to a non-binding referendum question added to their ballot this year.

The text proposes opening a conversation with all counties, with the exception of Cook, “to form a new state.” Since 2020, 27 of the state's 102 counties have already voted on the issue, with significant support for “secession” ranging from 63% to 83% of the vote.

“Some people call us a secessionist movement, but we prefer not to use that word because it’s very loaded in the United States,” says Merritt. “Our approach is really about following a legal and constitutional process that will lead to an orderly separation. It’s not a quick or easy project. But in recent years, the political and social climate has been favorable to us, and the movement has been growing.”

The New Illinois movement says it’s in a growth phase, with committees now in 33 counties, a database of about 1,000 members and a social media community of more than 19,000, says Merritt, who chairs the separatist group’s steering committee.

Sitting in the cluttered living room of his northern Illinois home, the organization’s treasurer, Dan Juffernbruch, says the birth of the new state the movement is pushing is “only a matter of time.” “I wouldn’t be in it if I didn’t believe there was a chance of success,” says the patent and licensing consultant in his early 50s. “There’s a push across the United States toward more self-government. It’s becoming necessary to get out of broken systems of representation, where a portion of the population no longer has the ability to win elections, which ends up frustrating and dividing people.”

In 2021, a study by Southern Illinois University found that “rural resentment” had indeed taken hold in non-urban parts of the state, with 66% of respondents expressing disillusionment with the central government while feeling they do not receive their fair share of state resources.

Complex Separation

The last time a state was created in the United States was in 1863, when Congress approved the creation of West Virginia, which wanted to live its own destiny separate from the breakaway state of Virginia. A few years earlier, Maine had also been created by splitting off part of the territory of Massachusetts. The divorce began in 1820 and ended with the formation of the 23rd state to join the Union in 1842.

To create the New Illinois, the state’s separatist movements will have to convince all the counties, then obtain the support of the state’s legislative authorities, under a constant Democratic majority since 2003, before the constitution of the new state is submitted to a final vote in Congress in Washington, as stipulated in section 3 of article 4 of the United States Constitution.

To date, only one elected official from Illinois, Democratic Representative La Shawn Ford, representing a poor district on the south side of Chicago, has said he is “ready” to debate the separation of the state, without however supporting the movement.

Last May, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a rising star in the Democratic Party, sent a clear message to voters in counties facing a statewide referendum question this year. “I just want to remind everyone here that we are one Illinois,” he said as he visited Madison County to dedicate a public building for the Madison County Transit Authority, Spectrum News reported. “Madison County is just as important to our state as Chicago. It’s too easy to let partisanship and regional differences divide us. Instead, let’s all row in the same direction.” »

This report was funded with support from the Transat International Journalism Fund- Le Devoir .