I’ve suggested that South Dakota might escape Kristi Noem’s tyranny, save money, and provide better public services by dissolving itself, ceding our edges to better-run neighboring states, and letting buffalo run free in a great central grassland.
Minnesota State Representative Jeremy Munson (R-23B/Lake Crystal) gets my plan backwards: he has submitted to the Minnesota Legislature a plan to cede the rural western two thirds of Minnesota to South Dakota:
Rep. Jeremy Munson has introduced HF2243, “A County process established to request approval to be excluded from the Territory of Minnesota, application and final approval of exclusion request requirements established, and constitutional amendment proposed.” This bill, if passed, starts the process for allowing Western Minnesota Counties to vote to join the State of South Dakota, or any County to vote on joining a neighboring State. Please sign the petition below, to show your support of this bill. Minnesota becomes more politically polarized every year and the metro politicians have shown us that rural Minnesotans are no longer represented by St Paul. It’s time to leave [Rep. Jeremy Munson, “Join SD, ND, WI, or IA,” campaign website, retrieved 2021.03.26].
Now my initial reaction was, “Dang, Minnesota is already too far away.” Munson would probably kill the grocery economy in Ortonville and Pipestone, because our east-edgers couldn’t hop across the border to avoid the sales tax on food.
But I wouldn’t mind getting some of the North Woods into our jurisdiction, and it would be nice to have a border with Canada.
Plus, it occurs to me there could be some positive political implications. Governor Kristi Noem retweeted Munson’s idea, but I think she fails to recognize the impact that bringing the rural Minnesota Republican Party into our fold would have on her one-party regime’s grip on power. An influx of eager, ambitious Minnesota Republicans would pose an enormous challenge to the grip on power that South Dakota’s small-pond establishment has held since the Janklow years. Those Minnesota counties aren’t going to sit back and let the same old honyockers from Castlewood, Clark, Canton, and Union Center run their affairs: they’re going to march in, redistrict, and run for office… and they will outnumber us. My quick clicking of this University of Minnesota map (ooo… how many new campi do we get?) suggests we’d get over 1.1 million new residents. Our Senate is capped at 35, so Legislative districts would grow from about 24,000 people each to over 56,000. Minnesotans would run our political show, and Noem and a lot of other local yokels would be out on their can, eaten alive by a much bigger and more effective political machine.
I’m not sure Minnesotan GOP overlords would be any more gracious or survivable than our current regime, but hey, any shake-up of South Dakota’s one-party cabal might be worth trying!
Bonus Merger Advantage: Hauling all of those red rural Minnesota counties into South Dakota guarantees that Minnesota’s remaining Senate seats stay blue. Plus, even if it shifts one Electoral College vote to red South Da-Megakota, it guarantees the rest of Minnesota’s Electoral votes go to safe and sane Democratic Presidents.
Pffff! Not gonna happen. Why do people put time and money into stuff like this?
Should have made it at the township level. That way it’d be more in tune with the whole gerrymandering process – lumpy borders everywhere, with some snaky connecting links between pockets of MAGATRY. Boy wouldn’t the various law enforcement agents have a fun time navigating that?
Nooooooooooooooooo!
That shape would be too goofy looking. Maybe clean up the edges a bit. :-)
When we were teenagers in Sioux Falls, we wondered why Minnesota’s boundary couldn’t be moved 30 miles west. Even as teens we recognized how backward South Dakota was, while Minnesota was cool. As a kid I remember how much better Minnesota roads were, how they actually plowed the roads in winter, how they had much nicer rest areas on the new interstates and even on state highways. I mean we had privies, while Minnesota had actual flush toilets!!! Plus, they had the Minnesota Twins, and the Vikings!!! Didn’t Minnesota territory go all the way to the Missouri River at one time? If we do anything along this line, let’s cancel South Dakota completely.
Anyway, both states have to agree to boundary changes. Those are made sometimes when rivers on the boundary change course. Those changes make sense, but anything major like this would probably require a whole new discussion of statehood, and with Democrats in charge, they might just want to cancel out you welfare queens in South Dakota.
All those little rural boys just cant stand it any more. I would love to see all of them break away and have their pitiful imaginary states go down the tube. Who would pay for the infrastructure, they need the big cities in every state to pay for everything. What a bunch of whiners they are.
I would vote for this!
Run a large underground tube from Mississippi to South Dakota to transfer the multitude of stoopid laws between both backward states and allow dual citizenship to magats of both hell holes.
It’s all stolen land from the Indians. Both states should give the land back, then go back to their original country. It seems of late, Republicans always got screwed up idea floating around in their empty heads… if you cannot become a 1 inbred party-state find one that is and join up with them. Or maybe they heard South Dakota’s Governor has declared herself America’s Governor and they want to be on her team.
Best solution is from RST Tribal Member. Give it back.
Give it all back. Then everyone pays rent to the tribes.
I would like to see States NIBBLE at So Dak.
Minnesota gets 30 miles west, including Sioux Falls.
North Dakota gets 30 miles South, not Aberdeen though.
Nebraska could get Yankton and Vermillion.
Wyoming could get Rapid and north Hills.
Then the Capitol could be moved to our largest city, Aberdeen!
I think a Governor with a Heart, Brain and Spine (rare combination in South Dakota) would say,
hey 20% of our population is Hispanic, Native, Black, Asian, non white. So 20% of our Cabineys will be Minorities! I will personally campaign for any minority who wants to be Senator or Representative.
America is a melting pot.
SD would get an influx of (overall) wealthier, better-educated citizens. Several new state universities: Bemidji; Moorhead; Morris; Marshall; St. Cloud. Maybe a proposal to relocate the capital.
Hate to tell you SD2020 the United States isn’t a melting pot, we are multicultural but thats very different.
Minnesota Public Radio reporting: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/03/26/anaylsis-no-western-minnesota-wont-leave-for-south-dakota-heres-why?fbclid=IwAR2efQ-HZw5ekgsaXxz7_tcHCP4Gfw2ZbOjOecP80qsYsIEjH70i4tq8Jgk
I for one welcome this idea vigorously.
Once complete, in addition to the COVID shots I vote we mandate shots of whiskey and hand out muskets. We’ll easily be able to take the rest of MN.
nyuk nyuk
Goofy shape, sx? Turn it 90 degrees counterclockwise, and it’s a blockier, more compact Florida… with snowmobiling.
A new capital, Joe? Yes, I think the new majority would demand it. All those Minnesotans (Minidakotans? Maxidakotans?) wouldn’t want to truck all the way to Pierre to run their new state. I’m thinking Watertown might have the best shot at winning that relocation election. On pure geography, I’d say Ortonville, But they are too small and not on the interstate.
Completely ignoring North Dakota in this
I think we’d happily take the northwestern side of Minnesota, particularly the Red River Valley, cementing our role as a strong and independent agricultural producer (with strong anti corporate farming laws). Northwest Minnesota was also represented by a democrat in congress until this year (when a trumpian former lt governor won)
I currently live less than a 10 minute walk from the Minnesota border, it doesn’t make sense to have northwest Minnesota as part of Minnesota, it is much more politically and socially aligned with ND and makes my job much harder having two jurisdictions so close
Rep Munson is acting like a moron who doesn’t know how good they have it. A weekend road trip through the small town poverty in eastern and central South Dakota shows even the most disinterested casual observer how much better life is in rural Minnesota than in South Dakota. So long as acting morons like Rep Munson and his brethren in South Dakota, continue voting against their interests, then the rural poverty will continue marching eastward through western Minnesota and Iowa.
A stark example was Sen Thune’s nonsensical oped this week that ‘no one should lose the farm due to the estate tax’. Well, no one has. Name one in the past decade and provide records. Sen Thune is a windshield looking for a bug – not representing folks in South Dakota. Yet, idiots vote for him.
Apparently extending the right to vote to US territories prompted all sorts of republican nonsense (They are good for little else these days). One proposal merges Wyoming with South Dakota, another merges the Dakotas, another merges Wyoming with Montana, and my favorite cedes the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Montana to Canada. https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-0203-dc-statehood-20210202-qy2oa6fnibf6ri3zifv7y4x4v4-story.html
Eastern South Dakota should count itself lucky if it where in the Minnesota state as it was once in the Minnesota Territory. It would be wealthier and better governed.
Not sure what fruit juice Munson and Noem are drinking but perhaps if they each actually represented the people of their state they would not have dream up such a ridiculous plan. It would be great Noem actually represent all people in SD, including those on the many SD reservations before before bringing in additional counties. I shake my head at the stupidity of the bills that come forth. As a state and country we have far more important things to be working g on than moving a state line.
This is great. Then when I move to MN, it will be rid of all of the dirty red spots.
Uff da! Den vee’d hafta lern ta talk funny, doncha kno! O fer da luv o’ St Olaf! ;-)