

Sign at the state welcoming visitors to the State of Illinois
HARDING, ILL. — Ralph Moses is fed up with liberal Democrats elected in Chicago controlling policy for the entire state of Illinois. That includes the state’s high taxes, unfriendly business climate, strict gun-control laws and funding to help illegal immigrants, he said.
So last year, the 77-year-old retired software-engineer consultant decided to do something about it.
Moses gained enough signatures to get a resolution on Calhoun County’s November ballot asking voters if they wanted an option to separate from Chicago and its surrounding county to create a new state that better represents residents outside the city.
More than 77% voted yes in the deep-red county, the state’s third smallest, with just over 4,400 residents. That’s in contrast to Chicago’s 2.6 million residents, which is more than 40% of the entire state population.
“The response was, very simply, that everybody in the county feels pretty much the same: that we are not represented and our interests are not taken care of,” Moses said. “We get the leftovers.”
But Indiana Rep. Todd Huston has proposed another idea. He wants disillusioned Illinois residents like Moses to consider joining Indiana by redrawing the state line to include their counties.
“We’ve got a lot of great things going on Indiana,” he said in an interview with CNHI. “We’d love to be that alternative.”
‘RAISE OUR HAND’
Since 2020, residents in 33 counties have voted overwhelmingly in support of non-binding resolutions expressing an interest in breaking off from Illinois to become the nation’s 51st state. That represents nearly a third of Illinois’ 102 counties.

Separating from Illinois is a tall order that requires approval from the U.S. Congress and the statehouse, where Democrats make up a supermajority. It’s only happened three times in U.S. history. The most recent came in 1863 when West Virginia broke off from Virginia.
That’s why Indiana House speaker Huston authored House Bill 1008, which would create a commission to “discuss and recommend whether it is advisable to adjust the boundaries between the two states.”
Republicans put the legislation center stage this month when they made it one of their main policy objectives for this year’s legislative session. The bill received its first reading in January and was referred to the House Committee on Government and Regulatory Reform.
More than anything, Huston explained, the bill aims to start a conversation to let Illinois residents know that another option could be to join Indiana, which aligns more with their conservative values.
“We understand their frustrations,” he said. “I don’t know how it plays out long term, but if there’s going to be other solutions on the table, we just want to raise our hand.”
While experts say there’s little chance of that happening, advocates like G.H. Merritt, who leads the separatist group New Illinois, said Huston’s offer has shined a spotlight on their movement and validated their efforts.
“It was gratifying to have the Indiana speaker take us seriously and seem to empathize with the situation that we have here,” she said.
FOUNDING A MOVEMENT
A push to separate Illinois has existed for at least a decade, but the movement first gained traction in 2019 when Illinois Rep. Brad Halbrook, R-Shelbyville, introduced a resolution calling on Congress to make Chicago the 51st state.
Halbrook said he still supports the move today as Democrats continue to use their supermajority to push through progressive legislation created for people in the nation’s third-largest city, not the rural parts of the state he represents.

Illinois Rep. Brad Halbrook
“There’s this really bad policy that gets created that burdens hard-working men and women in the majority of the state, and they’re just growing more and more tired of it,” he said.
That’s the case for Moses, who lived in a Chicago suburb for 35 years before moving back to Calhoun County. He cited a cultural chasm between Chicago and rural Illinois, which he said is more religious and self-sufficient. For him, it already feels like he’s living in two different states.
“Chicago has a concentration of people that has a different set of interests, a different set of needs, a different set of values and a different set of ethics and morality,” he said. “It’s like a night-and-day difference between the two types of environments.”
That’s the reason Merritt and members of New Illinois educate residents on their constitutional rights to separate. The group advocates at the statehouse and has committees in 48 counties. Last year, members created the first draft of a new constitution in preparation for the split.
For Merritt, forming a new state is the only viable option to break away from what she sees as the entrenched corruption within Chicago politics that leads Democrats to pass city-focused policies with no regard for how they might impact rural Illinois.
“You have an expectation of representative government,” Merritt said. “When you realize that you’re being cheated out of that, you’ll only stand for it for so long.”
Loret Newlin feels the same way. She spearheads the Illinois Separation movement, which lobbies county boards and local residents to approve ballot resolutions gauging support for splitting from Chicago like the ones approved so far by 33 counties.
Their first success came in 2020, when 74% of Effingham County voters supported the resolution, creating a domino effect around southern Illinois. In November’s election alone, seven counties overwhelmingly supported the proposal.
“That got people’s attention and suddenly the media was interested in us again,” Newlin said. “Now, Indiana has noticed us, too.”

Brian Gaines, a University of Illinois political scientist
But voting in favor of a state split through a non-binding resolution is a far cry from making it a reality, noted Brian Gaines, a University of Illinois political scientist. Getting those resolutions on the ballot requires only a fraction of the signatures needed for an actionable measure, like approving project funding or issuing bonds.
Moses from Calhoun County said he needed to get about 200 signatures to place the resolution on his county’s ballot. He personally talked to 157 people and got nearly all of them to sign.
Gaines said although the measures have no teeth, they work well to express discontent to state lawmakers.
“It’s easy, cheap talk,” he said. “That doesn’t mean they don’t have heartfelt sentiments, but it isn’t really about policy change so much as opinion. I think that it’s an appealing kind of symbolism.”
‘IT’S THE DREAM’
The same holds true for redrawing state boundaries, which would require the approval of both state legislatures and U.S. Congress — a pathway littered with political landmines, considering that Indiana and Illinois are dominated by opposing parties, Gaines explained.
He argued the politicians and groups advocating for separation know this, but continue to tout the proposal to make a point. That’s also the case in other states like California and Oregon, where groups are also pushing to create new states.
“It’s like the people who’ve been saying, ‘If Trump wins again, I’m leaving the country,’” Gaines said. “I remember people saying that about George W. Bush, and very few ever actually do it.”
Even if the bill were to pass in Indiana, Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker would need to appoint five people to the commission. It’s an action he almost certainly won’t take given comments he made last week dismissing the proposal as a “stunt” and slamming Indiana as a low-wage state that doesn’t provide proper healthcare.
For Newlin, Pritzker’s attitude only validates her feeling that Democrats don’t care or listen to anyone outside of Chicago and only fuels her efforts to overcome the odds and separate from the city. The American Revolution serves as inspiration for the work.
“It’s one of those things that seems impossible right now, but it’s the dream,” she said. “If colonists had waited until it looked more likely that they would win against the most powerful military on Earth, they wouldn’t have written the declaration in 1776.”
Newlin is still focused on creating a new state despite the fact she’s personally open to the idea of redrawing the Illinois-Indiana border. Some of her family has already moved to Indiana, she noted, due in part to the liberal climate in Illinois, which has seen a steady population decline over the past decade.
Separatists use that as proof of the state’s failing policies. Indiana Rep. Huston noted that more than 100,000 Illinois residents in the last few years have already abandoned the state and moved east across the border.
“People are voting with their feet on this issue,” he said. “So I feel quite comfortable in saying people are already showing that they want to get over to Indiana.”
Moses said he likes Indiana and isn’t opposed to joining the state rather than creating a new one, but the logistics are complicated considering his county is located on the western edge of Illinois near St. Louis.
“I’m not stuck on any one solution at this point in time,” he said. “What I am firm about is the situation has to change. How it gets changed, I’m not smart enough to say.”
But for Merrit with New Illinois, the proposal to join Indiana isn’t enticing — or realistic — enough for her group to abandon its efforts to form a new state. What Illinoisans outside of Chicago need is their own sovereignty to govern as they see fit, she said.
“We appreciate what it does that Indiana is talking about this,” Merritt said. “But I think in the real world, it’s going to be a lot easier for us to just split off from the state of Illinois. Nobody ever said we had to stop at 50.”
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