Several rural areas of Northern and Northeastern Colorado that are, for the most part, Republican, said they are done with the leftist laws that Democrats have passed this year. They want to split from the rest of Colorado, and make state number 51: North Colorado.
"Our very way of life is under attack," Weld County Commissioner Sean Conway told 9News on Thursday.
According to the Huffington Post, Conway is spearheading the movement that Weld, Morgan, Logan, Sedgwick, Phillips, Washington, Yuma and Kit Carson counties secede from Colorado. At a Colorado Counties Inc. conference held in the beginning of the week, attendees formed a plan to move away and create their own state.
New laws recently passed in the Democratic state this year were catalysts to enacting a plan for the new North Colorado. Stricter gun control, monitoring what some call cruel treatment of livestock and expanding regulation of gas and oil production planted the seeds of rebellion. Then, Gov. John Hickenlooper signed a bill that ups renewable energy standards in rural lands. That was the last straw for those that oppose the bill. They have deemed it a "war on rural Colorado."
"I have never seen a legislative session like this," Conway said. "They ignore us. They won't listen to us. It started with the gun control bills and came to a head this week with S.B. 252 (the renewable energy bill) being signed."
Some Colorado residents regard this plan as somewhat of a joke, as longtime resident and former political science professor at the University of Northern Colorado Steve Mazurana told The Denver Post.
"It's just going to be...a crackpot idea by a bunch of crackpot commissioners, some of whom are term-limited. Some will just call it Crackpottopia."
According to Conway, some cities in Vermont, Tennesse, Kentucky, Maine and West Virginia also tried to secede from their home states after they disagreed with the legislation being enacted.
A city, nor groups of cities, have successfully seceded from their states in 150 years.
