«The invitation is wide open,» West Virginia’s governor said of the idea.
On Thursday, many residents of Maryland and West Virginia were somewhere between shocked, bemused and angered to learn of a proposal by a group of Maryland Republican legislators for the state’s three westernmost counties to break off and join West Virginia, a plan that’s destined to fail but that some in those counties argue makes perfect sense. «Absolutely, without any question, the invitation is wide open,» West Virginia’s Republican Gov. Jim Justice said at a news conference on Friday, called solely to address the Maryland counties. “You sure as the dickens won’t ever regret it!” Many Maryland lawmakers slammed the proposal as a stunt, as did the state’s largest newspaper, The Baltimore Sun. «If you want to be irrelevant, you pull stunts like this,» the paper wrote in a Friday editorial, noting at least two of the counties listed for secession receive more than 40% of their annual budgets in state funds—well above the average of 26.8% in Maryland counties. The state’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, also blasted the idea, saying it was just a «publicity stunt.
