As the Rocky Mountain West swings left, the Democratic Party is investing significant resources to capture the region to make up for losing the South.
DENVER - The Democratic National Convention hasn't been held in Denver for a century, but when the party nominates Barack Obama here this week it will be returning to a region that is key to its hopes of winning the presidency in November.
Buoyed by their success in state and congressional races, Democrats are hoping the Rocky Mountain West can move solidly into their column during this presidential election, making up for the loss of the party's former base in the South to the Republicans.
During the primary season, the Democrats allowed Nevada to move up its caucus to January, putting its contest in the same month as the traditional kickoff states of Iowa and New Hampshire. They made a point of selecting the so-called capital of the Rocky Mountain West for their convention to highlight a willingness to expand from their coastal bases. Last week the party held conference calls with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., to stress the importance of the West and it will highlight western officials at convention events.
"The road to the White House runs through the West," said Salazar, who was elected in 2004.
'Major political realignment'
As recently as 2000, all eight Rocky Mountain states featured Republican governors, and their electoral votes usually went to GOP presidential candidates. Now five have Democratic chief executives. Obama has invested significant resources in many of these states and is polling even or ahead of Republican John McCain in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, whose total of 19 electoral votes put them on par with battleground states such as Ohio.
"There has been a major political realignment in the Rocky Mountain West in the last seven to eight years," said Daniel Kemmis, director of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana. "It's worked its way up the ballot but has not reached the presidential level."
That's because for years, Kemmis said, the party was long willing to sacrifice western votes to rally its supporters elsewhere. For example, in 1996 President Bill Clinton won plaudits from environmental groups when he designated huge swaths of southern Utah as a federally protected national monument. Outraged Utah residents, angry at another federal intrusion on land management, ousted the Democratic congressman who represented the region.
Like voters all over the country, Westerners make their political decisions largely on issues like the economy, the war and energy. But observers agree that Westerners also are a different breed politically. They tend to be more libertarian in their political outlook and suspicious of the federal government, which is the largest landowner in the region and has a long history of battling with locals over cattle grazing, recreation and development.
Focus on different issues
Western liberals focus on different issues from those of Democrats in the industrial cities that historically have made up the party's home turf. They are often more concerned about the environment and lifestyle issues such as growth and transportation than globalization or racial politics.
"Democrats can't sell New York-style, Massachusetts-style union politics out there," said Tom Schaller, a political science professor at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County and author of "Whistling Past Dixie," which advises Democrats to focus on the West. "They can sell a new environmentally conscious, pragmatic governing style."
At the presidential level, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona "have gone from being pretty noncompetitive 20 years ago to becoming contestable," said Ruy Texeira of the Brookings Institution, co-author of a new report on western politics titled "The New Swing Region." (The other mountain states include Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming.)
Texeira noted that the growth in the region is fueled by large cities including Denver and Las Vegas, communities a separate Brookings report refers to as "Mountain Megalopolises." The newcomers tend to be college graduates who back Democrats. The ranks of the most reliable Republican bloc, white noncollege graduates, are shrinking.
Meeting in Denver is seen as part of Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean's strategy to expand the party's geographic base and run a "50-state" campaign instead of pouring resources only into traditional Midwestern battlegrounds.