Republicans dominated the Rocky Mountain West five years ago, boasting GOP governors in all eight states.
Today, half of those states are now led by Democrats. And if Democrats also win a tight gubernatorial race in Colorado this November, they will have leaders in most of the region.
That alone could explain the surge of national Democratic Party interest in what’s also called the Interior West, made up of Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona and Idaho.
But a series of regional events in the past two years have also caught the eye of Democratic leaders, including the centrist wing of the party that opens its meetings in Denver today.
Democratic wins in the West in 2006 may indicate potential battlegrounds for the 2008 presidential election.
“There have been significant gains in the Western part of the country that has given hope to Democrats. That’s why we’re coming there,” said Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, chair of the Democratic Leadership Council and a potential 2008 presidential candidate.
Although the West is often thought of as rugged Republican territory, Western leaders and those who study the region say that belief is about as accurate as the Marlboro Man.
“The Interior West is more libertarian, more tolerant and has a ‘leave me alone’ attitude,” said Ryan Sager, author of “The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians and the Battle to Control the Republican Party.”
While Republicans have clearly dominated the West in elections, their success has more to do with the GOP’s ability to masterfully paint Democrats with a broad stroke than with core GOP values, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer contends.
He said Republicans cast Western Democrats in the same mold as the stereotype of East and West Coast Democrats: anti-gun, rabid environmentalists who want bigger federal government.
Schweitzer, who won his 2004 race partly by vowing to preserve and expand access to public land for hunters and fishermen, said he made sure while campaigning that people knew he was a Western Democrat.
“I said, ‘Who the hell are those people in the East and West Coasts anyway? They don’t run our states out here,”‘ he said. “I told people, ‘I’m a Montana Democrat.”‘
Western Democrats’ ability to separate themselves from the national party and localize their elections started to really make headway in 2002, when Democratic governors were elected in New Mexico, Arizona and Wyoming.
Two years later, Democrats took control of Colorado’s statehouse for the first time in 44 years. Democrat Ken Salazar was elected to the U.S. Senate, and his brother, Democrat John Salazar, won a rural congressional seat by asking voters to “send a farmer to Congress.”
That same year, Montana Democrats took over the state senate and Schweitzer was elected governor.
Other signals of change started popping up on the Western landscape. Montana voters rejected cyanide-leach mining and approved medical marijuana. Nevada backed a minimum-wage hike. Colorado passed a tobacco tax and renewable-energy requirements.
And U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada was elected Senate minority leader.
A number of factors have been cited in helping Democrats, including population growth in the West; the rise in the number of Hispanic voters, who tend to lean Democratic; and the Bush administration’s increase in federal spending and its federal land policies.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said many Western voters resent the administration opening up more federal lands to private miners and oil and gas drillers.
“It ends up uniting the conservationists, the hikers, the hunters and the fisherman,” he said, who want access to the land.
While Richardson supports oil and gas development on federal leased land, he also believes that some areas have to be protected. That’s why he refused to open up the Otero Mesa grasslands to drilling and has sued the federal government over it.
“It’s all about balance,” he said.
Also helping Democrats appeal to Western voters, according to Sager, is the Republican Party’s alliance with the religious right. That alliance is especially strong in the South, where social and moral issues often carry more weight.
John C. Green of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, a nonprofit research center, said the West is “much less religious” than the South, and religions there are more diverse.
“Evangelicals in the West tend to be open to a broader agenda. They are more concerned about the environment, human rights and social justice,” he said – which gives Democrats an opening in the political fence.
But the challenge is formidable, especially considering President Bush won all eight Interior West states in 2004.
Sen. Salazar said his party needs to disseminate an independent message that appeals to the “common person,” defends gun rights, opposes discrimination in any form and doesn’t run away from faith.
“People don’t want something too radical right or radical left,” he said.
Staff writer Karen Crummy can be reached at 303-820-1594 or kcrummy@denverpost.com.
