How the West is won: the increasing importance of western states in presidential elections

On the 2000 presidential election map, the Rocky Mountains were awash in a sea of Republican red.

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Only New Mexico--a state Democrat Al Gore won by a measly 366 votes--provided any contrasting blue. The results weren't surprising to those who watched the Western campaign closely. Gore's campaign didn't think it could win the West, so it didn't spend a lot of time or money there.

"Some parts of the West were not fertile for targeting," said Donna Brazile, Gore's 2000 campaign manager.

What a difference a few years makes. Today, both campaigns are gearing up for a fierce fight in the West, especially in the interior mountain states where the Hispanic population is exploding. And Democrats suddenly see the possibilities in a whole new light.

Daniel Kemmis, director of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana, said Democrats have picked up some Western momentum since Bush took office, evidenced by increasing numbers of Democratic governors and state legislators.

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The key battleground states of Arizona and New Mexico, have elected Democratic governors since the 2000 presidential race. In Montana, Republicans still control the state House and Senate, but barely. President George W. Bush is widely expected to win Montana again, but the GOP hasn't picked up a Montana state House seat in eight years.

Kemmis said if U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, scratches the surface of that 2000 electoral map, he's likely to uncover some Democratic blue ready to emerge.

"There are indications of some movement away from total Republican dominance in the West," Kemmis said. "That Republican dominance is fairly shallowly based."

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More in Play than the South

For decades, conventional wisdom held that the road to the White House led through the South. But the Republicans have solidified their turf in Dixie in the last several presidential elections, and Democratic strategists are looking west to claim new ground.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the chairman of the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, said that with the possible exceptions of Louisiana, and Florida, it will be tough for Kerry to pick up electoral votes in the conservative South. But the West, with its rapidly growing Hispanic population and changing demographics, could provide new opportunities for Democrats, said Richardson, who has been mentioned as a possible vice-presidential candidate.

"There is a growing view that concentrating on the West and South west makes more sense than concentrating on the South," Richardson, a bilingual Hispanic, said in an interview.

Of course, the people planning President Bush's re-election effort view the western political landscape a lot differently. Republican elected officials and strategists contend their party better reflects western priorities on the key issues of the economy, war and combating terrorism. They paint Kerry as a know-it-all outsider.

"When Washington tells you how to use the land or how to manage the forests or what to do with the water, that can be a problem," said Ken Mehlman, Bush's campaign manager. "Sen. Kerry believes, as much as anybody in the Senate, in a 'Washington-knows-best' approach that says 'We're going to tell you how to protect this endangered species or manage this forest or what to do with your land.'"

Cecil Andrus, a former U.S. Interior secretary and Democratic governor in Idaho, conceded that the Democratic Party under President Bill Clinton lost ground to Republicans on environmental and land use issues. He said the Clinton administration's unyielding approach to enforcing the Endangered Species Act and designating federal wilderness areas alienated voters who depend on the land for their livelihoods.

"It caused us (Democrats) a great deal of harm in the West," Andrus said. "There was no meeting with the people of the West to work out a balanced approach to timber harvesting, for example. The Republicans were smart enough and disciplined enough to beat us with that."

But Andrus said western voters are looking beyond regional concerns in 2004 and focusing more on national issues of war, health care costs and of course, jobs.

"Kerry will win some of these states in the West," Andrus predicted. "People out here are saying, 'Where did the jobs go?'"

Many Bush backers think the candidates' personal styles and home states could play as much of a role in how the West is won as their policy differences. Battle-tested western Republicans contend that their constituents identify more closely with the president, a plain-talking Texan in cowboy boots, than Kerry, a Massachusetts senator whose $100-plus haircuts and oratorical speaking style have rubbed some voters the wrong way.

"The western states are more conservative than the eastern seaboard and more individualistic," said Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, a popular two-term Republican who is chairman of the president's campaign in the state. "Being a senator from Massachusetts is going to be an impediment to John Kerry."

The last Democratic presidential candidate from Massachusetts, former Gov. Michael Dukakis, got drubbed in the West in 1988, losing every single Rocky Mountain state to George H.W. Bush (but he did carry Oregon and Washington).

Kerry enjoyed a long winter media cycle, thanks to the early Democratic primaries and his dramatic come-from-behind finish in the Iowa caucuses. In fact, Democrats in Arizona and New Mexico moved their presidential primaries to February from June this year to force the candidates to tackle western issues.

The move paid off from a media standpoint, with local newspapers and television stations providing extensive coverage of the race and the issues Democratic candidates, including Kerry, were putting on the table

But as the campaign moves into the next stage and the media begins to more closely examine both candidates' records, Republicans are betting that Kerry's bounce will start to lose its trajectory.

"His record of raising taxes and big government programs won't play well out West." said Nicole McCleskey, a western strategist for Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling and consulting firm based in Washington, D.C.

Western State Opportunities

David Damore, a political scientist at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, said his state is likely to be considered a toss-up in the 2004 presidential election primarily because voter registration in Nevada is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Bush won Nevada by 21,500 votes, or slightly more than 3 percentage points, in 2000.

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However, Damore said, the issues framing the early campaign debate in 2004--taxes, war, job creation and the economy--are more likely to favor Bush. Explosive growth in Nevada is fueling one of the most robust economies in the nation. Polls show at least half of Nevada residents supported the war in Iraq. Nevadans are famously anti-taxation, which should give Bush a boost when he reminds them of the income tax cuts he convinced Congress to pass during his term.

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"Republicans also tend to turn out a little more here," Damore said, adding that those factors could each hurt Kerry in Nevada.

A hot-button election issue in Nevada is sure to be Bush's choice of Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for burial of nuclear waste. In July 2002, he signed legislation that made Yucca Mountain the repository site for nuclear waste, despite lingering questions about its ability to safely contain radioactive particles. Kerry voted against this.

Perhaps no state in the West is as coveted as New Mexico. Though it has only five electoral votes, both campaigns are expected to fight fiercely for the state, because it was the one western state that still seemed truly up for grabs after the votes were tallied in 2000.

Democrats outnumber Republicans in New Mexico by a 1.6-to-1 margin, but the state's congressional delegation is dominated by Republicans. New Mexico is also something of a presidential bellwether; since becoming a state in 1912, it has voted for the winning candidate in every presidential race except those in 1976 and 2000. Richardson, a popular governor with a national profile, is likely to be an effective campaigner for Kerry in the state. But Republicans are up for a fight. In early April, Karl Rove, Bush's top strategist, told Republicans in neighboring El Paso, Texas, that the campaign is doing everything possible to win New Mexico.

"We're building the biggest grass roots organization in the history of New Mexico politics," Rove said at the fundraiser. "We have county chairs in all 33 counties. We're literally organizing leadership down to the precinct level."

In Colorado, widely viewed as Bush country, the climate for Kerry could be better than many casual observers think. Floyd Ciruli, a leading pollster and political consultant there, said the state's problems with education funding and a sluggish economy could have voters looking for a change in the White House.

Still, a Rocky Mountain News poll published on April 4 showed Bush leading Kerry in Colorado 49-to-40 percent. Ralph Nader had 4 percent in the poll.

"As this election cycle began, the view was that Colorado was pretty safe for Republicans," Ciruli said. "There is a growing sense of vulnerability about Bush."

Colorado is losing a popular Republican senator, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, to retirement, and Ken Salazar, the state's moderate, Hispanic Democratic attorney general, is making a strong push to claim the seat for himself. That could help bring more Democratic voters to the polls in a state where Republicans have a 190,000-voter edge in registration.

"Salazar has completely changed the dynamic for the Senate race, which is affecting everyone else," Ciruliadded.

Hispanic Vote Up for Grabs

Of course, it is impossible to talk about the importance of the West in presidential politics without mentioning the much-discussed Hispanic vote. Hispanics, with the exception of anti-Castro Cubans in Florida, traditionally have voted Democratic.

But Bush spent serious time and money courting Hispanics in 2000, with fairly impressive results. Exit polling showed that the president captured 35 percent of the Hispanic vote nationwide; four years before, only 21 percent of Hispanics casting ballots supported GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole. Bush, who speaks limited Spanish, also has nominated Hispanics for high-profile government positions and judgeships, bolstering his case that his is an inclusive administration.

Richardson, the only Hispanic governor in the nation today, said it will be practically impossible for either candidate to win several states in the West without solid support from Hispanics. In New Mexico, Hispanics total about 43 percent of the population. In Arizona, they account for about 25 percent of the population. Hispanics do not have an illustrious history of actually voting. But registration numbers are growing and both parties are making a point to reach out to the nation's largest minority ethnic group.

"It's going to be decisive," Richardson said. "The Hispanic vote will determine how New Mexico and Arizona go."

Hispanics comprise roughly 22 percent of the voters in Nevada, and could make a difference in that state. Hispanics in Florida, while not part of the West, should also be important. Richardson said that Kerry's campaign should target the 20 percent of Floridians who are not Cuban.

For Colorado, some Bush strategists have said the president needs to capture at least 40 percent of the Hispanic vote to win a close election.

Colorado's Gov. Owens said it's important for Bush to speak to Hispanic issues--such as immigration, education, homeownership--and do it through Spanish language media. Both campaigns are planning on running extensive Spanish-language ads in key western battleground states.

"The Hispanic vote will be critical, but it does not mean we have to win a majority," of that vote, Owens said.

And don't forget the Ralph Nader factor. The consumer advocate, again running for president, has said his campaign would drain as many votes from Bush as Kerry. But few political observers, including GOP strategists, believe that. Republicans in New Mexico have been known to play up Green Party candidacies in their own campaign ads to remind Democrats of an alternate choice.

Doug Hattaway, who worked on Gore's campaign, said Democrats should focus on marginalizing Nader as much as possible in states with relatively large Green Parties, such as Oregon and New Mexico. Many Democrats are still fuming over Nader's 2000 candidacy, which they contend cost them the election.

"You don't want to engage them so much that you help them," Hattaway said. "But it would be smart to make sure there are surrogates taking on Nader's candidacy in key states where Nader would be a problem."

Michael Coleman is the Washington bureau chief of the Albuquerque (N.M.) Journal.

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