The Democrats' New Western Stars

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"Actually, the one thing we all have in common is our style," says Ken Salazar. The new Rocky Mountain Democrats are populist, unpretentious, egalitarian and tough. They tend to be avid hunters and fishermen. (I was with Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer one day when he reached into his pocket for a pen and pulled out a 30.06 rifle bullet.) A surprising number of them have backgrounds in law enforcement. Of the Democrats who have been elected Governors in the all-blue stripe of states running from Montana to New Mexico, only Bill Richardson of New Mexico has spent any time as a legislator. The rest are either ranchers or prosecutors. Janet Napolitano, the wildly popular Governor of Arizona, which is in the next stripe west, was a U.S. Attorney appointed by Bill Clinton, as was Dave Freudenthal, the Governor of Wyoming. Ken Salazar was Colorado's attorney general before winning his Senate seat. "I could never have gotten elected back East," says John Hickenlooper, a former geologist and microbrewery owner who was elected mayor of Denver in his first try for public office. "You don't have a complicated political superstructure out here. You don't have to wait your turn to run for office. Outside the Latino community, ethnicity doesn't count for much. Nobody cares who your grandparents were."

Democrats are not yet dominant in the inner Mountain West and may never be, not as long as states like Utah and Idaho remain a deep conservative crimson. They made only modest gains in the 2006 congressional elections, taking away one Republican seat in Colorado and two in Arizona and adding Jon Tester's Montana crew cut to the U.S. Senate. But they have had considerable success in local elections--and not just their stunning successes at the gubernatorial level. Since 2004 they have also won control of the Montana senate and both houses of the Colorado legislature. And the region's Democrats will throw disproportionate weight in the 2008 presidential selection process. Nevada will hold caucuses in the first week of the presidential campaign, having poked its way into the schedule between the traditional battles in Iowa and New Hampshire. A few weeks later, on Feb. 5, there will be a Rocky Mountain regional primary, with three states--New Mexico, Arizona and Utah--participating (and three more--Montana, Idaho and Wyoming--thinking about joining).

Indeed, there are those who believe that the gradual purplification of the West may have dramatic national consequences. If the Democrats can pick off a few Rocky Mountain states to augment their strength in the Northeast, upper Midwest and West Coast, they may be able to build an electoral majority that does not include the ferociously conservative South. As Thomas Schaller of the University of Maryland pointed out after the 2006 elections, "For the first time in more than half a century, the minority party in the South is the majority party in both chambers of Congress." Schaller is the author of Whistling Past Dixie, in which he argues that there are 29 electoral votes--two more than Florida has--to be harvested in four Rocky Mountain states that are trending Democratic. "The Democrats can win the presidency hitting singles out here in the West," says Schweitzer, referring to the tiny electoral-vote totals in states like his (which has three). "Or they can keep on trying to hit home runs down South."