Democrats May Look West for Votes

If only two or three Western states like Arizona, Nevada or Colorado had switched their presidential pick, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry would be looking forward to his January inauguration.

Nevada tilted toward President Bush 50% to 48% and New Mexico was even closer.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Democrats must expand their base beyond the Northeast and Pacific Coast states.

"If we don't expand our base and cling to our limited base of support, I don't know how we win a presidential election," Feinstein said. "We have to build up the West."

But winning states in the interior West — those west of the Rockies but not directly on the Pacific coast — is easier said than done, say political analysts. That's in part because Westerners often favor less government regulations on access to federal lands or environmental issues, which runs counter core Democratic beliefs.

Democrats point hopefully to Colorado, where a Democrat replaced a retiring Republican senator and Democrats took over the Republican-controlled Legislature. But political experts caution that Colorado is not a bellwether for the West.

Colorado Republicans were blamed for the state's budget deficit, said John Straayer, a Colorado State University political science professor. And Ken Salazar, the state's Democratic attorney general who was elected senator, has a reputation as a moderate and pragmatic politician, he said.

"It would be a stretch to say (the election) is a leading indicator of any Democratic surge," he said.

In Arizona, where nearly 25% of registered voters are independents, voters want pragmatic solutions to problems of water shortages, illegal immigration and environmental regulation, said Kristin Kanthak, a political science professor at the University of Arizona. Voters in the state never connected with Kerry and gave President Bush a win by 11 percentage points, she said.

"(Democrats) have been defined by the Republicans, at least in this state, as the party of big government," she said.

But Arizona voters are willing to support more government in some areas, including education and border issues, Kanthak said. For example, Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano's plan to expand kindergarten to an all-day program was very popular, she said.

Voters also want government action to solve environmental, immigration and crime issues surrounding the border, she said.

"There's a big feeling that the federal government has not done its fair share to fix the problem around here," Kanthak said.

Democrats must straddle some tricky environmental stances in the West, said David Olson, political scientist at the University of Washington.

While support of curtailing logging in national forests and protecting public lands from drilling plays well on the coasts, those positions are opposed in much of the West, Olson said.

"(Democrats) can't come out here and talk our issues," said Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada in Reno.

For example, he said, Republicans seized the initiative on permitting more trees to be cut down on public lands to try to prevent large-scale forest fires — a huge issue in the West.

And political experts say Democrats can't take for granted the support of the West's growing Hispanic population. Although Hispanics generally vote for Democrats, Bush did better than expected with Latino voters by appealing to conservative social values on marriage and religion, Olson said.

Bush mobilized Hispanic team leaders, set up phone banks that spoke Spanish and set up outreach programs called Viva Bush in most states.

"The question of who's going to dominate the West is largely controlled by who controls the Latino vote," he said.

Not everyone agrees that winning the West is key for Democrats.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., earlier this month questioned whether Senate Democrats should choose Nevada Sen. Harry Reid as their leader because he wasn't from their traditional base in the Northeast.

"The question I raise is: Are the interests of the party served best by a leader who comes from a state that doesn't have the same urban flavor that we have in our industrial states?" said Lautenberg, who later voted for Reid.

Reid, who hails from tiny Searchlight, Nev., said while Democrats must do better in the West, their focus should be on winning the hearts of rural Americans.

In Nevada's two urban areas, Kerry carried the Las Vegas area and ran only slightly behind in Washoe County, he said.

But Vice President Dick Cheney visited rural Elko twice before the election, helping Bush capture a majority of voters in rural eastern Nevada.

"Rural Nevada beat John Kerry," Reid said. "I believe where the Kerry presidential bid failed was in not selling itself to rural America."