W*GS
08-24-2008, 05:41 PM
The swing states: Colorado
Suburban cowboys
Aug 7th 2008 | DENVER
From The Economist print edition
How a reliably red state ended up in the purple camp
IN ONE episode of “South Park”, a potty-mouthed cartoon set in Colorado, a film festival comes to town. At first the locals are delighted. The visitors boost the economy and the films, which feature gay cowboys eating pudding, are better than expected. But the festival turns out to be a dastardly scheme, devised by Californians, to ruin pretty mountain towns and turn them into versions of Los Angeles. The natives must fight back.
<center>http://www.economist.com/images/20080809/CUS999.gif</center>
This is pretty much how Coloradoans view their state. Not so long ago, the natives will tell you, it was a beautiful place filled with hardy individualists—“a leave-me-alone kind of state”, according to Jon Caldara of the conservative Independence Institute. It was also solidly Republican. Since the 1960s Colorado has voted for a Democratic president only once, in 1992, when Ross Perot and George Bush senior split the Republican vote. Then the Californians and other newcomers arrived, sprinkling their monstrous houses over the hills and upending the state’s politics.
These days Colorado’s Democrats are on a roll. Since 2004 they have taken control of the governor’s office, both chambers of the legislature and two congressional seats. John Hickenlooper, Denver’s Democratic mayor, is enormously popular across the state. In the caucuses on February 5th more people came out for Barack Obama, who carried the state, than for all the Republican candidates put together.
This month the Democrats will hold a convention in Denver—the first time in 100 years that they have dared to meet anywhere near the Rocky mountains (see article). But John McCain is pushing back, assuring voters that he must carry Colorado if he is to win the White House. The polls are balanced, with most showing paper-thin leads for Mr Obama. A Senate race is similarly tight. Colorado may be worth just nine electoral college votes, but it is likely to be the hardest-fought state in the western half of America.
Colorado still projects a mountain-man image. Its five major-league sports teams are the Avalanche, the Broncos, the Nuggets, the Rapids and the Rockies. In reality, it resembles southern California even more closely than locals complain. Most of the state’s people live in a sprawling, more or less horizontal metropolis that stretches 130 miles (209km) from Fort Collins in the north to Colorado Springs in the state’s middle. In the central section, around Denver, the traffic can be almost as bad as in Los Angeles and the air often smells worse. Another similarity is that virtually all the population growth is in suburbs and small towns on the metropolitan fringe. This is where the Democrats are gaining ground.
Consider Larimer County, on the border with Wyoming. Once the sugar-beet capital of Colorado, this is now a booming job centre. Its biggest settlement is Fort Collins, a tidy town that was the model for parts of Disneyland. With its micro-breweries and coffee shops, Fort Collins is the kind of place that scores highly on magazine lists of the best places to live in America. It should be solidly Republican, and it is, but the party’s advantage is crumbling. In the past four years the Republicans have shed more than 2,000 registered voters in the county. The Democrats have added 5,500, while fully 9,000 new voters have registered as independent.
It is a similar story elsewhere. In suburban Arapahoe County, which both state parties describe as a battleground, the Republican edge in voter registrations has shrivelled from 29,000 to 7,000. Recently, independent voters passed Republicans to become the biggest group in the state. Some of this is due to Colorado’s growing Hispanic population, some of it is due to Californians and some of it reflects the general unpopularity of the national Republican Party. But there is a more important reason for the Republicans’ woes: their elected representatives are bonkers.
<center>http://www.economist.com/images/20080809/CUS972.gif</center>
In the 1970s the state party came under the sway of an anti-tax, anti-big government group known as the “House crazies”. This included Tom Tancredo, now a congressional scourge of illegal immigrants. The House crazies eventually joined forces with an equally fierce group of social conservatives rooted in Colorado Springs, headquarters of the evangelical Focus on the Family. By exploiting wedge issues and through clever use of ballot initiatives, they demolished both Democrats and moderates within their own party.
As the past four years have proved, Colorado’s conservative machine can no longer generate election victories. But it has proved hard to retool, or even to shut down. More than one lawmaker has got into trouble for comparing homosexuality to bestiality. The small-government wing remains incensed that voters suspended a tax-restraining measure in 2005, even though it was crippling the state’s finances. The Republican Party is in a worse mess, and has a more serious image problem, in Colorado than in America as a whole.
So Mr McCain’s campaign will have to make most of the running. It starts with several advantages. Mr McCain is a westerner who understands local issues such as energy and water. His call for offshore oil drilling is going down well in a landlocked state where the cars are big and the commutes long. And his opponent has an important weakness. In order to keep his promise not to take money from lobbyists, Mr Obama must run a campaign independent of the state Democratic Party. This is a recipe for overlap and confusion.
Floyd Ciruli, a Denver pollster, points to another hazard. Thanks to Ward Connerly, a black political activist and yet another Californian, Colorado’s voters will vote this November on an amendment that would ban preferential treatment on racial grounds—in other words, affirmative action. They are likely to approve it. Mr Obama, who supports affirmative action with reservations, may well end up on the wrong side of the argument. If so, his post-racial image will be tarnished.
Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
Suburban cowboys
Aug 7th 2008 | DENVER
From The Economist print edition
How a reliably red state ended up in the purple camp
IN ONE episode of “South Park”, a potty-mouthed cartoon set in Colorado, a film festival comes to town. At first the locals are delighted. The visitors boost the economy and the films, which feature gay cowboys eating pudding, are better than expected. But the festival turns out to be a dastardly scheme, devised by Californians, to ruin pretty mountain towns and turn them into versions of Los Angeles. The natives must fight back.
<center>http://www.economist.com/images/20080809/CUS999.gif</center>
This is pretty much how Coloradoans view their state. Not so long ago, the natives will tell you, it was a beautiful place filled with hardy individualists—“a leave-me-alone kind of state”, according to Jon Caldara of the conservative Independence Institute. It was also solidly Republican. Since the 1960s Colorado has voted for a Democratic president only once, in 1992, when Ross Perot and George Bush senior split the Republican vote. Then the Californians and other newcomers arrived, sprinkling their monstrous houses over the hills and upending the state’s politics.
These days Colorado’s Democrats are on a roll. Since 2004 they have taken control of the governor’s office, both chambers of the legislature and two congressional seats. John Hickenlooper, Denver’s Democratic mayor, is enormously popular across the state. In the caucuses on February 5th more people came out for Barack Obama, who carried the state, than for all the Republican candidates put together.
This month the Democrats will hold a convention in Denver—the first time in 100 years that they have dared to meet anywhere near the Rocky mountains (see article). But John McCain is pushing back, assuring voters that he must carry Colorado if he is to win the White House. The polls are balanced, with most showing paper-thin leads for Mr Obama. A Senate race is similarly tight. Colorado may be worth just nine electoral college votes, but it is likely to be the hardest-fought state in the western half of America.
Colorado still projects a mountain-man image. Its five major-league sports teams are the Avalanche, the Broncos, the Nuggets, the Rapids and the Rockies. In reality, it resembles southern California even more closely than locals complain. Most of the state’s people live in a sprawling, more or less horizontal metropolis that stretches 130 miles (209km) from Fort Collins in the north to Colorado Springs in the state’s middle. In the central section, around Denver, the traffic can be almost as bad as in Los Angeles and the air often smells worse. Another similarity is that virtually all the population growth is in suburbs and small towns on the metropolitan fringe. This is where the Democrats are gaining ground.
Consider Larimer County, on the border with Wyoming. Once the sugar-beet capital of Colorado, this is now a booming job centre. Its biggest settlement is Fort Collins, a tidy town that was the model for parts of Disneyland. With its micro-breweries and coffee shops, Fort Collins is the kind of place that scores highly on magazine lists of the best places to live in America. It should be solidly Republican, and it is, but the party’s advantage is crumbling. In the past four years the Republicans have shed more than 2,000 registered voters in the county. The Democrats have added 5,500, while fully 9,000 new voters have registered as independent.
It is a similar story elsewhere. In suburban Arapahoe County, which both state parties describe as a battleground, the Republican edge in voter registrations has shrivelled from 29,000 to 7,000. Recently, independent voters passed Republicans to become the biggest group in the state. Some of this is due to Colorado’s growing Hispanic population, some of it is due to Californians and some of it reflects the general unpopularity of the national Republican Party. But there is a more important reason for the Republicans’ woes: their elected representatives are bonkers.
<center>http://www.economist.com/images/20080809/CUS972.gif</center>
In the 1970s the state party came under the sway of an anti-tax, anti-big government group known as the “House crazies”. This included Tom Tancredo, now a congressional scourge of illegal immigrants. The House crazies eventually joined forces with an equally fierce group of social conservatives rooted in Colorado Springs, headquarters of the evangelical Focus on the Family. By exploiting wedge issues and through clever use of ballot initiatives, they demolished both Democrats and moderates within their own party.
As the past four years have proved, Colorado’s conservative machine can no longer generate election victories. But it has proved hard to retool, or even to shut down. More than one lawmaker has got into trouble for comparing homosexuality to bestiality. The small-government wing remains incensed that voters suspended a tax-restraining measure in 2005, even though it was crippling the state’s finances. The Republican Party is in a worse mess, and has a more serious image problem, in Colorado than in America as a whole.
So Mr McCain’s campaign will have to make most of the running. It starts with several advantages. Mr McCain is a westerner who understands local issues such as energy and water. His call for offshore oil drilling is going down well in a landlocked state where the cars are big and the commutes long. And his opponent has an important weakness. In order to keep his promise not to take money from lobbyists, Mr Obama must run a campaign independent of the state Democratic Party. This is a recipe for overlap and confusion.
Floyd Ciruli, a Denver pollster, points to another hazard. Thanks to Ward Connerly, a black political activist and yet another Californian, Colorado’s voters will vote this November on an amendment that would ban preferential treatment on racial grounds—in other words, affirmative action. They are likely to approve it. Mr Obama, who supports affirmative action with reservations, may well end up on the wrong side of the argument. If so, his post-racial image will be tarnished.
Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.