Westward once again The Big Strategy

The 2006 campaign is in its final stretch. Generic polls are looking good for the Democrats, and individual polls are generally breaking our way, too. Likely Democratic pick ups in the West in the House if the election were held today include AZ-08, CA-11, CO-04, CO-07, and NM-01. All politics is local, as the saying goes, each race has its own dynamic, and a lot can happen in a week. Still, at Western Democrat we are pleased to see that the media continues to pick up on The Big Strategy in the West.

The latest example: Jeff Greenfield, Senior CNN Analyst filed this piece on CNN.

More than 140 years ago, Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, uttered a famous piece of advice to an advice-seeker: "Go West, young man." Democrats seem to be heeding that advice as they look to expand their electoral base.
… eight states -- Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah -- have formed a reliable Republican bloc for decades.
Since Lyndon Johnson's '64 landslide, only Bill Clinton has managed to win more than one of these states in a presidential election; more typical is the John Kerry total: zero electoral votes out of 44. It's like losing Illinois and Ohio just about every time…
Democrats now hold governorships in Arizona, where Janet Napolitano is cruising to re-election; Montana with Brian Schweitzer; New Mexico, where Bill Richardson seems assured of another term; and Wyoming, where Dave Freudenthal is likewise a favorite. And Democrat Bill Ritter is leading in Colorado. In three of those states, Colorado, Montana, and New Mexico, Democrats hold the state legislatures.
They hold Senate seats in New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, and Nevada --Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid's home state -- and have a better than even chance of picking up the other Montana seat, where John Tester is challenging Sen. Conrad Burns. And in the House, Democrats have eight seats, compared with four in 2000, and have a shot at three more.
Why this success? For one thing, Western Democrats aren't big on the cultural liberal issues -- they support gun rights and some, like Sen. Reid, are pro-life. For another, the West tends to tilt more libertarian than other regions…
… if Democrats can stake a claim in the West, then they need worry less about finding political footing in the much more difficult region of the Deep South.
If Democrats decide that the West is a critical region for them, that could make a big difference when they begin sizing up the contenders for 2008, like asking, "Can a Senator from New York really compete in the land of the Big Sky and tall cactus?" One way to judge how seriously Democrats take this strategy: If they choose Denver over New York as the site of their next convention.

Leo Brown | November 1, 2006 | Comment on This Post (1 so far) Permalink: Westward once again The Big Strategy

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