True West (Go West, Democratic Party, Go West!)

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True West
At the Democratic Party's Western States Caucus in Montana, evidence abounds of a region

It’s 8:30 on a sparkling June evening, and leaders of Montana’s resurgent Democratic Party are hosting a river trip for the annual meeting of the party’s Western States Caucus. The group of nearly 100 party leaders and elected officials is motoring through the canyon of the Missouri River that Captain Meriwether Lewis, 200 years ago this July, named the Gates of the Rocky Mountains. At a narrow bend, river pilot Tim Crawford swings the Sacajawea II around 180 degrees, and the passage literally looks like immense rocky gates opening and closing. As the setting sun lights up the peaks, Howard Dean, in town for the gathering, peers up the canyon’s sheer, 800-foot limestone walls, and spots a bald eagle nested atop one of the ponderosa pines. Turkey buzzards circle, but the group’s good spirits suggest that the birds are looking for Republicans.

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The Mountain West has trended (to put it mildly) Republican in recent decades. But its progressive Democratic legacy is being rekindled. Nowhere is this happening more than here in Big Sky Country, where Brian Schweitzer, the newly elected Democratic governor, ran a full 15 points ahead of John Kerry as the Democrats took control of both the governor’s mansion and the Montana Legislature for the first time since 1989. In Colorado, Ken Salazar picked up a Senate seat for the Democrats, running 4 points ahead of Kerry. Democrats now have governors in New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Washington, and Wyoming. They picked up seats in both legislative chambers in Colorado, Montana, Oregon, Nevada, and Washington, and House seats in Arizona. Back at Jorgensen’s -- Helena’s one union hotel and the invariable venue of Democratic gatherings like this one -- pollster Celinda Lake, who grew up near Billings, offers some explanations for the success. The West, Lake says, “is far more libertarian than the South. Two-thirds of voters are pro-choice. Only one-third of Christians in the West are born-agains, compared to two-thirds in the South.” The large Mormon population in these mountains has experienced discrimination firsthand from fundamentalists who don’t consider Mormons to be Christians. Mormons have no enthusiasm for state-sponsored religion.

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Brian Schweitzer is characteristic of a new wave of western progressives. “He presents himself as a problem solver, rather than in ideological terms,” says Lake, “but the policies are progressive and they build popular support for progressive government.” Since taking office, Schweitzer has had a terrific six months. In the legislative session, he steered through a tax increase on tobacco, the proceeds of which will subsidize health-insurance purchasing pools and lower the cost of prescription drugs, as well as a pioneering ethanol program that a coalition of greens, farmers, and ranchers had been pursuing in vain for nearly three decades. Under the new law, 10 percent of basic motor fuels consumed in Montana will have to be ethanol, distilled from grains. A byproduct of the process will produce feed for cattle ranchers.

The new law also provides for country-of-origin labeling to help farmers and ranchers, and will produce an estimated $250 million of new economic activity for Montana thanks to the ethanol refining. Schweitzer deliberately picked a fight with extractive-industry interests, which would rather see oil drilling in the pristine Front Range just north and east of here. The ethanol program was so popular with farmers that he was able to split the Republicans and force several to cross the aisle and support it. Schweitzer comes across as a pragmatist, but he’s also a canny partisan. The centerpiece of his program is a jobs and economic-development initiative.

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The West helps explode one of the great myths of this political era, of an American electorate hardened into red and blue voting blocs. In fact, there are plenty of independent-minded voters that an astute leader from either party can reach. “A lot of the West,” says Celinda Lake, “is red on the outside, blue on the inside.”

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=9861

[ibegurpard]

1. bingo

"The West, Lake says, “is far more libertarian than the South. Two-thirds of voters are pro-choice. Only one-third of Christians in the West are born-agains, compared to two-thirds in the South.”"