Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter

Who’s Going to Win in the West?

By Joan McCarter, 11-04-08

Election Day for politicos is like Christmas Eve for a five-year old. You’ve tried all year to be the best you could, to do everything right so that you get your reward on the big day. But on that day, there’s nothing left to do but wait for the capricious hand of an outside force to determine your fate. Since you’re past the point of altering the outcome, you speculate about what the day might bring. We do know that tomorrow morning we’re going to wake up to a vastly different national political landscape. Here’s what it might look like closer to home.

In Washington State, we might not know the outcome of the two key races. Because King County either likes all of the attention or is just stubbornly committed to performing some sort of ritualistic process with every absentee ballot cast, they’re not going to count them all today. They’ve already told us that it will probably only be around a third of them. So it could be a couple of weeks before we know for sure whether Gov. Christine Gregoire has to move out of the mansion and if western Washington’s eighth district congressman will be permanently retired from public service. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict Gregoire keeps her job and that Democrat Darcy Burner ekes out a narrow win. The state has been Obama’s from the beginning.

Oregon is about to send a new Senator to Washington, the key race there. Incumbent Gordon Smith has had a hard time figuring out how to sell himself to voters--as the moderate Republican Democrats should vote for in the old tradition of Mark Hatfield and Bob Packwood, or as the true Republican holding back a wave of blue on the left coast. As a result, he’s alienated plenty of Republicans and convinced just a few Democrats. And revelations about his family business’s practice of hiring illegal immigrants and polluting eastern Oregon waterways have damaged him with both sides of the electorate. It’s a highwire act that appears to have failed. Jeff Merkley will most likely be going to Washington January 5. The only open U.S. House seat will remain in Democratic hands. Obama wins handily.

Idaho’s big race is in the first Congressional district, where Democrat Walt Minnick is poised to snatch the seat away for the first time in 14 years. Bill Sali has been too much of an embarrassment even for Idaho’s Republicans, and all the polling in the last month or so indicates they’re ready to boot him. Minnick will then have two years to try to convince Idahoans that Democrats can govern, but he’s going to be a target from day one. The Senate race could provide a surprise if Republican Jim Risch’s efforts to convince Mormons that he’s the LDS candidate in the race backfire. The Catholic has been running an ad with Mitt Romney in the southern half of the state, sending a signal to the Mormon voters in the area that he needs to make sure he secures. There is an actual Mormon in the race, independent Rex Rammell. If he siphons off enough votes, along with two other independent candidates, the Democrat Larry LaRocco could pull a surprise upset. That’s a pretty unlikely scenario, but not out of the realm of possibility. There’s no question about who this state is going to vote for at the top of the ticket. At the national level, it’s going to stay red for a very long time.

Montana’s most interesting contribution to this cycle so far has been it’s crazy primary election, in which the electorate chose the most fringe challengers in the Senate and House races. So there’s no contest there and governor Brian Schweitzer is cruising to reelection. The big races are downticket, where the legislature is a real battleground. Montana’s Republicans have been having a bit of a civil war, forcing out moderates in favor of hard-liners. That could possibly send voters who are interested in seeing their legislature actually be effective to vote for some Democrats, sending the statehouse into Democratic hands. The big surprise I predict out of Montana: the presence of Bob Barr and Ron Paul on the ballot sends the state’s three electoral votes to Obama.

Gary Trauner, the hardest working Democrat in the West, deserves to go to Congress from Wyoming. Whether he will has been a 50-50 proposition from the first time he ran in 2006. The polls on this one have been frustratingly consistent--a virtual tie since last May. Which is great news for a Democrat in Wyoming--rarely are Democrats competitive in federal seats here. Dick Cheney stumped for the Republicans in Wyoming last week. It’s probably the only state in the country where that could be a good thing for any candidate. The only advantage the Republican in the race, Cynthia Lummis, has is that party designation. She’s not quite as personally reviled in the state as the retiring congresswoman Barbara Cubin, but it’s close. She might be the most personally unpopular choice the Republicans could have made. This one might not be decided by the time we all wake up Wednesday, but I’m going to go out on a thin limb, and give this one to Trauner, the only spot of blue that will come out of the state this cycle.

Utah has been emptied out. Much of its money has gone to California and Arizona to try to get those states to ensconce discrimination against gays in their state’s constitutions, and most of its progressives have spent their weekends traveling to neighboring states to get out the vote for Barack Obama. There’s really nothing else of note happening here.

Colorado’s split Senate delegation won’t be split tomorrow. Two Democrats are going to represent the state as Mark Udall cruises in. I give the edge to Democratic challenger Betsy Markey in the state’s other most contested race for the 4th congressional district. Republican incumbent Marilyn Musgrave has finally worn out her welcome in this rapidly changing state. The big issues in Colorado are a couple of extreme ballot initiatives, an anti-union “right to work” effort that would cripple unions by cutting off funding in the form of union dues. I’m afraid this one passes. There’s also a crazy effort to declare a fertilized egg a person, an anti-abortion effort so radical that even Colorado-based Focus on the Family has refused to get involved. This one fails. Obama is going to win Colorado’s nine electoral votes.

He’s going to win New Mexico’s five, as well. In other races, another Udall, Tom, has led for the state’s open Senate seat since he declared months and months ago. This long-held Republican seat is going to a Democrat. It’s also entirely possible that all three House seats become Democratic. In the first, Democrat Martin Heinrich has held a narrow lead over Republican Darren White in the latest polling. Democratic enthusiasm and a huge, huge early vote turnout is going to push this one into Dem hands. In the second, Harry Teague, the Democrat, has a fighting chance of becoming the first Democrat to hold that seat in more than 30 years. The third district, the seat Udall is leaving, will stay Democratic with Ben Lujan.

Arizona very well could see the state house flip to Democratic control for the first time in years. It’s a bit of a long shot, but all the momentum in the state has been with the Democrats this cycle. That could also bring six of the state’s eight Congressional seats to Democrats. The incumbent Democrats in districts 5,7, and 8 are expected to hold on. The 1st, being abandoned by the indicted Rick Renzi is going to go to Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick, and the big fight has been in the 3rd, where Democrat Bob Lord has conducted an extremely effective campaign against incumbent John Shadegg, who’s had a few ethical concerns as well. Hanging over him is a bunch of wiretapped conversations with the aforementioned Renzi that might be revealed when Renzi goes to trial. That, and a series of missteps by Shadegg leae him vulnerable. This is the one to watch in Arizona and I think Lord pulls it out. The state will hopefully reject, for the second time, an anti-gay marriage Constitutional amendment. The fact that Arizona voters have defeated it once already should be enough, but much of the energy and money that would have gone to fighting this one has been redirected to California’s Prop 8 battle. This one is too close to call. The big surprise in the last week in Arizona has been Obama’s surge--could the state really reject its own Senator, John McCain? I think that’s highly unlikely.

Nevada’s lone Democrat in the House of Representatives might just be joined by two more. What’s really remarkable is that the state could be represented by three Democratic women. Dina Titus is running a very strong race against Jon Porter in the state’s third district. There’s enough of Las Vegas in this district to make for a very dissatisfied voting base. The only place in the country harder hit by the financial crisis is Florida, but Nevada is suffering. All through the Vegas area, homes are sitting empty and abandoned, construction projects have been halted, retail developments sit empty. Voters here are ready to throw the bums out. They are only slightly less ready to do so in the state’s second district--basically everything north of Las Vegas. Reno has been hit almost as hard as Vegas with the housing crisis, and massive new voter registration and mobilization here might be enough to offset the very Republican rural vote in the rest of the state and bring Jill Derby in, but it’s a stretch. I’m going to be conservative in this one, and predict a split--Titus wins in the third, and the second stays Republican. The massive organizing effort Obama has had on the ground here is going to tip the state to him.

To recap, that’s a prediction of three new western Democratic Senators--Oregon, Colorado, and New Mexico; nine new Democratic House seats; and five states, with 40 electoral votes, for Obama. Now that the speculating is done, I guess it’s hurry up and wait for the voting and the counting.

Happy Election Day.

Editor’s note: Joan McCarter’s weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics’ “Diary of a Mad Voter” feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.

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