With few electoral votes, one-party slant, Western states feel slighted in presidential politics

Pauline Arrillaga

Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2000 | 10:52 a.m.

He arrived just before noon and hopped a motorcade to the University of Nevada. He met privately with breast cancer survivors, then talked women's health at a rally. After an interview with local reporters, it was off to the Strip to accept the Teamsters' endorsement.

By sundown, he was gone.

It's the fastest-growing state in the nation, home to a sizzling nuclear storage controversy and considered a toss-up in the presidential race. Yet Al Gore, in his second campaign trip to Nevada, spent all of six hours here in September before heading to California for the ninth time and a three-day tour.

Republican candidate George W. Bush has come calling once, for two days of fund raising.

It's the political curse of the West. From the Nevada desert to the mountains of Montana, the eight-state Intermountain West could be considered the redheaded stepchild of presidential politics - ignored and oftentimes irrelevant.

Democrat Gore, like Bush, is making sure to include at least brief stops in states where the presidential race is close. The candidates have been to Arizona seven times between them. They total six trips to Colorado, five to New Mexico, three to Nevada. All four of those states are considered competitive in the election.

Still, from the Nevada desert to the mountains of Montana, people in the region often feel slighted during presidential campaigns.

Westerners still wince at memories of the 1980 presidential election, when then-President Jimmy Carter conceded defeat to Ronald Reagan before polls out West had closed. This year the nominees were a foregone conclusion by the time most Western primaries rolled around, and regional campaign appearances by the presidential candidates, and even the vice presidential candidates, for the most part have been few and brief.

"We call it a Tarmac stop: You stop at the airport, wave at people, shake hands, get back on the plane and leave," says Floyd Ciruli, a political analyst for the Denver-based Center for the New West.

Both campaigns insist the region is vital.

"In these states, you see a great range of issues that are important to Americans, that are important to the vice president," says Gore spokeswoman Maria Meier. Still, Gore hasn't been to four of the eight states.

"The Bush-Cheney camp is not taking anywhere for granted," says Bush spokesman Andrew Malcolm. Bush has been to six of the eight.

But for the most part, the Intermountain West remains little more than a refueling stop on the way to California.

The reasons lie in mathematics and demographics: The region, composed of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, contributes just 40 electoral votes toward the 270 needed to win. California alone has 54.

And with the exception of sometimes swing states Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, the Intermountain West is a GOP stronghold. Republicans hold the governor's office in all eight states and control 30 of the region's 40 U.S. House and Senate seats.

"The Republicans have come across as being able to speak with a more distinctively Western voice," particularly on issues such as access to public lands and natural resources, says Daniel Kemmis, director of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana.

"The Democrats," he adds, "have moved more in the direction of being able to sacrifice the West for electoral gains among environmentalists."

Writing off the West may not prove as politically correct down the road.

With the nation's five fastest-growing states in the West - Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho and Colorado - the region is expected to pick up the majority of new congressional seats when the 2000 Census is complete, meaning at least a handful more electoral votes.

While much of the growth in the early '90s could be attributed to an influx of mostly conservative Californians to the region, it is now characterized by soaring Latino and Asian populations and independent voters with little allegiance to either party, according to Ciruli.

In Colorado, for example, 12 percent of eligible voters are Hispanic while 34 percent are registered as "unaffiliated" or independent. In Nevada, the Asian population rose 123.7 percent over the last decade, the largest such increase in the nation, while the Hispanic population rose 144.6 percent.

"We're not monolithic. We're not, and never were, all one way or the other," says Jim Souby, executive director of the Western Governors' Association, a Republican-dominated organization that was majority Democratic just eight years ago.

The group this year sought to heighten the region's political influence with a proposed eight-state Western primary, though that idea fizzled into a two-state affair.

Souby says the region is destined to become more politically important, not only because of its growth but due to the economic influence of the information technology industry and the fact that Western issues such as the environment and urbanization are beginning to transcend the West.

"We're on track to have tremendously increasing influence in the foreseeable future," he says. "Are we calling the shots? No. Are we headed in that direction? Very definitely."

In the meantime, Westerners remain realistic about their place in the political pecking order.

"They've got to do what they've got to do to get votes," Las Vegas engineer Tim Buchanan said as he awaited Gore's appearance at the University of Nevada. "It's exciting to see them here, and it's important for the local political races."

Still, Buchanan admitted: "I can understand why Nevada's not at the top of the list."

Naomi Millisor, a Las Vegas resident for 40 years and office manager of the state Democratic Party, said it doesn't matter how often candidates visit, as long as they eventually do.

"When they don't come," she said, "that's when we get angry."

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EDITOR'S NOTE - Pauline Arrillaga is the AP's Southwest regional writer, based in Phoenix.

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