It’s not the Old West, it’s our guide to this year’s Western elections — tracking how the rising anger threatens to overcome many voters’ moderate streak.
Us and them vs. all the rest
Ethnic diversity strengthened early Butte, Montana – and still can.
Fields of dreams
Basic labor rights elude farmworkers
‘The last word is action’
Boulder clean-energy activist sees declining coal supply as a boon
A house like a buffalo
A carpenter muses on dismantling and recycling tumbledown buildings
How I ran for a U.S. Senate seat, and what I learned
Investigative reporter John Dougherty writes about his surprising Arizona campaign
Solar spree
In early October, the Interior Department gave its blessing to three solar energy projects in California’s sun-saturated Mojave Desert and Imperial Valley, and one in the Nevada desert. The approvals — the first ever on federal public land — came five years after the agency opened public deserts in the Southwest to solar development. A…
A raw-edged memoir
Raw Edges: A MemoirPhyllis Barber280 pages, hardcover: $26.95.University of Nevada Press, 2010. All memoirs risk provoking the reader’s question: What’s so important about your life, anyway? Why should we bother to read a whole book about it? Nevada author Phyllis Barber tries to answer that question in her second autobiography, Raw Edges: “While this search…
Hello, and goodbye
High Country News welcomes new assistant editor Cally Carswell. Cally has spent the last nine months here as a multimedia fellow after completing an internship; now, she’ll continue her excellent work reporting and writing stories, editing articles, and producing video and audio as a permanent staff member. Born in New Mexico but raised in Chicago,…
Writing in tradition
From the HilltopToni Jensen179 pages, softcover: $19.95.University of Nebraska Press, 2010. In From the Hilltop, her first short story collection, Toni Jensen relies on her Métis heritage (a mixed Indian and European cultural group from Canada and the Northern U.S.) to explore contemporary Indian life off the reservation. It is not surprising that her writing…
Nevada: A hairy ride for Harry
Two years ago, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid must have felt on top of the world. He stood at the helm of a Democratically controlled Congress, and he and his state had just helped put a Democrat in the White House. Reid and his cohorts immediately set to work: They scotched the plan to bury…
New Mexico: Wolves, wilderness, drilling and Latinos
“Nothing is more attractive to a wolf than the sound of a crying baby,” said then-Rep. Steve Pearce, R, during a 2007 debate over one of his bills, which sought to kill funding for the federal Mexican wolf reintroduction program in southern New Mexico, Pearce’s district. More recently, Pearce expressed his views of land protection…
Oregon: Tea Party limbo
It’s hard to imagine, in these Tea Party times, a guy with a political history like John Kitzhaber’s having a chance to win a major elected office. As a Democratic state senator in the ’80s, he authored Oregon’s government-funded health plan; later, as governor from 1995 to 2003, he expanded the plan, got more funding…
Stringing up the Western sheriff
Note: This is the editor’s note for our Western elections guide. The other elections stories are listed at the end. — The people were angry about a political system that seemed hopelessly corrupt. Waves of immigrants were flooding in and everything felt chaotic. The economy soared and plummeted, driven by naked greed, profiteering businesses, and…
Arizona: Obama’s curse?
Is President Obama to blame for the Democrats’ troubles? In the West as a whole, maybe. In Arizona? Definitely. When Obama picked Arizona Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano to run his Homeland Security Department, he inadvertently surrendered the state to an ultra-conservative agenda. The Republican Legislature forged ahead with bills closing state parks and selling off…
California: Dope, eBay, pollution and moonbeams
California’s ballot is sizzling hot. Top of the list is Proposition 23, which would emasculate or kill California’s pace-setting 2006 climate change law, Assembly Bill 32. That law takes a multi-pronged approach, including statewide cap-and-trade and more rooftop solar, to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Prop. 23 would put…
Utah: A Sagebrush Rebel headed for D.C.
Utah’s most important election this year was held in the springtime, when angry right-wingers overthrew three-term incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett in the Republican primary. Mike Lee, a lawyer who pushes high-profile Sagebrush Rebel cases, is now the Republican candidate for Senate. And given Utah’s history, Lee will almost certainly crush Democrat Sam Granato to win…
Colorado: The West’s true swing state
Congressman John Salazar has a tough job. His constituents are scattered across a huge swath of Colorado’s rural Western Slope, over a political and demographic spectrum that ranges from oil and gas roughnecks in conservative Grand Junction to creative-class telecommuters in liberal Telluride. But most of Salazar’s constituents lie somewhere in between and share a…
Washington: Tea Party limbo #2
Washington is a coffee-drinking state; Starbucks is only one of the many java peddlers rooted in Seattle. Tea, however, at least of the political sort, is not catching on. So the fact that some of this year’s races appear to be ramped up on caffeine can probably be blamed on roasted, ground-up beans. HCN’s Guide…
Wyoming: A popular governor gets mysterious
Democratic Gov. Dave Freudenthal isn’t running for a third term, despite his belief that he could successfully challenge Wyoming’s term-limits law in court and translate his high approval ratings into another win in the ballot boxes. And he’s apparently decided that it’s no longer crucial to have a Democrat in the governor’s office as a…
Lynch-mob politics
It’s not the Old West — it’s our guide to this year’s Western elections
Montana: Utility regs and clean energy up for grabs
When Democrat Dennis McDonald first decided to try to knock Denny Rehberg out of Montana’s sole seat in the House of Representatives, his chances appeared good. Montana’s Democrats had been on a roll since 2004, winning a Senate seat, the governor’s mansion and four other statewide offices. McDonald has a background in ranching — an…
Idaho: How a Democrat wins in the Northern Rockies
When the votes are counted election night, it might surprise some national pundits if Idaho’s 1st Congressional District goes blue. But Democrat Walt Minnick was a pretty good bet when he wrested the seat from 14 years of Republican ownership in 2008. And since then, Minnick has positioned himself to appeal even more to Idaho’s…
We’re listening
Below are some of the comments you sent us on the most recent reader survey. Thanks for taking the time to let us know what you think. We’ve been reading all your survey responses, and thinking about how we can keep HCN on your “essential reading” list. I have learned more from HCN about the…
Taming the River Wild
Proposals to make rapids safer raise raft of questions