Politics

The pundits  may have waited until the last possible second on election night to call California, along with Oregon and Washington, and pronounce Democrat Barack Obama the 44th president of the United States, but there was never really any doubt that the electoral-vote-heavy-weight Golden State would embrace the Illinois Senator by a wide margin.  With […]

Prior to yesterday’s election, New Mexico was just about evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. While Dems controlled the State House and Senate, and a Dem lived in the Governor’s mansion, two of the three U.S. Congressional seats were held by Republicans and the state was represented by one Republican and one Democrat in the […]

I had grand plans of coming to the office this morning and writing definitive post-election blogs about the races we’ve been following in Washington and Oregon. But it’s almost time for lunch, and the two most interesting races — Dave Reichert vs. Darcy Burner for Washington’s 8th Congressional District and Gordon Smith vs. Jeff Merkley […]

Well, there weren’t too many surprises coming from McCain’s home state yesterday. All of the incumbents, even Harry Mitchell, D, in the 5th Congressional District, held onto their U.S. Congressional seats, and the Mac nabbed the state’s presidential contest, albeit by a narrower margin than most talking heads expected. Ann Kirkpatrick, D, bagged only open […]

Their names are familiar, but not the way we know “John McCain” or “Barack Obama.” They raised a total of about $6 million  — compared to more than $650 million raised by Obama and $360 million raised by McCain. In case you missed it, Ralph Nader (independent, raised $3.9 million), Bob Barr (Libertarian, $1.3 million), […]

Gun activists believe — perhaps correctly — that the future of their hobby is bound up with the financial health of the companies that make guns. That’s why the NRA campaigned so heavily for the 2005 gun liability bill, which keeps gun manufacturers and dealers from being held responsible for crimes committed using their products. […]

After two almost-too-close-to-call presidential elections, New Mexico is now considered safe turf for Barack Obama. But more interestingly, in a poll taken just two days ago, things were looking up for the rest of New Mexico’s Democratic candidates. Currently, Republicans hold one of the two U.S. Senate seats and two of the three U.S. Congressional […]

As Ray Ring observed back in July, there’s a growing rift between conservatives and moderates in the Republican Party in the West. This is something that most of us have lost sight of over the past few months, during which the news has been about the contest between Republicans and Democrats, not the internal power […]

Loyal GOAT readers have already read the tale of Chris Cannon, the ultra-conservative, oil-shale-promoting U.S. House member from Utah who got beat in this year’s Republican primary after he made the mistake of being open to compromise on immigration. Well, it turns out that Utah hath nothing weirder — or sadder — than an uber-conservative […]

Frustrated by a lack of action from other Republicans, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch has personally raised more than $6.5 million for the National Republican Senatorial Committee through an elite donor group dubbed “Orrin’s Army.” He also presided over the President’s Dinner, a feast that raised $13.5 million for Senate Republicans. The money will be used […]

Back when he was a Colorado congressman, we thought Republican Scott McInnis was pretty darned conservative. And he was. But it turns out he’s still more moderate than the folks that are taking over his party. He recently said that, had he stayed in the race for Colorado’s open U.S. Senate seat, he could have […]

For quite a while, I resisted the temptations of “early voting” or “voting by mail,” and remained steadfast in my preference for voting the old-fashioned way: at my precinct on Election Day. It made me feel something like the way I felt when I attended church as a kid, that I was joining others in […]

In the October 13th edition HCN reviewed western ballot measures. This year there apparently are only a few “environmental” measures on western ballots and at least one of these – the California initiative on “green measures” – is actually anti-environmental.  I don’t know about you but I find this troubling. In a national election year […]

As noted in Ray Ring’s recent HCN feature, the Mormon church is throwing its impressive institutional — and financial — weight behind the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 in California. But like any religious group, the Latter-Day Saints are hardly monolithic. The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting (and further reporting) that a growing number of Mormons […]