(Updated November 8) Political trends established over the last several years, or decades, in the American West mostly continued in yesterday’s elections — providing more evidence that our region is not coherent politically, but instead is really two opposing sub-regions. Democrats held or even gained ground in the coastal states (California, Oregon and Washington) as […]
Politics
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
Wyoming Conservation Voters closes after 11 years
Wyoming pronghorn trek 120 miles, leaving Grand Teton National Park to winter near Pinedale, in one of the longest overland mammal migrations in the U.S. Although it’s less photogenic, the winter migration of Wyoming environmental lobbyists to Cheyenne for the legislative session is similarly epic. This was especially true before 2001, when the League of […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
Utah’s Bob Bennett on the Tea Party, wilderness and life after Congress
Bob Bennett, 79, served as a U.S. senator for Utah from 1992 until 2010, when he lost the 2010 Republican primary to Tea Party candidate Mike Lee. “I was really upset for the first 48 hours,” Bennett says. “Then it was like, ‘I’m free at last, free at last!’ ” Bennett, now a political consultant, […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
How the Mormon GOP runs Utah with a collectivist touch
“Our object is to labor for the benefit of the whole …” –Brigham Young, 1873 A throng of cars floats down Interstate 15 on an end-of-summer morning, the rising sun wreathed in the orange gauze of distant wildfire smoke. In Lehi, a suburb sandwiched between Salt Lake City and Provo, a massive steel-and-glass shape juts […]
Posted inGoat
Strange days
It was Halloween Wednesday night. This brought an extra degree of strangeness to our small town. I saw a cop handing candy to some kids, a giant red bear gyrating on the dance floor, and three of the town’s most ambitious young women shackled in binders. Over the past weeks, as elections draw closer, a […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
Voters shape energy policy by choosing utility regulators
Cam Cooper raises pedigree Angus cattle along the Big Hole River, a beautiful, rural region of southwest Montana. Like most ranchers, her politics are “quite conservative,” she says. “I generally vote Republican.” But this November, she’ll vote for at least one Democrat: John Vincent, an ally in Cooper’s battle against a new transmission line that […]
Posted inGoat
The money trail
The Montana Statesman calls itself “Montana’s largest and most trusted news source.” It is edited and published by Donald Ferguson, an “award-winning newspaper veteran,” boasts the Statesman’s website. Its home page features 11 stories — six of them unflattering portraits of Steve Bullock, Montana’s attorney general and the Democratic candidate for governor. The headlines topping the page: “Bullock admits […]
Posted inWotr
Nevada, face down and flailing
Suddenly, this election season, state politicians in Nevada are refusing to sign the pledge – the one anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist has been foisting upon conservative candidates and lawmakers for years. It requires the faithful to swear that they will never, ever raise taxes. Many signers surely believe in it; others sign for fear of […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
Races where the environment matters. Sort of.
Environmentalists can’t contain their glee about Jay Inslee’s candidacy for governor of Washington. “I can count on one hand the members of Congress … that are like Jay Inslee,” gushed League of Conservation Voters president Gene Karpinski at a Washington chapter event last October. The national LCV usually stays out of state politics, but at […]
Posted inGoat
Whither wilderness?
On a stretch of land along the eastern side of Colorado’s Arkansas River, enormous, sand-colored rocks pile up on each other, looking as if a giant child had picked up a handful and let them dribble out between her fingers. This rock jumble is overlaid with piñon pine, juniper, and spots of ponderosa. It’s land […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
Is the Latino electorate finally beginning to make its mark?
When Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., announced his retirement in 2011, pundits predicted the GOP would easily hold the seat this November. After all, Arizonans last chose a Democrat for Senate in 1988, when as The Wall Street Journal reminisced, “gasoline cost less than 90 cents a gallon … and stirrup pants were in.” Yet Democrat […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
Redistricting pains in California and other states
Once every 10 years, after each U.S. Census, states must redraw political boundaries to reflect demographic changes, a process called redistricting. Districts must have equal populations and should not dilute minorities’ voting powers by splitting their vote. The process can become highly politicized, with parties jockeying to draw favorable districts and keep incumbents in office. […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
Westerners’ presidential proclivities
The Democratic Party has taken a shine to the West of late, seeing the region as its best shot to grow the base. Indeed, changing demographics — rising populations of minorities and educated whites, and a declining white working class — have put a few formerly solid red states into play for Democrats in presidential […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
2012 Western ballot initiatives
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline 2012 Western ballot initiatives.
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
As goes Nevada, so goes the nation?
Updated 10/30/12 Twenty-seven days before the general election, northern Nevada state Sen. Greg Brower pleaded a case before a roomful of ardent conservatives that sounded suspiciously moderate. “We can’t survive without any taxes and regulation,” the Washoe County Republican told a women’s club at the Nugget Hotel in Sparks. He acknowledged that he considers power-sharing […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2012: Red State Rising
Heated Conversations
Comments posted online in response to our Sept. 17 story “Fire fights“: There is really no question about Richard Hutto’s quote in this article, “the federal government is spending money thinning forests that have a long history of dense stands and severe fires.” But one should differentiate forest management at its interface with homes and […]
Posted inGoat
Binders full of newspaper endorsements
In the age of political Internet memes, which both entertain and influence voters, how important is a newspaper endorsement? The answer depends on who you ask. To voters, a newspaper endorsement may have little bearing on their vote, as NPR’s media correspondent David Folkenflick reported. In interviews, a dozen voters suggested they put little to […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Inside the orchard: A conversation with novelist Amanda Coplin
Amanda Coplin spent the first years of her life in Wenatchee, Wash., the self-proclaimed “Apple Capital of the World,” and was indelibly shaped by its rolling acres of fruit trees, and by her frequent visits to the apple and apricot orchard owned by her grandparents. Those sights and smells are powerfully evoked in her debut […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Already gone: a profile of Muscogee (Creek) poet Joy Harjo
The author of She Had Some Horses and In Mad Love and War discusses her new memoir, Crazy Brave.