Ohio schmohio.
If you want a real fix on where this election is going to be decided, pay attention to where House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is spending her time next week: Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. Except for New Mexico, where Al Gore won by a whopping 366 votes in 2000, these are the new battlegrounds, where past may not be prologue. Suddenly, red states like Nevada and Colorado are up for grabs. Pelosi, who has been on a tireless crusade to return Democrats to power in the House of Representatives, knows where the openings might present themselves.
“There are a lot of opportunities for us in the West,” says Kori Bernards, communications director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who will make the western swing with Pelosi. “We have good candidates in high-Democratic-performing districts who can put us closer to taking back the house.”
House Democrats have said all along that what they need to win control is for John Kerry to create a small headwind in a few swing states. If there is going to be a wind at all it's likely to be one blowing out of the west.
While the presidential candidates continue to spend an enormous amount of time, money, and energy on the famous 19 battleground states, Kerry appears to be pulling ahead in a number of them, mostly in places where Gore won in 2000. It's likely that after Labor Day, when George W. Bush's post-convention bounce subsides, the number of true battleground states will be cut in half, with most of the remaining contests in the West and Southwest.
Ohio and Florida will remain close, sure, and Iowa and Wisconsin will be unreadable until Election Day. But while Bush beat Gore in Arizona (51-45), Nevada (50-46), and Colorado (51-42) by relatively large margins, each of those states is suddenly as in play as New Mexico.
So on Wednesday, Pelosi will be in Nevada trying to help Tom Gallagher, a former gaming executive (he ran what is now Caesars) and the favored Democrat, knock off freshman Republican Representative Jon Porter. The Third District is ostensibly a solidly Republican seat -- but Gore beat Bush by 1,052 votes in that district in 2000, and the latest state polls show Bush leading Kerry by three percentage points, 46-43, with a 4-point margin of error. A push, as they say at the blackjack table.
Later in the day, Pelosi is scheduled to be in Arizona with Paul Babbitt, who is running for one the seats Democrats covet most. The Republican incumbent, Rick Renzi, is a freshman who was elected with 49 percent of the vote in 2002. Although there hasn't been much polling on the race, the early polls show Renzi with a big lead. Still, Babbitt gives the Democrats reason to hope.
His name is political gold in Arizona: He is the brother of former Gov. Bruce Babbitt, who ran for president in 1992 and then became Bill Clinton's Interior Secretary. Democrats also enjoy an edge in registration, and while Renzi has raised almost $1.3 million -- nearly twice as much as Babbitt's $715,000 -- the two campaigns go into the fall campaign with approximately the same amount of cash in the bank, just over $500,000. And as in Nevada, the Republican Arizona of 2000 has been bleeding a little and may not be as red this November. First, after 12 years of GOP rule, Arizonans elected a Democrat, Janet Napolitano, governor in 2002; now, polls show Bush ahead of Kerry 48 to 45 percent with a 4-point margin of error, essentially a tie.
If it's Thursday then it must be New Mexico, where Pelosi is after one of what have been dubbed the Gore seats, Republican-held seats in districts where Al Gore won. This time the incumbent is three-term GOP Representative Heather Wilson, a former Air Force officer and Rhodes Scholar, who has befuddled the Democrats. In 2000, Gore won the district by 2,800 votes, but Wilson was narrowly re-elected with 50 percent of the vote. In 2002, however, Wilson won re-election with 55 percent of the vote against state Senate President Richard Romero. An impressive primary win by Romero in June has set up a rematch between Wilson and Romero, who seems better prepared this time around. In addition, one recent poll showed John Kerry running ahead of Bush in the district 49 percent to 42 percent.
Then comes Colorado, where Republicans seem in danger of losing a Senate seat and where Democrats are after two House seats that could help them pick up the dozen they need to take control of the House. The plot got even thicker this week when Colorado voters decided to place on the November ballot a proposal that would abandon the winner-take-all system that gives all of the state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the state. If the proposal is adopted, Colorado's nine electoral votes this November will be allocated based on the winner of each of the seven congressional seats, with the additional two going to the one that won a majority. Had such a system been in place in 2000, Bush would have won six electoral votes and Gore would have won two, making him President.
The 2000 census added one more seat to the Colorado congressional delegation, and in 2002 Democrats came within 121 votes of taking that seat. It's held by freshman GOP Representative Bob Beauprez, who won a hotly contested race. Pelosi is after him as well. This time Beauprez will face Jefferson County District Attorney Dave Thomas, who was unopposed in the August 10 primary. Voters within the boundaries of what is now Colorado's Seventh District voted for Al Gore 50-49 in 2000.
That's why Nancy Pelosi is embarked on her western roadtrip, and why both Kerry and Bush will follow often in the weeks to come.
Terence Samuel is the chief congressional correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. His column about politics appears each week in the online edition of The American Prospect.
