Blogs

Jim Messina — born in Denver, raised in Boise, with a University of Montana bachelor’s degree in political science — will be a deputy chief of staff in Barack Obama’s White House. Messina worked his tail off to get there. He was chief of staff for Obama’s campaign, and his political experience stretches from Alaska […]

The Bush administration has a little more than two months left in office, but those two months promise to be an exciting — and probably distressing — time for those of us interested in federal land policy. The administration hopes to change a number of administrative rules before it rides into the sunset, and none […]

Given the size of the federal debt, $10 trillion and growing, it shouldn’t be a surprise that there are proposals to reduce it. And why go through the pain of raising taxes or reducing spending when the federal government could just sell some public land — abundant in the West — and apply the proceeds […]

Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave was the Richard Pombo of the 2008 election, targeted by the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund and others for her anti-environmental votes (the League of Conservation Voters gave her a 15 percent rating this year, in 2006 she had an 8 and in 2005, a zero). The Defenders spent a total of […]

Yes, Colorado turned blue. But in western Colorado’s Delta County, the GOP prevailed, giving the nod to the McCain-Palin ticket. Democratic congressman John Salazar fared best, getting about 45 percent of the vote. Not one Democratic candidate won here, from the top to the bottom of the ticket. I know something about being a Democrat […]

Swayed by an alliance of the Mormon Church, evangelicals and Catholic bishops, voters decided yesterday to use two states’ constitutions to ban marriage for gays and lesbians … … even though, I’ll interject, constitutions are normally intended to ensure the civil rights of minority groups. California’s Proposition 8 was the most intense gay-marriage battle ever […]

California’s raft of green ballot measures this election looked like the start of an enviro-revolution. Almost. Proposition 7  would have required California to generate 50 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050, and Proposition 10 would have authorized a $5 billion bond issue to promote alternative energy and alternative fuel vehicles, with about […]

As the Barack Obama wave swept much of the West, carrying fellow Democratic candidates to many victories, the Republicans in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming proved to be more resistant. John McCain won the presidential races in all three states. In the Congressional races, the Democrats apparently took one House seat that had been held by […]

As ABC News put it, “the traditionally red state of Colorado has seen a wave of blue voters.” The state picked Obama for president, probably boosted by high turnout among Hispanics, 20 percent of the state’s voters. The last time Colorado went blue was in 1964, for Lyndon Johnson. Dems now control both U.S. Senate […]

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 […]