The recent Snowdown festival
in my town of Durango, Colo., celebrated with silly costumes, a
parade, risque humor and even some events centered on snow. People
threw themselves down the slopes on everything from skis and
snowboards to kayaks, bicycles and even unicycles.
The
enthusiastic diversity shows how ski areas have evolved, and it
also reminds me of something else: You can tell a lot about how a
place will vote by checking to see if it has a ski resort. While
George Bush won Colorado, the map of western Colorado counties that
John Kerry carried could have come from a ski industry brochure.
Bush won in only one Colorado county that includes a
major ski area — Grand County, home to Winter Park. There are some
ski areas in red counties — Powderhorn in Mesa County and
Wolf Creek in Hinsdale County are examples — but
they’re mostly smaller and not destination resorts.
What’s more, the results were often lopsided. In La Plata
County, home to Durango Mountain Resort, John Kerry got 53 percent
of the vote, the same as in Eagle County, home to Vail and Beaver
Creek. In Routt County, base for Steamboat, he got 54 percent. He
won Summit County, chock full of resorts such as Keystone,
Breckenridge, Copper Mountain and Arapahoe Basin, by 59 percent. In
Pitkin County, where there’s Aspen and three other ski areas,
68 percent of the voters chose Kerry. And in San Miguel County,
home of Telluride’s ski resort, he got 72 percent.
The pattern also seems to hold in other states. Bush easily carried
Vice President Dick Cheney’s home state of Wyoming, winning
all but one county — the one that includes Jackson Hole and
its ski area.
The GOP ticket won New Mexico, too. But
John Kerry got 74 percent of the vote in Taos County, another ski
area. Idaho’s four electoral votes also went to Bush. Kerry
won only Blaine County, home of Sun Valley.
Kerry won
California overall, but that state’s sparsely populated
inland counties went mostly for Bush. Still, Kerry carried the ski
resort counties of Mono and Alpine.
In Utah, the
Democrats didn’t win a single county. But at 45 percent,
Kerry came closest in Summit County, base for Park City and two
other ski areas.
It seems that people living in counties
with ski areas are more likely than their neighbors to vote
Democratic. The problem is that the correlation is easier to
demonstrate than to explain. For that I contacted some people who
know more than I do about politics and ski towns.
Fred
Brown, a longtime observer of Colorado politics and columnist for
The Denver Post, said he first noticed the
connection in 1992, when Bill Clinton carried Colorado. He
dismissed a “limousine liberal” hypothesis, pointing out that
“there are a lot of Hollywood liberals who hang out in Aspen, but
they don’t vote there.”
Former Colorado Lt. Gov.
Gail Schoettler, who has campaigned statewide several times, said,
“There are big differences in points of view between ski counties
and other rural areas.” In particular, she cited concerns about
social issues and the environment.
Writer Hal Clifford
also sees environmental issues as important. He said, “What matters
…is that you are there for the mountains and the love of the
place.” Clifford is the author of Downhill
Slide, a must-read book for anyone interested in ski
towns or the ski industry.
“Ski towns are also party
towns,” Clifford said. “And they always have been.” He suggests
that heritage has fostered a libertarian streak that’s at
odds with the Bush administration’s emphasis on morality:
“So, who would vote for people who condemn your lifestyle?”
Schoettler and Clifford both point out that ski county
populations are self-selected samples. Clifford said, “I think
these places draw like-minded people, even in the second-homeowner
set. Sure, Republicans go to Vail and Aspen and Telluride to ski
and drink and eat, and they go home and vote Republican. But many
of those people who stay probably weren’t Republicans to
begin with.”
“Ski towns,” Clifford said, “are built by
idealists. … If you have the money, ski towns are the place
to go to reinvent yourself, that most American of journeys.”
If the area’s politics get reinvented in the
process, I suppose that’s pretty American as well.
Bill Roberts is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is
the editorial page editor of the Durango Herald
in western Colorado.
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