Once-Republican Rockies now a battleground

Streaks of blue are turning red-state Colorado as purple as its mountain majesties.

Liberal hues began to multiply in 2004, when Democrats seized control of the general assembly for the first time in 30 years. They intensified last fall, when voters loosened TABOR, a government- spending chastity belt long extolled by fiscal conservatives. This year, Colorado's color wheel is downright dizzying, as a bill to ban public smoking heats up the legislature.

This is Marlboro country?

The state's transformation from Rocky Mountain redoubt for conservative values to a proving ground for progressive policies is yielding more competitive elections here - and offering Demo- crats across the country a model for resurgence.

"We're probably the No. 1 battleground in the country," says pollster Floyd Ciruli, based in Denver. Democrats nationwide, he says, "are anxious to replicate what's going on out here."

What's going on is a flurry of victories for Democratic forces.

In 2004, despite a major voter- registration advantage for Republicans, and the popularity of President Bush, voters added two Democrats - brothers John and Ken Salazar - to its congressional delegation. That same fall, voters famous, or infamous, for parsimony approved $4.7 billion in transit funding, siding with Denver's Democratic mayor instead of the state's Republican governor. Democrats have been piling on victories ever since. Just last week, Senate Democrats passed a bill that would make driving without a seat belt a more serious crime. And this fall, Democrats have strong prospects to win back the governor's chair.

"The left has made substantial strategic strides," says John Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank in Golden, Colo. But "that doesn't mean Colorado's voter base has changed."

To stage a comeback, he says, the state's fractured Republicans must decide whether to act more like Democrats, or less like them. "It's make-it-or-break-it time for the right here," he adds.

It's a tipping point that spans the Continental Divide. In 1999, every state in the region - Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona - had a Republican governor. By the end of 2006, only Utah and Idaho may have one.

But the Democratic gains don't necessarily reflect broad conversion to liberal ideology. Instead, analysts see a backlash to years of GOP dominance. "It's not something fundamental that's changing so much as the far-right agenda that has pushed too far, and people in the West ... are pushing back," says Mark Cavanaugh, an analyst at Denver's Bighorn Center, a centrist policy group. "In the short term, we'll switch back and forth in this state."

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