Last summer, strange things began showing up in my inbox: personalized messages from Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Even more oddly, the e-mails were being sent from what appeared to be an Obama field office in the Idaho state capital, Boise.
From my newspaper’s bureau in Idaho, I looked out over a lake and the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains. It was beautiful, but I had trouble seeing why the junior senator from Illinois was bothering with us.
Idaho has a mere four electoral votes (compared to 55 in California and 20 in Ohio) and these votes are widely considered the undisputed property of the Republican Party. Idaho is the last bastion of high approval ratings for President Bush — some of my neighbors continue to display “Bush-Cheney 2004” stickers on their SUVs and pickup trucks. Every major office in the state and three-quarters of the legislature is controlled by Republicans. Yet Obama seems to think he has a chance.
Three days before Super Tuesday, Obama flew to Boise and spoke to a crowd of 13,000 (temporarily making the speech venue the 11th largest city in the state). He was the first major presidential candidate in 30 years to make a campaign stop in Idaho. He’s also the only candidate with a field office here. Explaining his Idaho decision on the CBS program Face the Nation, Obama said: “I think I can get some votes that Sen. Clinton cannot get. That broadens the political map. I think it bodes well for the election, but more importantly, I think it bodes well for us being able to govern.”
Last week, for the first time since 1980, party members in all 44 of the state’s counties met to caucus — during the 2004 match-up between Bush and John Kerry, Democrats in a third of Idaho’s counties didn’t even bother to meet. Obama didn’t treat Idaho as flyover country and Idaho responded by giving him a landslide victory.
Certainly, part of the success is owed to effort. Everybody wants to be liked. But it also reflects several other factors:
Billary: Although the rest of the nation increasingly views Bill Clinton’s presidency as a golden era, many westerners — even Democrats — are still seething over what they considered heavy-handed federal initiatives by the Clinton administration. Wolves were restored to ranching areas. Wild forests were protected from mining and logging. Obama is not married to the man who made these decisions.
The Toe Tap: Idaho’s senior senator, Republican Larry Craig, was arrested last summer for allegedly soliciting homosexual sex in an airport bathroom. Craig has refused to leave office, despite widespread public pressure. Idahoans are weary of politicians with long tenures in Washington DC — a belief that bodes well for the relatively fresh and untarnished Obama.
Race: Ninety-five percent of Idaho residents are white. This is even higher than in Iowa, where Obama scored his first major victory. Until recently, Idaho was also the headquarters for the Aryan Nations neo-Nazi movement. But in 2001, the skinheads lost their compound after a lawsuit, and their land is now being turned into a peace park.
The state was also the first to elect a Jewish governor (1915) and among the first to grant women the right to vote. I wasn’t surprised that an African-American did well here.
Obama’s success in Idaho might not offer many electoral votes or even campaign cash, but it revealed a fairly significant crack in a Republican fortress and surely raised the eyebrows of Democrats and swing voters in other solidly red states.
National pundits continue to wonder why Obama bothered with Idaho — the Washington Post called it a “curious tactical decision” —but one only needs to look to the neighboring state of Montana for an example of why this decision might work. In 2004, as the Republicans strengthened their hold on Washington DC, a rancher named Brian Schweitzer became the first Democrat in 16 years to be elected governor of Montana. It was one of a handful of Democratic victories that year and shocked leaders of the party.
Leading Democratic strategists had effectively abandoned red states like Montana and Idaho in favor of the big battleground areas. Montana, like Idaho, was widely viewed as unwinnable. But Schweitzer — most people in Montana refer to him simply as “Brian” — offered an exciting choice, especially to the independent-minded voters of the west. He had no prior political experience, and his lieutenant-governor running mate was a Republican. He likes to hunt, but he drives a biodiesel-powered Volkswagen. He speaks Arabic and wears cowboy boots. He walks to his Capitol office each morning with his cow dog, Jag, following at his heels. And his popularity remains high.
In an interview in August, Schweitzer told me that Democrats can’t afford to ignore a single state and that they must put forth candidates who, like him, appeal to voters in both parties. “I own the middle,” he said.
The chairwoman of the Democratic Party in my home county, Bev Moss, said Schweitzer’s success brought hope to the region’s long-frustrated Democrats. “Schweitzer is our shining star,” Moss told me. “It’s not the East Coast Democrat that appeals to people out here. It’s Brian Schweitzer carrying around his gun with his dog next to him.”
Obama, a former law school professor, hasn’t exactly crisscrossed Idaho with a six-shooter and a hound. But it’s hard not to notice his ability to stir so much excitement among Democrats in this notoriously conservative state. Hillary, meanwhile, has been nowhere to be found.
