High Noon in the West

While the nation’s political attention focuses on the charges, countercharges, shifting deadlocks and promiscuous polls of the presidential horse race, several Senate races in the West form a little-noticed undercurrent that could affect government nearly as much as the top of the ballot.

The parties are spending record amounts trying to alter the 51-49 Republican control of the Senate, the body that will, for instance, receive numerous judicial nominations from the next president, including perhaps several Supreme Court nominees. The late polls show the GOP staying on top, but no poll seems infallible in 2004.

As in California’s Barbara Boxer-Bill Jones contest, Senate races strongly favor incumbents. But a rash of retirements has opened competitive seats that could undermine or underline Republican control.

The struggle has made for campaigns that look strangely reversed in the Plains and the West, where the sparse sprinkle of humans strongly favors President Bush but can be ornery about state races. In South Dakota, Sen. Tom Daschle, who as minority leader constantly confronts Bush, faces such a stiff challenge from former Rep. John Thune that Daschle relies on ad images of him and Bush hugging. That’s an irregular Democratic tactic anywhere except a state that chose Bush by 22 points in 2000. Thune, part of a heavily funded effort to defeat Daschle, calls the Democrat “obstructor in chief.”

Republican Sen. Don Nickles is retiring in Oklahoma, which hasn’t backed a Democrat for president in four decades; Bush leads there by more than 20 points. Nickles’ would-be Democratic replacement, Rep. Brad Carson, built a lead over former Rep. Tom Coburn by opposing John Kerry’s tax policies and embracing Bush’s views more than the Republican candidate, who questioned the president’s abundant federal spending.

In Colorado, where even registered independents outnumber Democrats, GOP Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell is leaving. Atty. Gen. Ken Salazar, the Democrat, supports most of Bush’s tax cuts. His Republican opponent, beer baron Pete Coors, does too. Both also support the Patriot Act, Bush’s Iraq policies and drilling on federal lands. Salazar, like Republican Mel Martinez in the Florida race, hopes to be the Senate’s only Latino. The Colorado race is surprisingly close, given that the name and face of the 6-foot-5 centrist GOP candidate are familiar to millions from Coors beer ads of mountain streams about to flow into bottles.

In Alaska, the governor and one senator share a last name, Murkowski, because the former, Frank, appointed the latter, his daughter, Lisa, to the Senate. She faces a tight fight against former Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles. Again, the partisan lines blur, with both candidates favoring oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Late Tuesday, Americans may learn who the next president will be. The fate of his agenda will depend on the results of these state races, suffused with their parochial and often particularly Western concerns.