This November, most of the nation will be transfixed by the presidential contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. But there’s also plenty to see downballot in the West.
SHIFTING AFFILIATIONS
• Arizona has long been home to old-fashioned Barry Goldwater-style conservatives. But MAGA hijacked the state Republican Party, alienating its more moderate members. Republican John Giles, for example, the mayor of Mesa, endorsed Kamala Harris. The shift gives Rep. Ruben Gallego, a progressive-turned-moderate Democrat, an edge over election-denying Trump acolyte Kari Lake, R, in the race to replace Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who veered from left to right politically before finally dropping her “D” in 2022. Democrats might even win control of the state Legislature for the first time in decades.
• It’s a long shot, but Utah could get its first Democratic governor since 1985, largely because of GOP infighting. Incumbent Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican who purports to champion civility, won his party’s primary by nearly 40,000 votes. But his MAGA opponent, Utah state Rep. Phil Lyman, challenged the results in court, and, when that failed, launched a write-in candidacy. Lyman — who has blasted Cox for being insufficiently right-wing — could draw enough Republican votes to give Utah House Minority Leader Brian King, a Mormon bishop, a fighting chance. And Cox’s flip-flopping on Trump might damage him: He refused to vote for him in 2016 and 2020 but recanted after the attempt on Trump’s life, saying that the former president was saved to unify the nation.
• In-migration and demographic shifts are nudging some red Western states toward purple and blue. But Wyoming’s incomers are turning that GOP stronghold an even deeper shade of MAGA-red. In the August Republican primaries, the “Freedom Caucus” continued to infiltrate the state Legislature. These new right-wing lawmakers gained notoriety for outright climate-change denial and for slamming Republican Gov. Mark Gordon for championing carbon capture to help preserve the state’s still-dominant but ailing coal industry, despite Gordon’s numerous lawsuits against the Biden administration over fossil fuel and public-land regulations.
Outside cash is pouring into Montana, not only to buy real estate, but to purchase candidates and influence the race for a U.S. Senate seat, in which Democrat incumbent Sen. Jon Tester seeks to hold off Republican Tim Sheehy. Sheehy’s main benefactors are PACs bankrolled by Wall Street high rollers and the Koch brothers. Tester’s dough comes from Democratic Party-affiliated PACs, but he got a louder boost in August, when members of Pearl Jam played at his fundraiser in Missoula.
ENERGY AND CLIMATE AT THE POLLS
• Incumbent Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola is taking on Republicans Nick Begich and Trump-endorsed Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom to represent Alaska. But Big Oil is poised to win no matter what. Since becoming the first Alaska Native in Congress in 2022, Peltola has taken a pro-drilling stance at odds with President Joe Biden’s energy policies. She successfully pushed the administration to approve ConocoPhillips’ massive Willow drilling project, and the oil corporation and its employees gratefully donated $16,400 to her campaign and another $300,000 to the Center Forward Committee PAC, which in turn contributed the same amount.
• Montana’s first congressional district will see a rematch between incumbent Rep. Ryan Zinke, a MAGA Republican and Trump’s former Interior secretary, and Democrat Monica Tranel, an attorney who has worked in the energy and utility sectors. The candidates diverge on almost every issue, but one of the biggest involves climate change and energy: It’s Zinke’s drill your way to “energy dominance” versus Tranel’s all-in on the renewable energy transition.
• In New Mexico, the nation’s second-largest oil-producing state, the race for the U.S. Senate pits the Democratic incumbent, clean energy booster Sen. Martin Heinrich, against Republican Nella Domenici, daughter of the late Sen. Pete Domenici, a decidedly old-school fossil fuel enthusiast. Heinrich supported tighter regulations on public-lands drilling and methane emissions, but he alienated some of his base with a bipartisan bill to streamline permitting for renewable energy and transmission projects while expediting oil and gas drilling and liquefied natural gas exports.
• In Utah, two climate champions — of different degrees — are vying to replace retiring Republican Sen. Mitt Romney. Republican Rep. John Curtis launched the Conservative Climate Caucus, acknowledges human-caused climate change, supports clean energy and was endorsed by environmental group EDF Action — yet received only a 6% score from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), perhaps because he’s reluctant to regulate fossil fuels. He’s heavily favored to defeat Democrat Caroline Gleich, an environmental advocate and ski mountaineer, who’s been endorsed by the LCV and Protect Our Winters Action Fund.
• The clean energy transition goes head-to-head with the fossil-fuel status quo in Montana and Arizona in the battle for several seats on those states’ obscure but influential utility regulatory commissions.
• In Washington, fossil fuel fans sparked two initiatives aimed at stifling the energy transition. One would repeal the 2021 climate law and carbon auctions that have so far raised more than $2 billion to fund climate-related projects, while another bans local and state governments from restricting natural gas hookups or appliance sales. California is asking voters to approve a $10-billion bond to fund parks, environmental protection and water and energy projects, while two southern Oregon coastal counties will inquire whether voters support or oppose offshore wind development.
A REFERENDUM ON WESTERN LANDS
• If you thought nuclear weapons testing and uranium mining ended when the Cold War did, think again: A slew of long-idled mines on the Colorado Plateau are slated to reopen. And now, Project 2025, the right wing’s “playbook” for a second Trump administration, looks to return nuclear weapons testing to Nevada — perhaps creating a whole new generation of “downwinders” sickened by exposure to nuclear fallout, even as U.S. House Republicans terminate RECA, the program that compensates them.
• All this could play an indirect role in elections in downwinder states like Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Arizona. And it’s a major issue in Utah’s House District 69, home to dozens of mines and Energy Fuels’ White Mesa Mill, the nation’s only active uranium processing center, which processes ore from the corporation’s Pinyon Plain Mine near the Grand Canyon. Davina Smith — who favors tougher environmental and public lands protections — hopes to become the first Diné woman to serve in the Utah Legislature. Her opponent, Blanding Mayor Logan Monson, supports the industry.
• Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District, home to 12 tribal nations and the Pinyon Plain Mine, may also feel some fallout from the nuclear renaissance. Former Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez, a Democrat who has condemned the uranium industry’s lethal legacy, is challenging incumbent Republican Rep. Eli Crane to represent the district.
• When incumbent Rep. Lauren Boebert, the gun-slinging MAGA Republican, abandoned the race for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District late last year to run in a redder district, it turned one of the nation’s most closely watched races into a run-of-the-mill contest where it’s hard to distinguish between Democrat Adam Frisch and Republican Jeff Hurd, two moderates. Frisch, who narrowly lost to Boebert in 2022, is a self-proclaimed pragmatist who has taken progressive stances on abortion, social issues and labor but veers to the right on public lands. Like Hurd, he opposes national monument designation for the Lower Dolores River and claims Biden administration policies are hampering oil and gas drilling. And Frisch echoed Utah Republicans when he slammed the new public-lands rule, which puts conservation on a par with other uses, saying it would “seriously harm western Colorado’s economy and way of life.”
OTHER BALLOT INITIATIVES
• Nevada, Montana, Colorado and Arizona all have ballot initiatives that would make abortion a constitutional right. Colorado’s would also repeal a constitutional provision banning the use of public funds for abortion.
• Coloradans will vote on whether to ban trophy hunting of mountain lions, bobcats and lynx. A separate initiative would levy an excise tax on firearm and ammunition sales to fund crime victim, education and mental health programs.
• A ballot measure would give Oregon residents a “rebate,” or basic income, of $1,600 per year, and an Arizona initiative tackles homelessness by allowing property owners to apply for property tax refunds if local government doesn’t crack down on unhoused people via camping and panhandling rules.
• A Wyoming ballot initiative creates a specific residential property tax category that opens the way to lowering property taxes for owner-occupied primary residences — and charging higher ones for unoccupied second or third homes.
SOURCES: OpenSecrets, Federal Election Commission, Ballotpedia, Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, Colorado Newsline, Arizona Agenda, Utah News Dispatch, KJZZ, Politico. Data for the charts was collected by Colorado College State of the Rockies Project 2024 from Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
Data visualization by Cindy Wehling/High Country News
This article appeared in the October 2024 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Downballot.”
