Kevin Priola was a Republican before he could even vote.

Inspired by Ronald Reagan, he pre-enrolled in the GOP at the age of 17.

stronghold

and was elected to the legislature in 2008, where he has served ever since.

But Priola slowly became alienated from the GOP, which she saw as more authoritarian than conservative, and last August he became a Democrat.

“I couldn’t bear it,” Priola said of his old party, “and don’t associate with that style and brand of politics.”

He is hardly alone.

In the last two decades,

Republican ranks in Colorado have shrunk dramatically, to just a quarter of registered voters, as the once reliably red state has taken on a distinct blue hue.

The transformation is part of a larger political shift in the West: down the Pacific coast, through the deserts of Nevada and Arizona, to the Rocky Mountain states of Colorado and New Mexico. Once a Republican stronghold, the region has grown into a Democratic foundation. That, in turn, has reshaped presidential politics across the country.

With much of Western California, Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington seemingly locked down, Democrats are free to focus more on the perennial battlefields of the Midwest and venture into once solidly Republican states like Georgia.

Over the next few months, I will be visiting several of those Western states to examine the forces that have remade the political map.

The changes didn’t just happen, like the snow that embroiders the Rockies in the winter, or the runoff that swells Colorado’s icy rivers in the spring. It took money, strategy, demographic changes and, last but not least, a sharp right turn by the Republicans.

The series, dubbed “The New West,” begins in Colorado, as no state in the region

has changed its partisan coloring

as emphatically in the past two decades. “From being a Western swing state, it’s become a Democratic stronghold,” said pollster Floyd Ciruli, who polled public opinion in Colorado.

for over 40 years.

in 2004, Democrats essentially gave up and wrote the spot off

;

they have carried Colorado in every presidential game since then. In 2020, Joe Biden recorded a 13-point victory over President Trump, the biggest Democratic win here in over half a century.

::

Patrick Winkler helped change Colorado’s political complexion.

In the past 20 years, the state has grown to more than 1.3 million residents, most of them settled like Winkler in Denver or the suburbs that stretch endlessly along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.

Winkler moved from California three years ago, partly because the 29-year-old realtor wanted to own it

a house and knew his money would go further in Colorado.

The political views he imported are typical of Winkler’s youthful cohort, which leans toward the left of center. He voted for Biden and the Democratic Gov. Jared Polis last November, largely because of his contempt for the GOP, too narrow-minded, in Winkler’s opinion, and a particular distaste for Donald Trump.

“It was less of a personal opinion of the candidates,” said Winkler, who eventually bought a three-story townhouse overlooking a park near downtown Denver. “It was about the general vision of the parties and what they stood for.”

The influx of many newcomers, such as Winkler, from California is not a new phenomenon. Colorado has long been a magnet for those in their twenties and thirties, drawn to the state’s mouth-watering scenery, outdoor lifestyle and, more recently, its booming technology and service industries.

What has changed are those who have made their home in the Democratic Party: they are younger, more affluent, better educated, and more liberal on issues such as abortion and gay rights.

In short, the Democrats are now much more aligned with Colorado, one of the most educated and socially liberal states in the country, as the Republican base is older, less educated, more evangelical and

more

trump

When Lori Weigel moved to Denver in 1997, she recalled, “the Broncos always won and the Republican Party always won.”

“Now,” lamented the GOP strategist, “we have a losing football team and, statewide, a losing Republican brand.”

::

Polis sits in his spacious office in the State Capitol, his 13-year-old terrier mix, Gia, curled up in a chair next to him. His gray suit and purple polo shirt with matching Nike sneakers is a mishmash of tech bro and standard government official.

At 47 years old, Polis has been a multi-millionaire for over two decades. He made a fortune in the happy days of the commercial internet and, among other things, founded a thriving online flower delivery service.

Before running for elected office, Polis played a key role in Colorado’s makeover as one of the “gang of four,” a quartet of wealthy donors who have been spending millions building communities since the early 2000s. a political support system and the recruitment and funding of Democratic candidates.

The effort was vital to supplying the party’s bank and breaking the GOP’s hold on the state house.

However, Polis is downplaying the import in Colorado’s change from red to blue. After 10 years in Congress and entering his second term as governor, following a landslide re-election in November, the Democrat prefers to talk about policy rather than his role as

a

partisan Mr. Moneybags.

Colorado’s shift, he said, is “not down to funding.” And that’s true to a large extent, although the cash injection certainly didn’t hurt.

More important is the branding of the Democrats in Colorado as the party of the center.

The state is “not a playground for the fringe left,” said Chris Hughes, a former chairman of the Colorado Democratic Party. “It’s not a state like Maryland, where the Democrat will also win.”

Polis, who has boasted about cutting taxes and wielding a light hand during the COVID-19 pandemic, is the latest in a string of statewide Democratic officeholders who have resisted the National Party’s shift to the left.

There was US senator Ken Salazar in cowboy hat, who made the two-party system a calling card in Washington. Before Polis came the relatively centrist governments. Bill Ritter, an ex-prosecutor, and John Hickenlooper, a former oil company geologist.

Meanwhile, Republicans offered candidates from the right-wing tea party movement and fire eaters like anti-immigration crusader Tom Tancredo.

“Colorados tend to be very moderate,” said Democratic strategist Craig Hughes. “Anyone who puts personal ideology over solutions will have to deal with Colorado voters.”

For Polis, who despises hardliners in both parties, ideology is a four-letter word. He is quick to point out that Democratic registration in Colorado has fallen alongside the GOP’s.

(Although not nearly as much. Unaffiliated voters make up the majority at 45%, followed by Democrats at 28% and Republicans at 25%; for decades the parties have been roughly even, each with about a third of the electorate.)

Colorado Republicans have fared worse than Democrats, Polis said, because GOP candidates have focused too much on culture war issues such as

abortion and gay rights and plunged down rabbit holes like Trump’s false claims about stolen elections. (Earlier this month, the Colorado Republican Party elected an election denier as chairman.)

“Any candidate who wants to win in Colorado needs to talk about and have solutions to the issues that matter most to everyday Coloradans,” Polis said, ticking those off: education, affordable housing, traffic, congestion.

“They are going

focus on improving the quality of life,” Polis said of the state’s what-have-you-last-for-me voters. “Not those distractions from the left or the right.”

::

Casi Smigelsky works in technical sales in Denver and, like most Colorado dancers, is not a member of any political party.

The 33-year-old considers herself a fiscal conservative and is not so much a Biden fan as a relic, she says of the 80-year-old president. But Smigelsky has an even tougher view of the GOP, which she says is still overly attached to Trump.

“They have become a party of hatred,” she said, “and a party of taking away rights.”

although

Smigelsky could see herself voting for a moderate Republican for president, if someone somehow won the nomination in 2024, she will never vote for Trump, the early GOP front-runner.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “Absolutely never.”

Republicans were in decline in Colorado long before Trump made his way into the White House. The deceit of the former president and

the

bend

hi hatched

accelerated free fall.

Dick Wadhams, a fourth-generation Coloradan and longtime GOP campaign adviser, said it’s hard for Republicans these days to get even an impartial hearing from voters, regardless of a candidate’s personal qualities and beliefs.

He envisions typical Colorado voters saying to themselves, “‘We’re not going to entrust these functions to the Republican Party, even if these individuals look like they’re solid, because the party is generally crazy.'”

Pam Anderson can speak that first hand.

Anderson, the former election leader in suburban Jefferson County, describes herself as socially moderate, if not liberal, and has no use for those she calls political bombers.

Anderson was featured on the cover of Time magazine last October as one of “the defenders” fighting to save democracy after she defeated a Trump loyalist and election denier to win the GOP nomination for secretary of state, the overseer of Colorado’s

to vote

.

“I was an outspoken opponent of everything Trump said about elections,” Anderson said during the morning buzz at a Denver coffee shop. “Everything.”

Still, she said, detractors “laid millions of dollars in commercials saying I was too MAGA for Colorado.” She leaned back, as if still staggering. “I couldn’t raise enough money to fight that.”

Anderson shrugged. She threw her hands in the air.

She lost by double digits, riding a tide that gave Democrats all four state offices and underlining a major change that has changed Colorado and dramatically changed the West.