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By PAT WILLIAMS
Senior fellow and regional policy associate
O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West
People here in the
Rocky Mountain West are pro-choice; supportive of a woman’s right
to choose. From
Arizona to Alaska, in seven of the nine states of the Rockies, we westerners
want our families, and not U.S. Senators nor the Supreme Court, making
that difficult and personal decision.
A mid-September poll by Survey USA reveals how potent the matter of
choice is to both the confirmation of Bush’s supreme court nominee
Sam Alito as well as to the important elections of senators next November.
The latter could be surprisingly volatile here in the Rockies. From a
high of more than 60% in Colorado and Nevada to the upper and mid-50s
throughout the Rockies, people out this way are pro-choice—with
Utah and Idaho the only exceptions.
Given that the decision has been made to delay consideration of Alito’s
nomination until 2006, an election year, those confirmation hearings and
the vote soon thereafter will take on dynamic political overtones that
could have a significant repercussion on flipping the current majority
in the U.S. Senate.
Here in the Rockies, three of our “purple” states will be
holding U.S. Senate elections next year. Arizona, Nevada and Montana,
each firmly in support of a woman’s right to choose, will have three
anti-choice senate incumbents on the ballot. Senator John Kyl of Arizona
will be running. He is the behind-the-scenes manipulator who, on behalf
of the Far Right, sunk the chances of Harriet Miers and forced President
Bush to flip-flop. The two other potentially jeopardized senators are
Nevada’s John Ensign and Conrad Burns from Montana. Ensign, an arch-conservative,
anti-choice Republican is from one of the most pro-choice states in the
country. Burns, widely considered to be vulnerable in 2006, barely won
a squeaker in his last election, garnering less than 51%; and he will
be running against the grain of Montana pro-choice voters.
Observers are becoming increasingly aware that if the pro-choice voters
here in the Rockies adopt the longtime voting strategy of the anti-choice
people of single-issue voting—that is, for or against a candidate
based solely on the issue of choice—Burns would be history, with
Ensign and Kyl likely goners as well.
To further emphasize the political danger for these and other senate
candidates are the results of another recent poll. Taken this month, the
Gallup Poll shows that by the whopping plurality of 16%, Americans want
their senator to vote against Alito’s confirmation if it becomes
apparent that, once on the court, he would vote to overturn Roe v Wade.
No wonder the White House is playing down Alito’s past decisions
and opinions about choice and doing everything possible to present this
Far Right judge as a moderate.
In a 600-page Alito campaign briefing book, delivered to only Republican
senators, Bush touts Alito’s opinions on choice, privacy, and discrimination
as somehow mainstream.
Another episode in the “Alito is a moderate” campaign is
the recent press briefing by Montana’s former governor, Mark Racicot,
who assures Montanans and westerners about Alito. It is an attempt to
run downfield blocking for endangered senators, and is all about hoping
westerners won’t remember that Alito has made past decisions so
extreme that they were overturned by both the Third Circuit as well by
Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court.
Alito’s out-of-the-mainstream conservatism may well
imperil the three U.S. Senate incumbents who are up for re-election in
the pro-choice states of the Rocky Mountain West.
Pat Williams served nine terms as a U.S. Representative
from Montana. After his retirement, he returned to Montana and is teaching
at The University of Montana where he also serves as a Senior Fellow at
the Center for the Rocky Mountain West.
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