USA TODAY: Denver wooing Democrats for '08

Denver wooing Democrats for '08

By Tom Kenworthy, USA TODAY

DENVER — The Mile High City is hoping that a rising Democratic tide in Colorado and the West will lift its chances of hosting the party's 2008 convention.
Officials involved in Denver's bid for the convention say their prospects against rival New York City improved on Tuesday as Colorado voters put a decidedly Democratic stamp on the state.
"I think our chances are now better," says Denver City Council member Rosemary Rodriguez, who serves on the city's convention bid committee. If held in Denver, it would be the first Democratic convention here since 1908, when William Jennings Bryan was nominated.
Bryant Adams, spokesman for the Colorado Republican Party, says the GOP will bounce back from a "very difficult year" because "Republican values are in line with views and values all across the West."
Democrats in Colorado this week reclaimed the governorship after eight years of GOP rule, captured a House seat that had been Republican since 2002 and strengthened their majorities in the state House and state Senate. Colorado Democrats will hold four of seven U.S. House seats, a U.S. Senate seat and, for the first time since Dwight Eisenhower was president, control both the Legislature and governor's office.
Elsewhere in the West, Democrats picked up a Montana Senate seat, two House seats in Arizona, and re-elected governors in Wyoming, New Mexico and Arizona. Five of the eight mountain West states will have Democratic governors starting in 2007; prior to the 2002 election, they had none.
"We've had a lot of success in the West, and it seems to us here in Colorado that the way to keep it up is to focus on the western U.S.," says Steve Farber, a Denver attorney who co-chairs the city's convention effort.
"Democrats need to look at the Rocky Mountain West as their hope for the future," adds Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo. "We're ready we have the facilities, we have the most beautiful state in the nation."
A spokesman for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg did not respond to messages seeking comment. Republicans will hold their 2008 convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean is expected to decide between Denver and New York by early December. At a breakfast meeting with reporters in Washington on Thursday, he said both cities are still under consideration.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who is likely to become majority leader in January, has backed Denver's bid.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat who just won a second term, said Tuesday's election results "make a strong case for the convention going to Denver."

Contributing: Jill Lawrence in Washington