Obama aims to wrest West from GOP

LAS VEGAS -- To deliver messages on the need for energy savings, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain this week are choosing the same unlikely backdrop — this 24/7 playground of air-conditioned casinos and neon-lit desert skies.

On Tuesday, Obama promised "a very different vision of what this country can and should achieve on energy." McCain arrives Wednesday to discuss his plans for renewable fuels at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas campus.

Why preach conservation in a city that celebrates excess? The decision may have had less to do with the candidates' messages than with their electoral strategies.

"It's a sign that the electoral map is very competitive," said Brian Krolicki, Nevada's lieutenant governor and a McCain supporter. "Every state counts."

Obama's visit is part of a strategy to score upset victories in the traditionally Republican but independent-minded region that lies between California and the Rocky Mountains. "The winning-the-West strategy," as Danny Thompson, head of the Nevada AFL-CIO, called it, could help Obama win overall even if he falls short in some of the industrial battleground states. In Pennsylvania, for example, Hillary Rodham Clinton beat Obama decisively during the primaries.

Clinton won, but much more narrowly, in Nevada and New Mexico — both of which Obama visited this week. Together with Colorado, the states represent a combined 19 electoral votes, just one fewer than Ohio, the state that decided the 2004 presidential election.

President Bush won all three Western states that year, but by close margins. Since then, Democrats have scored gains in gubernatorial, congressional and state legislative races. "These states are becoming more and more Democratic," says Joel Kotkin, a California-based scholar who studies the nation's demographic trends.

On paper, this should be McCain country. The Republican has represented neighboring Arizona for more than 25 years in Congress and, as Obama himself acknowledged Monday, "can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party in the past."