Like much of the Mountain West, Colorado has been tilting Dem­ocratic in recent years. Colo­rado’s Democratic governor, Bill Ritter, crows that starting in Montana you can drive from the Canadian border to Mexico without passing through a single state governed by a Republican.

During the past four years Democrats have seized control of the Colorado leg­islature and captured Republican Ben Nighthorse Campbell’s Senate seat, and now occupy a majority of the state’s seven congressional seats. Though the state has voted Repub­lican in every presidential election since 1964 (save 1992’s three-way race, when a plurality voted for Clinton), current polls have the presidential race too close to call.

Democrats have made no secret of their desire to paint Colorado and the rest of the Mountain West blue. After years of trying and failing to establish a foothold in the South, Democratic strategists are calling that effort a lost cause. “Political attitudes and demographic changes in other parts of the country are far more favorable to Democratic messages and messengers. . . . There are opportunities to expand Democratic margins in the Mountain red states while consolidating control over the reliably blue northeastern and Pacific coast states,” writes political scientist Thomas Schaller, whose book, Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win without the South, is very much in vogue in Democratic circles. But there is debate about whether these new Democratic inroads are due to the fact that the scandal-plagued GOP is out of favor nationally — and temporarily — or, alternatively, this recent momentum is the beginning of a long-term electoral realignment.

Ground Zero in the battle for the political soul of the Mountain West is this year’s race for the seat of Colorado’s retiring senator, Republican Wayne Allard. Republican Bob Schaffer, a former congressman, is pitted against Democrat Mark Udall, a five-term veteran of the House currently representing the Second Congressional District. What makes this race so compelling is the high-definition contrast between the two. Schaffer is indisputably conservative — during his first term, National Journal ranked him the 19th-most-conservative House member. He also has a reputation for being a principled politician. “He’s got a tremendous amount of integrity. He had committed to term limits, to three terms in the House,” says Mike Rosen, a popular conservative talk-radio host in Denver. “Then the Supreme Court undercut the term-limits movement, but Bob Schaffer stood by his commitment and stepped down after his third term in a safe seat.” Schaffer captured 80 percent of the vote in his final congressional election.

Schaffer is well known for his command of policy and is well liked within the state’s Republican establishment. Kelsey Alexander, chairman of the Douglas County Re­publicans, knew Schaffer be­fore she moved to Colorado, having worked with him previously on forestry issues. “He didn’t owe me anything, and I wasn’t his constituent, but every time I went up to Capitol Hill he allowed me to speak to him. He knew his staff and he understood the processes of public-land management,” she says. “We didn’t always agree, but he always voted the way he told me he would. Completely outside of Colorado politics, this is a good guy.” Earlier this year, the Denver Post headlined its candidate profile “Schaffer Runs on Promises Made Good.”

Mark Udall represents Colorado’s Second Congressional District, which is anchored by Boulder. Home to the University of Colorado, Boulder has a national reputation for being a liberal place, even compared with other college towns. “Boulder liberal” is an unwanted epithet in the rest of Colorado. And true to form, Udall is one of the more liberal members of the House, with a lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 8 percent. Udall is much more liberal than the other Democrats who have found recent success in Colorado: Governor Ritter is a pro-life Catholic, and first-term senator Ken Salazar ran as a moderate. Both Ritter and Salazar are also Colorado natives with rural backgrounds, which worked to their favor. Udall moved to Boulder as an adult, making him suspect in the eyes of many natives.

“The common thread with both of those wins was that they had no legislative record. Bill Ritter had been a district attorney and Ken Salazar had been an attorney general, and neither one had been in a legislative body where they had a record of votes,” notes Schaffer’s campaign manager, Dick Wadhams. “So they both were able to define themselves as moderates and, in some cases, even conservatives. And they got away with it.” Both have proven more liberal than their campaigns suggested. Governor Ritter made a big push for unionization in the state, while Salazar’s voting record has earned him a distinctly liberal 17 percent ACU rating.

Udall will have a hard time playing the moderate. “He has one of the most liberal voting records we’ve ever had in a member of Congress from Colorado,” says Wadhams. The Schaffer campaign has had some fun at the expense of Udall’s record, lampooning his liberalism in ads that show a hippie standing outside a Volkswagen van and praising Udall for co-sponsoring legislation with Dennis Kucinich that would have allocated $8 billion to create a cabinet-level Depart­ment of Peace. Suspicious smoke billows from the van at the end of the ad.

But Udall is doing his best to run from that record. “[Udall’s] dogmatic envi­ronmentalism sells great in the Second Congressional District, but it doesn’t sell nearly as well in a statewide race,” says Rosen. “So he’s waffling now on his historic opposition to drilling, his overstatements on global warming. . . . Suddenly, he sounds more moderate. It’s transparent.” Udall — whose wife is a former officer of the Sierra Club — is now running ads in which he’s standing in front of an oil derrick, proclaiming: “We’ve got to produce our own oil and gas here in our country, and keep it here to power America’s economy.” Udall has voted against offshore drilling several times and voted against expanding refinery capacity on six occasions, according to the Politico.

It’s hard to imagine Udall’s newfound support for domestic energy exploration is anything other than an election gambit — especially considering that he broke a campaign promise regarding the issue. With gas prices soaring, Schaffer challenged Udall in a televised debate to vote against adjourning Congress in August if it hadn’t passed an energy bill, and Udall pledged that he would. Two days later, Congress voted to recess without having passed an energy bill. The sticking point was Democrats’ opposition to offshore drilling. The motion to recess passed by a single vote, 214 to 213. Udall missed that vote; had he kept his promise, he would have stopped Congress from leaving town without an energy bill. He missed the vote because he was delayed in getting back to Washington after a fundraiser. Oddly, he made the following vote, which occurred ten minutes later.

Udall isn’t suffering much for his liberalism — most of the polls give him a slight edge, with Schaffer within the margin of error. But given Colorado’s political history, Rosen is optimistic that the signs still bode well for Schaffer. “Colorado has always been a schizophrenic state, politically,” he says. “They like to split their delegations, even their Senate delegations. So at the same time we had people like Gary Hart in the U.S. Senate and Bill Armstrong – a big-time liberal and a big-time conservative. I’m hoping that this time around Coloradans want to split their delegation as well — since we have the liberal Ken Salazar, it’s time for Bob Schaffer.”

But Kelsey Alexander, the Douglas County chairman, remains concerned that, against all reason, Democrats continue to find success in Colorado by misrepresenting themselves as moderates. “You can call Bob Schaffer a conservative Republican. It’s the way he is,” she says. “He’s not going to run and hide from what he is. But Boulder-liberal Udall is running and hiding — because if they really knew what he is, they wouldn’t vote for him.”