Why the candidates are in the West

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain is scheduled to conduct a "town hall meeting" in Reno today.

Yesterday, prior to his own town hall meeting at the Cheyenne Avenue campus of the College of Southern Nevada, Democratic front-runner Barack Obama dropped by the downtown Las Vegas home of Felicitas Rosel and Francisco Cano, who voiced concern they may not be able to afford increasing payments for the home they bought three years ago with an adjustable-rate mortgage.

(The Illinois senator touted pending legislation that would offer incentives to refinance mortgages through the Federal Housing Administration, though he added a predictable call for more government oversight of the industry. Sen. Obama contended that, while such mortgages were being issued, "Nobody was watching" the banks, an assertion that might surprise those faced with the pile of government-required disclosure forms which government-chartered banks have long been required to present to borrowers.)

The question at hand, though, is what the candidates are doing here, at all.

Together, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado account for only 19 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. But those votes could be vital in a close race, and both parties consider the states to be "in play," after President Bush edged Democrat John Kerry four years ago by only 49.84 percent to 49.05 percent in New Mexico.

The president's margins were only slightly wider in Nevada (50.5 to 47.9) and Colorado (51.7 to 47.)

So Sen. Obama visited all three states over the long holiday weekend, hoping that anger with President Bush, as well as changing demographics caused by blue-collar service workers moving to the region, will nudge the states into the Democratic column.

"We're going to fight as hard as we can in these states. We want to send the message now that we're going to go after them, and I expect to win them," Sen. Obama said Monday.

Sen. McCain responded Monday that Obama "has no experience, no knowledge or background" on Western issues. "I believe as a Western senator I understand the issues, the challenges of the future for these ... states," the Arizona senator told The Associated Press.

Unstated in all this is the way such mathematics bear out the wisdom of the Founding Fathers in establishing the Electoral College, in the first place.

If presidents were elected "at large" by a straight majority of the national popular vote, it's unlikely the concerns of a few thousand Westerners would draw much more than the occasional bulk-mailed flier.

The real electoral battle would be for major population centers in California and east of the Mississippi, where the campaigns -- even more than is already the case -- would likely turn into huge potlatches, the candidates viewing the rural states as little more than cash drawers, suffering silently as the parties poured their looted largess into the vote-heavy cities.

Make no mistake, the candidates are here, asking what concerns residents of the rural West, only because Americans cast their presidential ballots state by state.