Below is a guest blog from authors Thomas
E. Cronin and Robert D. Loevy. Their new book, Colorado Politics and Policy, is a revised and expanded look at the government, politics, and political traditions
of this purple state.

Because the subtitle of our book is “Governing a Purple State,” many readers ask us: “Why is a once ‘reliably Republican’ state such as Colorado now a swing state, just as likely to vote Democratic as vote Republican?”

The answer is a simple one: “Because of the realignment of upper class, upper income, well-educated voters from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party."

Colorado is filled with high mountains and verdant valleys and lots of cattle grazing on the mountainsides. But the fact is most Coloradans live on a highly urbanized strip of land running from North to South for 150 miles at the eastern foot of the Rocky Mountains. In the center of this highly urbanized North/South corridor are Colorado’s two most populous cities – Colorado Springs and Denver.

Continue reading “Colorado voter insight”

Patrick Madden is spending the end of 2012 on a Fulbright Fellowship in Uruguay with his family, teaching some seminars and writing some essays. During his stay, he is writing a series of “Dispatches from Montevideo” for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. You can read those essays from him about every two weeks here. His book, Quotidiana, is a collection of essays that explores the connections between the ordinary and commonplace in everyday life. In 2011, Quotidiana was the winner of the Association for Mormon Letters Award in the Personal Essay and the Independent Publisher Book Gold Award in the Essay/Creative Nonfiction … Continue reading Award-winning author: Patrick Madden

Backstage by Ron Hull and Called to Justice by Warren K. Urbom were featured on the Lincoln Journal Star’s entertainment blog, Ground Zero. And The Wild West in England by William F. Cody, edited by Frank Christianson, was listed in The New Yorker as an October title to watch out for.                          Continue reading Review roundup

The first presidential debate is tonight at the University of Colorado in Denver at 8:00–9:30 p.m. CT. President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney will debate domestic policy. But Colorado is more important to this election than just the location of the first debate. It’s a swing state with many undecided voters. According to NPR, one-third of the state's voters are Republican, one-third are Democrat and one-third are unaffiliated, and that unaffiliated vote has “…the presidential candidates returning to the state again and again.” In Colorado Politics and Policy: Governing a Purple State by Thomas E. Cronin and Robert D. … Continue reading Colorado: Presidential election hotspot