By Adriel Bettelheim, CQ Staff

Denver’s identity has always been defined by displays of rugged individualism. Voters rejected statehood in the first go-around in 1864, and long after joining the union, maintained a love-hate relationship with the national political establishment. They demanded subsidies for agriculture, mining and other economic activities but chafed at efforts to regulate them.

Even today, the brewpubs and cafes in this city of nearly 560,000 don’t exactly throb with talk about politicians, even with preparations for the Democratic National Convention unfolding blocks away. Unaffiliated voters outnumber both registered Republicans and Democrats in Colorado, though the three groups are almost evenly split.

It seems like an unlikely place for a huge display of partisanship. But Democratic officials believe choosing the Mile High City for their four-day gathering points to an undeniable political reality: a shift to the political left that’s occurring in much of the Rocky Mountain West.

Democrats in recent elections have compiled an enviable winning streak in a region known for producing mavericks — such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumed Republican presidential nominee.

The question is whether Sen. Barack Obama , D-Ill., can capitalize on the momentum and use his message of change to win over a Mountain West electorate that’s shown a preference for pragmatists who don’t follow scripts. Longtime observers say Democrats should avoid reading too much into their newfound success, noting that the region’s voters are hard to pin down. Mason-Dixon and Quinnipiac University polls of likely Colorado voters released over the weekend both showed Obama and McCain in a statistical dead heat.

“It’s dangerous to just look at the moment in front of you and say that’s the trend, because the region has shifted back and forth. It can be a pretty unsettling place for party regulars,” said Patricia Limerick, chair of the board of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Iconoclasts Welcome

Obama’s outsider persona and vows to transform a broken political process could resonate in areas of the West that have been battered by the tech bust, the mortgage crisis and reduced federal payments to states. But in a region that’s lived through a century and a half of booms and crashes tied to silver, oil shale and other extractable commodities, residents tend to maintain a kind of stoic fatalism about the future and harbor skepticism about big government solutions.

Still, the economic slowdown has spurred some openness to the idea that government can solve some problems. Fifty-two percent voted in a 2005 Colorado referendum to roll back constitutional limits on government spending and allow the state to apply more than $3 billion in surplus revenue to education, health care and other needs. The vote exposed frustration among moderate suburbanites over conservative politicians’ efforts to limit state government and lower taxes.

Major Gains

Around the same time, Democrats began picking up GOP-held House and Senate seats in states that President Bush had carried in 2000 and 2004, and the party made gains in statehouses around the region.

In 2006, Democrat Bill Ritter Jr. won the Colorado governorship, succeeding term-limited Republican Bill Owens. Ed Perlmutter captured the suburban Denver congressional seat that Republican Bob Beauprez had vacated for an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid, giving Democrats a 4-3 edge in the state’s House delegation. And Democrats fortified their majorities in both houses of the Colorado General Assembly.

Elsewhere, Arizona’s once solidly Republican House delegation was split 4-4 after Democrat Harry E. Mitchell defeated six-term GOP incumbent J.D. Hayworth, and Democrat Gabrielle Giffords won the seat opened by the retirement of 11-term Republican Jim Kolbe.