ALBUQUERQUE — For five long weeks, the White House hung in the balance as one of the closest, most wrenching presidential campaigns in history went deep into overtime.
It all came down to Florida, where Republican George W. Bush was finally declared the winner, by Supreme Court decree. The official margin was 537 votes.
But in 2000, one state was even closer.
Lost amid Florida’s tumult and all the legal gladiating was Al Gore’s victory here in New Mexico, where the Democrat prevailed by a mere 366 votes.
The result established New Mexico as one of the country’s foremost presidential battlegrounds, a status reaffirmed in Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign when he won the state by less than a percentage point.
Since then, it’s been one Democratic victory after another — none of them close.
“We’re not purple,” said Joe Monahan, a blogger who has chronicled New Mexico politics for decades. “We’re blue. Very blue.”
To a large extent, it’s a story of movement.
People relocating from more liberal climes, like California.
Newcomers filling up cities and suburbs, as rural areas recede.
Latino influence expanding.
And, not least, Republicans shifting dramatically rightward — especially on issues such as immigration and abortion — antagonizing that burgeoning Latino population and butting up against wary Westerners bridling at those telling them how they should live their lives.
“They don’t like government interference,” said New Mexico’s Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham. “What I mean by that is: Don’t make health care decisions for me. Don’t talk to me about what you deem to be equality. Don’t tell me what books I can or cannot read. Don’t tell me who I can marry.”
In sum, she said, “Don’t tell me what to do.”
The state hasn’t exactly boomed over the last 20 years. Most of the state’s meager growth has been in and around its largest cities.
That’s boosted the strength and influence of Democratic-leaning Albuquerque, Las Cruces and Santa Fe at the expense of New Mexico’s rural areas, which tend to vote Republican.
There is a mythology of the West, a romantic notion of wide-open spaces and rugged individuals spread far beneath the big, open sky.
Although those people and places certainly exist, most Westerners live in cities. In fact, a greater percentage of residents are urban dwellers — 90% — than anywhere in the country.
Most of them favor Democrats, like Stacy Skinner, 58, another Hollywood migrant, who does hairstyling as well as celebrity makeup. Two months ago, she leased an apartment near Albuquerque’s hulking Sandia Mountains.
Skinner fully intends to support President Biden’s reelection, having backed every Democrat seeking the White House since Barack Obama.
“Republicans,” Skinner said, “have become the party of crazy.”
But it’s not just the bellicosity of build-a-wall Republicans that puts off many New Mexico voters. It’s also the GOP’s messengers.
As the Hispanic population expands, Hispanic clout has grown along with it. Today, New Mexico has more elected Hispanic officials than any state, most of them Democrats.
That’s made the party’s candidates more relatable and appealing to voters who see themselves reflected in the faces of the men and, increasingly, women wielding political power on city councils, at the Roundhouse — as the state’s circular Capitol is known — and in Washington.
Today, the five-member congressional delegation is entirely Democratic. The party holds all seven statewide offices and controls the Supreme Court and both houses of the Legislature by significant margins.
Biden is a strong favorite to carry New Mexico in 2024 after beating President Trump by 10 percentage points in 2020.
Once a bellwether, the state no longer swings with the national mood. It’s become Democratic bedrock, part of a politically crucial base in the reconstituted West.
Mark Z. Barabak is a Los Angeles Times columnist.