GOP faces growing demographic nightmare in West

...The political power of Las Vegas is a hint of the GOP’s worst-case scenario: A mega-metropolitan area so dominant, and so Democratic, that it swamps the Republican advantage in increasingly conservative rural areas. Republicans who have watched Nevada politics in recent years worry their party’s struggles in the Silver State will be a harbinger of things to come as the face of the American electorate changes — especially in other Mountain West states such as Arizona and Colorado. “The Wild West is slowly becoming an Urbanized West,” said Mike Slanker, a Republican strategist in Las Vegas. This is the 11th story in our Changing America series, in which we investigate the demographic and economic trends shaping the nation’s politics. Nevada’s booming growth underscores the two trends working most in Democrats’ favor: the rising power of cities that are acting more reliably liberal, and the expanding influence of Hispanic-Americans who are becoming the nation’s largest minority community. Republicans still control most offices in Mountain West states. In the eight states within the region, stretching from Montana in the north to Arizona and New Mexico in the south, the GOP owns 10 of 16 Senate seats, 19 of 31 House seats and six of eight governorships. But many of those seats are at stake in the 2018 midterm elections: Republican governors of Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada and New Mexico face term limits, as does the Democratic governor of Colorado. The two most vulnerable Republican senators facing reelection are Heller and Arizona’s Jeff Flake. Democrats are targeting a handful of U.S. House seats in the region...more