(Cross-Posted to DemNotes at www.DemNotes.com)

Sunday, we headed over to Pueblo to participate in the annual “Fiesta Day” parade in Pueblo. Fiesta Day is part of the wrap-up celebration for the State Fair each year, and draws tens of thousands of people to the streets of South Pueblo to celebrate the Hispanic heritage of the Steel City.

I’ve been in Fiesta Day parades nearly every near for almost a decade now, and each year is more and more fun. This year, we joined Congressmen John Salazar and Mark Udall on the parade route. The focus of the day was to get Congressman Udall in front of as many people as possible and talking about his run for the U.S. Senate. All along the parade route, Salazar and Udall were greeted with cheers and smiles — Pueblo loves Mark Udall, and things certainly look good for him down here in Southern Colorado a year before the race gets to full speed.

Notable was the absence of any presence by the Republican Party in Pueblo at the parade. Beyond not hearing a single “boo” from the crowd, the Republicans didn’t even bother to have an entry in the parade. Neither Bob Schaffer nor any other prominent Republican politician were present. You may recall that last year, I reported from Pueblo that it appeared that the Pueblo Republicans were abandoning nearly every candidate, statewide and local, to focus on keeping the seat of the incumbent County Sheriff, Dan Corsentino. Well, Corsentino lost miserably to Kirk Anderson Taylor, and since then, it just seems like the Republican Party down in Pueblo has fallen to pieces.

That’s not to say the GOP won’t be back in Pueblo. But for now, it is clear that the leadership of the Democratic Party — led by able County Chair Terry Hart — has been very successful at winning races and demoralizing the opposition in this critically blue county.

I’ll be back up in Denver for an event on Saturday which I should be announcing in the next couple of days… stay tuned! Hopefully, I can get pictures of the parade up on DemNotes here really soon…

 UPDATE:  I screwed up on the name of the new Pueblo Sheriff — His name is Kirk Taylor

Hearty thanks are in order for the Pueblo County Democrats and friends for their hard work in staffing a booth at the Colorado State Fair for the past eleven days. They chose a prime location in the upper concourse of the central Fair building, right near an entrance and had TONS of flyers and brochures available, plus energetic workers with a good plan for interacting with the people passing by.

The gate traffic numbers aren’t in yet, of course, but it’s a sure thing that hundreds of thousands of people were exposed to the Democratic message here in Pueblo! Great job, guys!

From Paul Thompson, Douglas County Dems Chair and author of democracyinprogress.org

A feature story in today’s Los Angeles Times highlights Douglas County in describing how unaffiliated and even Republican votes can’t be taken for granted in the coming presidential election. LA Times reporter Peter Wallsten, who spent several days in the Denver suburbs the week before last and spoke with several of us, noted the change that’s in the wind.

Here in Douglas County, the state’s Democratic governor won nearly 50% of the vote last year — a major achievement, considering that fewer than one in five voters here are Democrats and that President Bush had won overwhelmingly in 2000 and 2004.

After describing how Republican strategists had until recently counted on the support of emerging suburbs such as ours, the article describes what we have been seeing every day.

But talk today to Donna Howe, 49, a [Highlands Ranch] mother of two who backed Bush in 2004, and a dramatic setback to that plan emerges.

Like many of her neighbors, Howe is an independent voter who is frustrated by the direction of the country, nervous about national security — and open to a Democratic candidate “with good ideas on healthcare and a reasonable plan to deal with the Iraq war.”

The same holds for Jim Tuccio, 44, who lives a few streets away and blames Republican mismanagement of the economy for strangling the mortgage company he once worked for, costing him his job.

And it’s not just the unaffiliated voters who are looking our way. Quoting a leader in an Arvada megachurch:

“I’m still a Republican, but I’m very close to being an independent,” said Phil Waters. “I’m closer to the middle than I used to be because of the way the Republicans have screwed things up.”

And public opinion research also explains why we should expect a good year for the Democratic Party in 2008.

Surveys by Pew have found that far fewer voters now identify with the Republican Party. Where the two parties had roughly an equal hold on the electorate in 2002, now only about 35% call themselves Republicans or independents leaning toward the GOP, compared with about 50% aligning with the Democrats.

Moreover, independent voters are shifting their outlook on government, Pew found, putting them more in line with the Democratic Party in their concern about income inequality and belief in a government safety net for the poor.

Even some of the GOP’s most ardent backers — supporters whom Bush’s campaign courted heavily in 2004 — are less enthusiastic about the party, among them Latinos and women in suburbs and exurbs.

I expect we’ll see more of the national media here in the next 14 months. The political climate is changing, and we’re at the center of it.