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RENO, Nev. — Call it the political version of how to win the West.

Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are tripping over each other this week in New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado, a prelude to a likely general election matchup and inevitable fight for three booming battleground states. President Bush narrowly won the three states four years ago and Democrats now see them as ripe for opportunity.

“I’m a Western senator,” McCain, the GOP nominee-in-waiting from Arizona, said in this gambling mecca Wednesday, signaling he intends to fiercely defend the turf. “I understand our issues.”

Obama, who has nearly secured the Democratic nomination, sounds just as determined.

“We can win the West,” the Illinois senator said Monday at a museum in Las Cruces, N.M., as he stood alongside the state’s Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson, a prominent Hispanic. “We’re going to fight as hard as we can in these states.”

Once a Republican stronghold, the historically conservative West has changed demographically over the past decade and, thus, politically.

Retirees from all over, including the liberal Northeast and West Coast, flocked to the region because of its available and cheap land, its dry, warm climate, its range of recreational activities and its magnificent mountains and sprawling deserts. Businesses sprouted in the region’s few dense population centers, and job opportunities followed. So did swarms of swing-voting Hispanic immigrants.

That growth exploded since the last presidential election. Census figures show that Nevada grew 10.1 percent, Colorado 5.5 percent and New Mexico 4.1 percent between July 2004 and July 2007.

Thus, the region has become far more competitive and margins of victory have tightened as Democrats made inroads into decades-old GOP dominance.

In 2004, Bush won New Mexico by 1 percentage point, Nevada by 2 and Colorado by 5. Of the 270 electoral votes needed for victory, the states offer a combined 19 — the same number that Democrat John Kerry lost to Bush by four years ago. So, if Obama can win all the states that Kerry did, plus the three Western states, Democrats would win the White House after eight years of Republican rule.

Democrats argue that they now have more of a chance to take the West, and Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico are among their top targets. Arizona would have been, too, if McCain, the state’s four-term senator, wasn’t the GOP opponent.

They point to recent electoral gains that swept Republicans from long-held offices, and note that both Colorado and New Mexico have Democratic governors. They argue that migration, in part from the more liberal coasts, works to their benefit. And, they claim that swing-voting Hispanics, whose numbers also have grown, are trending Democratic this year.

Obama is maneuvering to compete in the West even before he secures the nomination over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. He talked with veterans on Memorial Day in Las Cruces, N.M., discussed the housing crisis in the sprawl of North Las Vegas, Nev., a day later, and was campaigning Wednesday in Denver.

Obama allies argue that his appeal to independents will extend to voters here. They play down concerns among some Democrats about his standing with Hispanic voters, and say he’s just as strong with them as Kerry and Al Gore were when they ran. Nevermind that both lost to Bush.

During the primary, Hispanics preferred Clinton to Obama by nearly 2-to-1, according to exit polls. Obama’s bid to become the first black president also may give some Hispanics pause; racial tensions between the two groups are undeniable.

Republicans say they are concerned about defending the West only because of the strong national headwinds working against the GOP and not because of their candidate. They are comforted by McCain’s long-standing support among Hispanics and his personal links to the West.

The Arizona senator and former chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee argues that his decades of experience handling issues critical to the region gives him an advantage over the first-term senator. McCain argues that Obama lacks the knowledge and background on Western issues, such as land management, water shortages and Native American concerns.

McCain’s support for an eventual path to citizenship for illegal immigrants is a wild card with Hispanics. “We have to secure our borders first,” McCain said at a town-hall style event at a local Boys & Girls Club on Wednesday. It’s a position shift he made after broad-based legislation failed last year.

He also touched on other issues.

On alternative fuel sources, he said solar energy development needs to be embraced in both Nevada and Arizona. And, pressed about the construction of a nuclear waste repository in Nevada that many residents oppose, McCain told people something they didn’t want to hear.

“I support Yucca Mountain once it goes through all the processes it needs to go through,” McCain said. “But I also support reprocessing. A little straight talk, we have to do both.”

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TESUQUE PUEBLO, N.M. — Benny Shendo Jr.’s bid for Congress isn’t just a political race. He’s literally running for office — touring northern New Mexico on foot and by bike as he seeks votes in a six-way Democratic primary.

The idea came naturally to the former college runner and marathoner, who is campaigning in a district with a greater concentration of American Indian voters than any other.

“Back in the old days, that’s how messages were carried — on foot,” said Shendo, a member of the Jemez Pueblo tribe.

His message: We’re all in this together.

“This race is really about representing all of us — whether we’re Navajos, whether we’re Apaches, whether we’re pueblos, whether we’re Hispanic, Anglo … Asians, African-Americans,” Shendo told students at the Santa Fe Indian School.

The 3rd District covers roughly the northern half of New Mexico, with Indians accounting for about 16 percent of the voting-age population. The district has voters from 16 tribes — 14 pueblos and parts of the Jicarilla Apache reservation and the huge Navajo Nation.

Shendo, former secretary of Indian affairs for Gov. Bill Richardson, is running for the seat left open by Rep. Tom Udall, who is running for the Senate. If elected, Shendo would be the first Indian to hold the office.

There’s only one Indian in Congress now: Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole, a member of the Chickasaw Nation.

Some Indians have been heavily involved in tribal governments, but the population historically has not participated much in state and federal elections, said Kalyn Free of Tulsa, Okla., who leads the Indigenous Democratic Network, which recruits and trains Indian candidates for public office.

American Indians received U.S. citizenship in 1924, but some states refused to let them vote for decades. Indians could not cast ballots in New Mexico or Arizona until 1948 and until 1957 in Utah.

“This is a political system not of our own making,” said Free, a member of the Choctaw Nation who ran for Congress in 2004 from an eastern Oklahoma district.

But, she said, if Indians are “not at the table … our voices are not going to be represented.” Her organization has helped more than 20 Indian Democrats get elected, most of them to state legislatures.

At least two other Native Americans are running in Democratic congressional primaries this year: Diane Benson in Alaska and Mary Kim Titla in Arizona.

With better-known and better-funded candidates in Shendo’s race, he “would have to do some really impressive turnout on the reservations in order to have a shot, which has been … hard in Democratic primaries,” said Albuquerque pollster Brian Sanderoff.

The candidate bills himself as the “real, true progressive” in a field of candidates who offer similar Democratic themes: ending the Iraq war, combating global warming, providing access to affordable health care.

Shendo says his Indian heritage gives him a singular perspective. For instance, his campaign literature points out that he’s no newcomer to being “green.” His people have been practicing sustainability for centuries.

A NAFTA question at a labor forum makes him chuckle, as he points out that his ancestors were trading with Mexico and Central America centuries ago.

“I was raised with the values and traditions that come from my people,” he explained to the labor audience: respect for land, water, animals, elders, families, neighbors, communities.

“This is who I am,” he said.

Shendo managed Native American programs for the University of New Mexico, and was assistant dean of students and director of the American Indian and Alaskan Native program at Stanford University. He was a fellow of the W.K. Kellogg National Leadership Program.

Shendo was in the Stanford job when he learned that the little Catholic school in the Jemez Pueblo community west of Santa Fe would be closing after nearly 100 years of operation. He resigned to go home and organize the first public charter school on an Indian reservation in New Mexico.

He recalls with a laugh his conversation with a Stanford official.

“You got a better offer? … We can match it,” the official said. “No,” replied Shendo. “You’ll never be able to match it.”

Monday: Barack Obama pays his respects after placing a wreath at the Veteran's Memorial Park in Las Cruces, N.M. (AP Photo)

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LAS CRUCES, N.M. — It’s the first event on the first day of a campaign swing through three Western states, and Barack Obama is covering all his bases.

He’s got patriotism, a Memorial Day event for veterans. He’s got cowboys, the location is the Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum. He’s got Hispanic voters, Gov. Bill Richardson introduced him. He’s even got a nod to the environment: The Organ Mountains loom behind him as birds sing and the warm New Mexico wind blows.

Obama is signaling, even before the Democratic primary formally wraps up, that he intends to fight this fall for Western states that narrowly went Republican four years ago.

New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado aren’t definitely Democratic blue or Republican red. Instead, they’re known as “purple states” by political junkies.

Together, they account for only 19 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. But those votes could be vital in a close race, particularly if Obama’s weakness among white, blue-collar voters carries over from the primary race and cuts his chance of winning some other states where Democrats usually do well.

“We’re going to fight as hard as we can in these states. We want to send the message now that we’re going to go after them and I expect to win them,” the Illinois senator said Monday.

President Bush won New Mexico over John Kerry four years ago by the tiniest of margins — 49.84 percent to 49.05. His margins weren’t a whole lot bigger in Nevada (50.5 to 47.9) and Colorado (51.7 to 47).

The Obama campaign hopes that anger at Bush, combined with changing demographics as new voters move to the region, will nudge the states into the Democratic column.

Richardson, the nation’s only Hispanic governor, called the three states “fertile ground” for Obama, particularly if he courts Hispanic voters with Spanish-language ads, personal appearances and attention to their concerns, such as immigration reform.

Hispanic voters have been a weakness for Obama during the primaries. Many have sided with the more familiar Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and there are questions about whether some Hispanics are reluctant to back a black candidate.

But Richardson said Obama can overcome that.

“As soon as he meets them, he builds support with them,” Richardson said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It’s a personal connection. They see a young man similar to John F. Kennedy. They see a minority like them. They see somebody who was brought up bi-culturally.”

Richardson also said that the growing number of service-industry jobs and high-tech jobs in some parts of the West are bringing more Democratic-leaning voters to the region.

Still, he acknowledges these purple states won’t be easy for Obama, whose caucus performance this year in the three states was mixed.

Obama lost narrowly to Clinton in the Jan. 19 Nevada caucus, lost the popular vote to Clinton in the Super Tuesday New Mexico Democratic caucus, but won handily in Colorado’s Democratic caucus, also on Feb. 5.

If he wraps up the nomination, Obama will face McCain, a senator from nearby Arizona, a military hero and a familiar face on the national stage for years. Many swing voters may feel more comfortable with McCain than a Hawaii-born, Harvard-educated, big-city law professor.

McCain said Monday that Obama “has no experience, no knowledge or background” on Western issues.

“I believe as a Western senator I understand the issues, the challenges of the future for these … states, whether it be land, water, Native American issues, preservation, environmental issues,” McCain said in an interview with the AP.

Obama said he needs to introduce himself to all Western voters, not just Hispanics. Issues like improving the economy, ending the Iraq war and providing universal health care will appeal to everyone, he said.

“I’m absolutely confident that we’re going to do very well west out here because people out west are independent-minded and are going to look at whether or not over the last eight years the country is better off under Republican rule. I think they’re going to conclude they’re not and they want fundamental change, something that I’m offering and John McCain is not,” he said.

Obama talked about veterans issues in a rural setting on the first day of his swing. Next up is a discussion of the housing crisis amid the sprawl of Las Vegas. Then comes a town hall meeting at a Colorado school for the arts.

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The Republican Party and MoveOn.org sparred Wednesday over a new ad going after John McCain for saying he’d be willing to keep an American troop presence in Iraq for 100 years.

The ad, set to launch in Iowa and New Mexico Thursday to coincide with the 5th anniversary of Bush’s now infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech, shows dozens of candles being lit on a cake bearing Bush’s declaration, each representing another year in Iraq.

“100 years in Iraq — and you thought no one could be worse than George Bush,” the narrator says.

Republican National Committee spokesman Alex Conant said Barack Obama, whom MoveOn is supporting, should reject such mischaracterizations of McCain’s statements.

“MoveOn.org is attempting to smear Senator McCain just like it smeared General Petraeus,” he said, referring to the group’s “General Betray Us” ad in The New York Times last year. “MoveOn.org is joining Barack Obama and the (Democratic National Committee) in maliciously misquoting John McCain … Obama should prove his rhetoric is more than ‘just words’ and stand up to MoveOn.org.”

The MoveOn spot comes on the heels of a new DNC ad that also hit McCain’s for his “100 years” comments.

McCain made the remark while campaigning in New Hampshire in January, and has since insisted that he has no intention of extending the war that long — only that he would keep a U.S. military presence in the country as the military has does in Germany, Japan and other countries.

DNC Chairman Howard Dean has said that even if that’s the case, McCain is “wrong” to want to keep a troop presence for a century.

MoveOn Director Eli Pariser fired back against the RNC Wednesday, saying, “Senator John McCain’s position on Iraq has been clear — he intends to keep our troops there for decades. This is not a one-time gaffe. It is the truth about John McCain’s and George Bush’s reckless foreign policy.”

Click here to see the new MoveOn.org ad.

FOX News Mosheh Oinounou contributed to this report.

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  — You’ve waited patiently in line to vote, only to be told your name can’t be found on registration rolls. Worse, they’ve run out of ballots at your polling station.

What to do?

In New Mexico on Super Tuesday, the answer was: Just scribble your name on a scrap of paper, list your preferred candidate and sign an affidavit declaring you’re a registered Democrat.

They’re called handwritten ballots and they were used and counted as legitimate during the Democratic Party’s Feb. 5 presidential caucus, in which Hillary Rodham Clinton outpolled Barack Obama by a margin of just 1,709 votes.

An Associated Press survey of Democratic Party chairs in most of New Mexico’s 33 counties confirmed reports that these so-called scrap-paper ballots were used after some polling sites ran out of ballots.

More than 17,000 provisional ballots were reviewed during the nine-day hand count that ended Thursday, and state Democratic chairman Brian Colon said he couldn’t say exactly how many were handwritten ballots.

“But if those scraps of paper were identified, if they were in there with a signed affidavit, then they were counted,” Colon said. “If it was submitted properly, then by gosh we counted it.”

It’s impossible to estimate how many scrap-paper ballots were submitted because the Democrats didn’t keep track.

“We didn’t do that,” Colon said. “We didn’t put them in piles and say ‘These qualify as scrap-paper ballots, these qualify as copies of ballots and these qualify as regular ballots.”‘

Allowing handwritten ballots might seem haphazard in an election already littered with voting problems. New Mexico’s caucus was plagued by long lines and lack of supplies at many polling sites.

However, one expert characterized scrap-paper ballots as rare but not extraordinary, saying they were used in the District of Columbia during last week’s Potomac primary.

“There were some instances in D.C. of blank pieces of paper being used for substituting ballots,” said Kim Brace, president of Election Data Services and a consultant in Washington. “They went in as provisionals, to be verified as prim and proper.”

Without knowing exactly how many handwritten ballots were ruled valid, it’s impossible to say what role these ballots played in the election and whether they threatened the credibility of the process.

“I’d want to know how many of these blank pieces of paper there were,” Brace said.

Colon said the key to ensuring an accurate count is having the voter sign an affidavit.

The decision to count qualified handwritten ballots was part of an agreement Democratic Party officials hammered out with representatives of the Clinton and Obama campaigns.

To Colon and other party leaders, the scrap-paper ballots helped them achieve their goal of including votes by anybody who could be confirmed as a registered Democrat in New Mexico.

“It was intent over form. That was the bottom line,” Colon said. “If we could identify a ballot and determine who they were voting for, these candidates agreed to ensure that those votes would be counted.”

According to certified results released by the Democrats, 8,404 of the more than 17,000 provisional ballots were qualified — 4,215 for Clinton and 3,935 for Obama.

Colon said some provisionals that were disqualified — not necessarily handwritten ballots — were thrown out because they were cast by Republicans, independents or members of other parties.

Brace said some confusion may have come from having Democrats running the caucus, since the party isn’t bound by state election laws.

“It was run by people who don’t really know how to run elections,” he said. “When party officials are planning it, this is the potential outcome.”

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton finally won the popular vote in New Mexico’s Democratic caucus and picked up one extra delegate Thursday, nine days after Super Tuesday voting ended.

State Democratic Chairman Brian Colon made the announcement after a marathon hand count of 17,000 provisional ballots that had to be given to voters on Feb. 5 because of long lines and a shortage of ballots. The final statewide count gave her a 1,709-vote edge over rival Sen. Barack Obama, 73,105 or 48.8 percent of the total vote to 71,396 or 47.6 percent.

The former first lady’s victory in the popular vote swung the final unallocated New Mexico delegate into her column, which gave Clinton 14 delegates in the state to 12 for Obama.

With the addition of New Mexico’s delegate, the national delegate count stood at 1,276 for Obama and 1,220 for Clinton on Thursday.

“I am so proud to have earned the support of New Mexicans from across the state,” Clinton said in a written statement. “New Mexicans want real solutions to our nation’s challenges. As president, I will continue to stand up for New Mexico and will hit the ground running on day one to bring about real change.”

The Obama campaign appeared to accept the outcome.

Obama’s state director, Carlos Monje Jr., was asked Thursday if he was confident the results were 100 percent accurate and replied, “We have confidence in the process.” Asked if Obama might seek a recount, he said Obama has momentum from eight wins since Super Tuesday and “we are going to look forward at the contests we have remaining.”

Monje said there were some “troubling aspects” in the conduct of the caucus, including “incredibly long lines that kept people from voting,” but he saw their solution in the future. “We’re going to continue to work with the New Mexico Democratic state party to make sure the next election goes more smoothly.”

Of the 22 states that held Democratic primaries and caucuses on Super Tuesday, New Mexico was the last to report a winner. The caucus here was run by the state Democratic party rather than by state government.

Colon, who came under fire for his handling of the troubled election, thanked the hundreds of volunteers who counted the ballots. The final figures “have been double and triple checked,” he said in a televised announcement.

New Mexico Democrats call their contest a caucus, but it’s not like Iowa’s caucuses where voters gather in gyms, churches or meeting rooms, divide into groups for each candidate, try to attract more support from other groups, and then count each group. Rather it more closely resembles a “firehall primary” — a primary with shorter voting hours and fewer voting sites than would be found in traditional state primaries.

It was a mess: Overwhelmed polling places with long lines, some up to three hours. Too few ballots. Confusion over where to vote. Bad weather in the north. In Rio Rancho, one of the state’s largest cities, a single polling location where 1,900 people remain lined up at 7 p.m on election night.

Colon has apologized repeatedly: “We absolutely miscalculated and I apologize. It’s a tragedy when folks are not afforded the opportunity to vote.”

The firestorm of criticism included some from Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson, a former presidential hopeful who said he was “deeply disturbed” by the problems. Partly because he was a candidate himself until mid-January, Richardson himself never got involved in helping plan or promote the caucus, as he did in 2004, the first year New Mexico tried it.

On Super Tuesday, Clinton and Obama vied for 26 of New Mexico’s 38 delegates to this summer’s Democratic National Convention. Twelve so-called superdelegates are not bound by caucus results.

New Mexico awards Democratic delegates proportionally, based on statewide vote totals and on the results in individual congressional districts.

In two of the state’s three congressional districts, Clinton and Obama equally split an even number of delegates at stake. In District 2, which had an uneven number of delegates, Clinton won the additional one by outpolling Obama by 55 percent to 41 percent, according to unofficial results.

Nine statewide delegates were at stake. Obama and Clinton evenly split the eight delegates already awarded. The final one was assigned to the statewide popular vote winner.