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Maine

Number of Delegates: 34
Pledged: 24
Unpledged: 10

How to Recognize a Maine Delegate:
Most Americans' perception of Maine starts at the Discount Outlet Stores in Kittery and ends at the parking lot of the Discount Outlet Stores in Freeport. This sixty-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 1 is lined with hotels, fried-clam shacks, renovated fishing villages and yacht clubs. It's wicked with "flatlanders." The area is seldom visited by the real "Mainah," who lives in a trailer that’s built under a "roof-over" and surrounded by a dozen outbuildings in varying stages of construction and decay. Outside of Portland, most Mainers spend their day hauling things in trucks or trailers. Sometimes boats are used as trailers to haul things. Sometimes boats are used to haulboats. Typically, the only stops that Mainers make during the day are at the gas station, the grocery store and the auto body repair shop. Or they'll ditch their entire rig if they think they see some good fiddleheads. The one thing that brings all Mainers together, however, is L.L. Bean. It's not just a store here; it's a way of life. The homegrown retailer specializes in making clothing that offers the perfect protection from the state's unique climate, whether it's the snow swarms of a Nor'eastah, or the black-fly-and-mosquito blizzards of July. Maine delegates will hit the streets of Denver wearing their distinct LaCrosse AlphaBurly Sport 800 Insulated boots, washable year-round wool pants and microfiber blazers.

Famous Mainers:
Scary author Stephen King; scary actors Linda Lavin, Patrick Dempsey and Judd Nelson; scary musician Juliana Hatfield; prickly comedienne Andrea Martin; singer-songwriters Howie Day and Patty Griffin; alleged hophead and lesbian pioneer Sarah Orne Jewett.

Famous Maine Democrats:
U.S. senator and 58th U.S. Secretary of State Edmund Muskie; U.S. senator, 17th U.S. Senate Majority Leader and MLB steroid investigator George J. Mitchell; 73rd Maine governor John Baldacci.

Famous Mainers With Denver Connections:
Co-executive director of the Colorado Progressive Coalition Bill Vandenberg; KOA talk-show wingnut "Gunny" Bob Newman; Maybellines guitarist Mike Levasseur.

State Nickname: the Pine Tree State, the Lumberjack State (official); the End of America State, the Roof-over State, the Nothing in Nowhere State (unofficial)
Population: 1,321,574
Racial Distribution: 96% white, 1% black, 1% Asian, 1% Hispanic
Per Capita Personal Income: $28,831
Unemployment: 5.1%

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The Recreate '68 alliance (profiled in the October 25 feature, "Recreate '68 Plans to Do Just That") has just issued a curious holiday manifesto. A take on the 1834 Clement Clarke Moore poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas," the alliance has crafted the following holiday missive, meant, presumably, to stir the hearts of would-be Democratic National Convention protesters. Enjoy, comrades:

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It was fun while it lasted.

Tom Tancredo just made official what had been rumored for 24 hours: He's pulling out of the Republican presidential race. Although he never really had a chance of reaching the White House, Tancredo's already won: He made immigration a focal point of the campaign.

The man who was warned by Karl Rove never to darken the door of the White House succeeded in making President Bush pay attention to an issue he'd rather ignore. Ditto for the other Republicans running for president: At the CNN debate earlier this month, Tancredo noted that on the immigration front, the other candidates Republicans were beginning to "out-Tancredo Tancredo."

But there's one way those candidates will never match Tancredo: in unvarnished honesty. Colorado's sixth congressional district congressman is renowned for making heartfelt, if unpopular declarations -- and let the chips, and political strategists, fall where they may.

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Louisiana

Total Number of Delegates: 67
Pledged: 56
Unpledged: 11

How to Recognize a Louisiana Delegate:
The surface of Louisiana may properly be divided into two parts: the swamplands, and the quagmires, which include the townships and parishes built on the bribes and embezzlements of organized political corruption. Like the Mississippi River, which flows in a ridge of its own deposits at an elevation of ten feet above the city of New Orleans, Louisiana politics flows in a channel of its own filth ten feet above the laws of man and nature. Unlike their peers in other states, who leave elected office and go on to consulting jobs and speaking tours, Louisiana politicians usually go to prison.Not to worry, though: A well-placed brother-in-law on the parole board will quickly have them back out on Easy Street. Louisiana delegates will be easy to identify in Denver. They'll be the jaywalkers wearing plush outfits of gold, green and purple, laden with plastic beads and carrying "go cups" filled with ice-cold Hurricanes and Hand Grenades.The mini-bars in their hotel rooms will be emptied of their costly refreshments and refilled with cash in $10,000 increments of $100 bills wrapped in foil and stuffed into frozen-food containers.

Famous Louisianans:
Musicians Mahalia Jackson, Fats Domino, Louis Armstrong, Professor Longhair, Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Harry Connick Jr., Lucinda Williams, Lil Wayne, Shannon Leto, Jared Leto and Buckwheat Zydeco; funny blondes Faith Ford, Reese Witherspoon and Ellen Degeneres; journalists Bryant Gumbel and Cokie Roberts; writers Truman Capote and Anne Rice; cartoonist George Herriman; assassin Lee Harvey Oswald; asinine Britney Spears; ass-blaster Richard Simmons.

Famous Louisiana Democrats:
35th governor Huey Long; 40th, 43rd and 45th governor Earl Long;54th governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco; 15th U.S Senate Majority Whip Russell B. Long; current senior senator Mary Landrieu; 56th mayor of New Orleans Moon Landrieu; 56th lieutenant governor Mitch Landrieu; 60th mayor of New Orleans Ray "Chocolate City" Nagin; Representative Bill "freezer full of cash" Jefferson; former U.N. ambassador Andrew Young; campaign strategist James Carville.

Famous Louisianans With Denver Connections:
Aerial navigation pioneer and DIA main terminal namesake Elrey Borge Jeppesen; Colorado Media Matters web producer Aimee Matheny; singer-songwriter Liz Barnez; Chapter One BBQ and Grill siblings Bonnie and Jerome Sims; photographer Nicole Marie Roche.

State Nickname: the Pelican State, the Bayou State (official); the Open Container State, the Nepotism State, the Kickback State, Roustabouts' Paradise (unofficial)
Population: 4,287,768 (a 5% loss after Hurricane Katrina)
Racial Distribution: 62% white, 33% black, 1.5% Asian, 1% Native American, 2.5% Hispanic
Per Capita Personal Income: $26,100
Unemployment: 3.3%

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Kentucky

Total Number of Delegates: 59
Pledged: 50
Unpledged: 9

How to Recognize a Kentucky Delegate:
Kentuckians insist that they live in the south, even though the majority of the state's population lives along the northern border, mainly in Louisville and the suburbs of the solidly Midwestern city of Cincinnati, Ohio. Kentuckians insist that they are the best-educated residents of all the southern states, yet Petersburg (near Cincinnati) is home to the Creation Museum, the evangelical-rebuttal-to-natural-science museum that proclaims the accuracy of the Book of Genesis without offering any proof. Kentuckians also claim to be the most stylish of all Southerners, which apparently means dressing like extras from the 1995 movie "Clueless," but only for the annual weekly festivities of the Kentucky Derby, and then it's back to the jeans and University of Kentucky jerseys for the rest of the year. No, Kentuckians aren't pathological liars; they just drink a lot of bourbon. The delicious Bluegrass State beverage is famous the world over for its ability to turn the most self-conscious hillbilly into a boastful blueblood. Dressing the part, female Kentucky delegates will look resplendent in their Flexi Roller fedoras made by Kokin, the official milliner of the Kentucky Derby, and male delegates will sport finely fitted seersucker suits. Note to delegates from other states who pretend that they don't smoke: Kentuckians always carry a pack of cigarettes.

Famous Kentuckians:
Sixteenth president of the U.S. Abraham Lincoln; first and only president of the Confederate U.S. Jefferson Davis; temperance wench Carrie Nation; first Jewish Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis; journalists Larry Flynt and Diane Sawyer; film directors D.W. Griffith and Gus Van Sant; actors George Clooney, Johnny Depp, Annie Potts, Harry Dean Stanton and Jim Varney; musicians Will Oldham, Dwight Yoakam, Joan Osborne, Wynonna and Naomi Judd.

Famous Kentucky Democrats:
Fourteenth vice president of the U.S. John Cabell Breckinridge; first African-American woman state representative Mae Street Kidd; national Urban League social reformer Whitney M. Young Jr.; Jimmy Carter's U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Juanita M. Kreps.

Famous Kentuckians With Denver Connections:
American frontiersman Kit Carson; Independence Institute policy wonk Jay Ambrose; former KBPI DJ Stephen "Willie B." Meade; perennial songbird Hazel Miller

State Nickname: the Bluegrass State (official); the Tobacco State, the Hemp State, the Corn-cracker State, the Mullet State (unofficial)
Population: 4,206,074
Racial Distribution: 89% white, 7.5% black, 0.5% Native American, 1%
Asian, 2% Hispanic
Per Capita Personal Income: $26,252
Unemployment: 6.5%

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In National Public Radio's December 10 story about the previous night's debate, a Republican presidential candidate forum in Miami sponsored by Univision, Tom Tancredo was mentioned first. How did the double T pull off this long-awaited coup? By not showing up -- ostensibly because appearing at such a "Spanish-speaking" event would have constituted "pandering."

Finally -- a way for Tancredo to separate himself from the pack. If he simply stops campaigning entirely, imagine how much publicity he'll get. -- Michael Roberts

Today the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida in Tallahassee upheld the Democratic Party's right to enforce its primary rules -- and spanked the Florida delegation for pushing up its state vote to early January

"We're pleased the court ruled in our favor, recognizing the constitutionally protected right of the Democratic National Committee to enforce its rules and treat all state Democratic parties in a fair and equal way," said Democratic National Committee Communications Director Karen Finney in response to the ruling. "The DNC is committed to protecting the right to vote for every American, and we look forward to continuing to work together to ensure that Florida turns blue in 2008."

Blue with the cold, maybe. So far, the DNC has refused to recognize the Florida delegation at the convention slated for next August in Denver -- and that means the 210 delegates were not assigned a hotel when the other 55 delegations received their assignments late last month.

But Kenny Be, our staff cartoonist, has a solution, as shown here. -- Patricia Calhoun

Tom Tancredo will unveil a new commercial in Iowa this afternoon, a month out from the vote there. His last ad tossed a bomb into the campaign, but the shockwaves didn’t raise Tancredo above the bottom of the pack. Still, his quixotic presidential run has had its effect: The first third of last week’s CNN debate was dominated by questions regarding immigration, the issue that Tancredo vowed to bring to the fore, and as Tancredo himself got to say – finally – the other candidates were “out-Tancredoing Tancredo.”

Now, if only everyone could learn how to pronounce his name before he returns to Colorado.
-- Patricia Calhoun

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Kansas

Total Number of Delegates: 41
Pledged: 33
Unpledged: 8

How to Recognize a Kansas Delegate:
Claim jumpers from Leavenworth, Kansas, laid out their town on theSouth Platte River and named it after Governor James W. Denver, inthe hopes that he would make Denver City the county seat of ArapahoeCounty, Kansas. That was on November 22, 1858, and it was the last time that Colorado would ever do anything nice for Kansas. First,Colorado took all the territory from east of the Continental Divideto the 102nd Meridian, then stole a century's worth of water. In 1985, Kansas took Colorado to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking $300 million back pay for a hundred years of lost irrigation and water-skiingopportunities. Colorado appealed for the next twenty years and gotthe fine lowered to $35 million. It still hasn't been paid, and Kansans are bleeding mad. That is why Kansas delegates, who would normally look just like Nebraska delegates, will stick out like sorethumbs. Just look for women wearing acid-washed denim jumpers and men wearing pleated khaki pants who angrily badmouthDenver while stuffing their bags with restaurant sugar packets andhotel towels. It may be their only form of restitution.

Famous Kansans:
Automobile pioneer Walter P. Chrysler; journalism pioneer Damon Runyon; literary pioneers William S. Burroughs and Langston Hughes; television pioneers Hugh (Ward Cleaver) Beaumont and Vivian (Ethel Mertz) Vance; entertainment pioneers Dennis Hopper and Cassandra (Elvira) Peterson; musical pioneers Charlie Parker, Joe Walsh and Melissa Etheridge; national embarrassments Kirstie Alley and Fred Phelps.

Famous Kansas Democrats:
Fourth territorial governor and namesake of the city of Denver, James W. Denver; former congressman Bill Reardon; first female Treasurer of the United States, Georgia Neese Clark; 26th Secretary of Agriculture, Dan Glickman and 44th governor of the state, Kathleen Sebelius.

Famous Kansans With Denver Connections:
Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winner Hattie (Gone With the Wind) McDaniel; businessman Philip Anschutz; Monkey Businessman Gary Hart; governor Roy Romer; 48th Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton; 5th Congressional District representative Doug Lamborn; Park Hill brass trombonist Steve Traylor.

State Nickname: the Sunflower State (official); the Land of Oz, Bleeding Kansas, the Squatter State, Midway U.S.A., the Grasshopper State (unofficial)
Population: 2,764,075
Racial Distribution: 82% white, 6% black, 2% Asian, 1% Native American, 9% Hispanic
Per Capita Personal Income: $29,935
Unemployment: 5.4%

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