"This was," explains U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, "the least political one I've been in."
But was it?
A Salt Lake Tribune analysis of Defense Department data shows "blue states" - those that voted for Democrat Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election - have been slated to lose a combined 24,289 military jobs while their "red state" counterparts will gain nearly 12,000 jobs.
On average, states that voted for President Bush in 2004 are slated to pick up 312 new jobs while Kerry-voting states will lose 1,179. Bush's home state of Texas - which lost 6,981 jobs in the last realignment round, has been recommended for gains of 6,150 this time around.
Kelly Patterson, director of the Brigham Young University Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, cautions against making political conclusions from such correlations.
"There's kind of a standard moniker," he says. "Correlation isn't causation."
While the Pentagon report was greeted with a mixture of relief and dismay on Capitol Hill, lawmakers and local community leaders in targeted states expressed anger and vowed to fight the cuts.
Although the base-closing process is designed to be apolitical, lobbyists and lawmakers will be actively involved.
''Today's decision by the Department of Defense is nothing short of stunning, devastating, and above all, outrageous,'' Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said. ''It is a travesty and a strategic blunder of epic proportions.''
Base Realignment and Closure Commissioner Jim Hansen, a former GOP U.S. representative from Utah, insists there are no politics at play.
The bigger job losses by some states compared with others ''is a coincidence," Hansen says. "Those guys over in the Pentagon would be scared to death to do anything like that. There's no way in the world to do that."
Hansen recommended looking at past rounds of realignment for comparison.
In the last round of closures - for which former President Clinton has been harshly criticized - states that voted Democratic in 1992 were dealt an average loss of 500 jobs per state just three years later. Republican-leaning states lost an average of 465 jobs.
Both groups lost jobs in the last round, with red states losing about half as many as blue states - roughly proportional to the population difference between the two groups.
The biggest winner in this round - Maryland, which would gain 9,293 jobs under the Pentagon's proposal - was solidly blue in the last election.
There is another correlation observers are noting in the latest realignment round, and it has little to do with geography or political philosophy: The Defense Department's plan appears to place an emphasis on continuing to grow its combat forces, likely because of a post-Sept. 11 - and post-BRAC 1995 - emphasis on ground war fighting.
Among the proposed changes is a streamlined command structure for all Army Reserve commands - one that Maj. Gen. Peter Cooke believes will make his already busy unit even more likely to go to war.
"At first blush, an analysis of BRAC documents suggests that the 96th Regional Readiness Command will become a deployable war-fighting unit," says Cooke, commander of the Salt Lake City-based command.
Such moves are likely intended to bridge the gap between the military of the past and that of the future.
"Our current arrangements, designed for the Cold War, must give way to the new demands of the war against extremism and other evolving 21st century challenges," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a statement.
mlaplante@sltrib.com
tburr@sltrib.com
---
Tribune reporter Robert Gehrke and The Associated Press contributed to this report
