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Four Craig residents made the trip to Pueblo on Saturday to represent Moffat County at the Colorado Democratic State Assembly.

The 2,800 delegates who attended the assembly gave U.S. Senate candidate Mike Miles a narrow win over Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar.

Moffat County delegate JoAnn Baxter said she followed the county assembly's wishes and voted for Salazar.

The Moffat County Democrats voted 20-2 to support Salazar in a straw poll taken at the county assembly.

Miles, an educator in Colorado Springs, collected 1,376 votes to Salazar's 1,269.

Before to the state assembly, Salazar was the presumed front runner in the race.

Both candidates' names will appear on the August primary ballot, although Miles' name will appear on the top line.

"I'm going for electability. If he (Miles) proves me wrong, I'll be 100 percent in his corner," Baxter said.

Baxter has been attending Colorado state assemblies off and on since 1976, when Jimmy Carter was elected president.

During those years, she has seen liberal candidates such as Miles win at the assembly only to be beaten by more moderate candidates in the primary season.

"Activists are the people who go to party assemblies," Baxter said.

Terry Carwile has been a Miles supporter since he met Miles four years ago, when Miles was starting to talk about running for the U.S. Senate even though Ben Nighthorse Campbell was intending to run for re-election.

Carwile voted for Miles at the county assembly and again at the state assembly.

The delegation overwhelmingly voted for Ken Salazar's brother, John Salazar, D-Manassa, who is running for the 3rd Congressional District seat that Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Grand Junction, is vacating at the end of his term.

John Salazar won 69 percent of the vote to soundly defeat runner-up Jim Spehar, the mayor of Grand Junction. Spehar collected 27 percent of the vote.

He needed 30 percent to make the primary ballot.

Even though Carwile voted for Spehar, he thought John Salazar would represent the Democratic Party well.

"I think John's going to turn out to be a fairly substantial candidate," Carwile said.

Delegates voted to support Sen. John Kerry for president.

The presumed Democratic presidential nominee won 68.2 percent of the vote, and Dennis Kucinich, the congressman from Ohio, won 29.8 percent, narrowly missing the Colorado primary ballot.

Delegates voted for the party platform to advocate a total withdrawal of troops from Iraq, Baxter said.

That anti-war attitude could explain why underdog candidates Miles and Kucinich, who both oppose the Iraq War, fared so well at the assembly, Baxter said.

Rob Gebhart can be reached at 824-7031 or rgebhart@craigdailypress.com