10-12-2002
ENVIRONMENT: How Green Is My Candidate?
WESTMINSTER, Colo.-The early-morning sun burst onto the snow-capped
mountains in Colorado's Front Range as Sierra Club deputy executive
director Maggie Fox launched into a pep talk to the 25 volunteers
preparing to go door-to-door in this Denver suburb. The Sierra Club is
distributing brochures blasting the environmental record of GOP Sen. Wayne
Allard and praising former U.S. Attorney Tom Strickland, Allard's
Democratic challenger.
"Allard thinks he can be anti-environmental for five years and then
cast a few votes in the last year, when voters are paying attention, and
make up for it," declared Fox, who is married to Rep. Mark Udall,
D-Colo. As the November 5 election approaches, Fox added, the Sierra Club
must be the "arbiter of truth to help the public sort it all
out."
Meanwhile, Allard's re-election campaign is portraying the conservative
senator-who voted for oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge and against tougher fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles-as an
environmental champion. According to Allard campaign manager Dick Wadhams,
the environment is a critical issue in the contentious, neck-and-neck
contest. The freshman senator himself, asked to name his top
accomplishments in office, recites a list of Colorado land preservation
projects on which he's been active.
Allard is not the only conservative Republican candidate boasting about an
environmental record that national environmental groups are attacking. In
the New Hampshire Senate race, GOP Rep. John E. Sununu, who is running
against Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, is trying to convince voters that
his environmental credentials are just fine. (Sununu defeated two-term
Sen. Bob Smith in the Republican primary.)
Like Allard, Sununu focuses on home-state projects when he insists that he
is a strong environmentalist: He helped secure federal funds for programs
to control water pollution in New Hampshire. But also like Allard, Sununu
voted for drilling in the Alaskan wildlife refuge and against tougher
fuel-efficiency standards. Sununu also voted to weaken the Environmental
Protection Agency's reporting requirements for industries that
pollute.
The League of Conservation Voters counts both men among its "Dirty
Dozen," the congressional candidates that it is targeting for defeat
because of their environmental records. (The others in Senate races are
Sen. Tim Hutchinson, R-Ark.; Rep. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.; former Rep. Jim
Talent, R-Mo.; and Rep. John Thune, R-S.D. Those in House races are
California state Sen. Dick Monteith, the GOP nominee in the 18th District;
Rep. Ken Lucas, D-Ky.; former Rep. Helen Bentley, R-Md.; Rep. Heather
Wilson, R-N.M.; and Rep. George W. Gekas, R-Pa. The group has not named a
twelfth target for 2002.)
In this year's tight Senate races, the Democrats are trying to motivate
their core constituents by talking about Social Security and abortion
rights. The Republicans are reaching out to their base by focusing on
national security and taxes. But in several key races, both parties are
trying to attract suburban independents by spotlighting environmental
issues. That crucial group of swing voters will likely determine which
party controls the Senate next year.
In Colorado, the Allard-Strickland race will probably be decided in the
Denver suburbs, where soccer moms are just beginning to pay attention to
it. Colorado has gained 560,000 new voters since 1996, when Allard first
ran for the Senate and defeated Strickland. Those newcomers, most of whom
are suburbanites, are almost equally split into Democrats, Republicans,
and unaffiliated.
This year's rematch between Allard and Strickland is unusually harsh by
Colorado standards. Campaigning in Douglas County, Allard, 58, introduces
himself to homeowners by telling them: "I'm Senator Wayne Allard. And
I just want to tell you that all of those negative ads you've been seeing
aren't true." One voter responded, "Which ones?" In fact,
both campaigns have been spewing a steady stream of attack ads.
Strickland's opponents describe the former U.S. attorney as a rich,
arrogant lawyer-lobbyist with ties to corporate polluters. Allard's
critics call the former veterinarian a do-nothing senator who doesn't sign
on to legislation unless he's sure it will pass.
Both camps say the economy is the most important issue. The Denver metro
area has lost nearly 26,000 jobs since August 2001. "People are
worried about homeland security and about the war on terrorism, but not to
the exclusion of the issues that affect their daily lives," said
Strickland, 50. Both candidates support the Bush administration's policy
on Iraq. "My opponent has sidled up as close to me as he can, so
right now [Iraq] is not an issue," Allard wryly observed.
In an October 6 debate, Allard and Strickland locked horns over Social
Security. Allard favors allowing younger workers to invest a portion of
their Social Security contributions on their own. Strickland said the
Social Security trust fund "should be made of iron. It should be
there no matter what happens in the stock market." Strickland favors
abortion rights; Allard favors overturning the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v.
Wade decision recognizing a right to abortion.
Strickland opposes oil development in Alaska's refuge and favors
tightening fuel-efficiency standards. Allard backs land preservation
projects that are based on two traditionally Western and conservative
sentiments: property rights and local control. Responding to environmental
groups' complaints that he has voted against tougher air- and
water-pollution controls, Allard says that he opposes imposing new federal
mandates on the states.
Despite his campaign's emphasis on environmental issues, however, Allard
acknowledges that he's unfamiliar with the details of the Bush
administration's wildfire protection plan, even though 500,000 acres of
Colorado burned this summer.
Nonetheless, Allard's campaign has taken several controversial steps to
try to convince voters that the senator is a true environmentalist. His
campaign ran a television ad that included a newspaper photo of Allard at
a press conference with Udall, who is widely viewed as a strong
environmental advocate. Allard refused Udall's request to pull the spot.
Then, an Allard campaign aide told a reporter that Allard was an honorary
member of the Sierra Club. When the Sierra Club protested that Allard was
merely one of thousands of Colorado residents who had been sent membership
solicitations, Allard campaign manager Wadhams branded the Sierra Club
"a liberal, partisan front group."
Wadhams calls the national environmental groups hypocritical for endorsing
Strickland, who represented corporate polluters while at the Denver law
firm of Brownstein Hyatt & Farber. Allard's campaign also attacked
Strickland for doing legal work for (and making a windfall profit from
selling stock in) Global Crossing, a Colorado-based telecommunications
firm that is now bankrupt and under investigation by the Justice
Department. Ironically, when Strickland left the law firm in 1999, the
Global Crossing case was taken up by another attorney who has since left
the firm: Gale A. Norton, whose successful nomination to be secretary of
the Interior was sponsored in the Senate by Allard.
The New Hampshire Senate race pits Sununu, a fiscal conservative, against
Shaheen, who has a moderate-to-liberal record as governor. Shaheen, 55,
charges that Sununu backs Big Business over New Hampshire interests and
that he dragged his feet in supporting corporate-accountability
legislation. Sununu, 38, accuses Shaheen of hurting New Hampshire's
"small-business economy" by promoting costly regulations and
increasing taxes. Sununu has also tried to portray Shaheen as
"waffling" on defense issues. And the two sides have tussled
over education, with Shaheen promoting her record of expanding
kindergarten programs, and Sununu charging that she has shortchanged
special education.
Sununu says he supports imposing tougher air-pollution rules on corporate
polluters. But environmentalists criticize him for not opposing President
Bush's proposal to rewrite the 1970 Clean Air Act. Sununu counters that it
is "premature to weigh in on the plan." His Democratic rival has
been a vocal critic of the administration's efforts to ease controls on
the Midwest's coal-fired power plants, which foul the air in New
England.
Despite criticism from the environmental groups, Sununu's Web site tries
to associate him with the Sierra Club and other green groups that
supported an environmental funding bill that Sununu voted for. Shaheen's
aides accuse Sununu of trying to confuse voters. "He has no
compunction about muddying the water and confusing the people on the
issues, and the environment is just one of them," said Shaheen
spokesman Colin Van Ostern.
As in Colorado, the New Hampshire Senate race will be decided by
independent voters, who make up a third of the electorate. To help sway
those voters and get out their core constituents, interest groups and the
Democratic and Republican parties have been pouring tons of money into the
two Senate races. The Republicans have also benefited from fund-raising
appearances by the president.
A month before the election, both contests are dead heats. In Colorado, an
early-October Zogby poll showed Allard and Strickland each with 42 percent
of the vote. Independents leaned toward Strickland. The Colorado race also
has a Libertarian candidate who could draw Republican votes from
Allard.
In New Hampshire, two recent independent polls found Sununu and Shaheen
virtually tied. Recently, the race has been complicated by a Republican
write-in campaign for the defeated Sen. Smith. Sununu downplays that
threat, asserting, "I think Republicans are focused on holding this
seat and beating Jeanne Shaheen." But, he acknowledged, "every
vote counts."
With control of the Senate up for grabs, environmental groups are
concentrating on the Senate contests in Colorado, New Hampshire, and a
handful of other pivotal states. "We're talking to people who
probably have not made up their minds, parents with small children,"
said Susan LeFever, director of the Sierra Club's Rocky Mountain chapter.
"We want to make sure they think about the environment when they
vote."
Margaret Kriz
National Journal
