The American Spectator

"Politics" by Grover Norquist

Why go Green?

Environmentalism is a Red Herring

September 2001

Why would George Bush stand firm on Kyoto, then turn around and sock GOP bulwark Jack Welch's GE with a half a billion dollar bill for dredging specious PCBs from the Hudson River? Why push for new oil drilling in Alaska, then ratify Bill Clinton's deliberately destructive arsenic water standards that will bankrupt small Western towns? Is Bush hurting himself and Republicans by running against the great green tide? Or is Bush caving for no good reason, conceding on issues that will not move votes?

Just how smart is it to go green?

With money, organization and high poll numbers, the green machine on paper looks fearsome indeed. Environmental groups raised and spent nearly $3.5 billion in 1999. The largest five groups-the Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, National Wildlife Federation, Ducks Unlimited and Sierra Club-have combined budgets of $1.6 billion and 3,000 employees. If these five groups direct only one-tenth of their budgets into politics in an election year, they would command $320 million in each two-year election cycle, more than the National Rifle Association and the Republican National Committee combined. In 1999, 64 percent of Americans agreed: "Environmental standards cannot be too high, and continuing improvements must be made regardless of cost." A majority of Americans have agreed with that statement every year since 1981.

Wow. With money and numbers like these, green groups should be a political armada, unstoppably rolling a new slate of enviroDems into power in the House, Senate, state governorships and the presidency. Right? With political muscles this big, it shouldn't be hard to come up with a list of candidates slaughtered for being environmentally incorrect.

So I went looking. I faxed a note to every congressman, Republican and Democrat, asking for examples of races they believed were won or lost on environmental issues. I called political writers for major newspapers, and eminent political analysts, and asked them: Does anybody actually lose an election over environmental issues?

Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report, the author of the Almanac of American Politics, suggested a 1972 primary where the incumbent Democrat, Wayne Anispall of Colorado, was defeated by a pro-environment liberal. Tom Davis (R-Va.), who heads the National Republican Congressional Committee, and House Ways and Means Committee chairman Bill Thomas (R-CA), both pointed to the first congressional district of California. Congressman Douglas Bosco, a pro-development Democrat, once declared that everyone in this evenly divided district loved trees-only half liked them vertically and half liked them horizontally. From 1990 to 1998 the district bounced back and forth between the pro-development Boscoe, the green Democrat Dan Hamburg and the pro-development Republican Frank Riggs.

Pretty slim pickings.

So I went to green groups and gave them a chance to boast about the heads they have rolled. If voting wrong on the environment is a political killer, tell us, where are the bodies you buried?

Scott Stoermer of the League of Conservation Voters says green issues "certainly" defeated Republican Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington State. Gorton lost his race to millionaire Maria Cantwell by 2,228 votes. In that race the Libertarian candidate won 64,734 votes. Gore carried the state by 138,681 votes-providing Cantwell extremely long coattails. Indian tribes that have long feuded with Gorton spent almost a million dollars getting out the vote against Gorton. The LCV did spend $444,000 against Gorton, attacking him as pro-cyanide-a chemical used in gold mining. Gorton also won votes in the rural eastern part of the state with his strong opposition to tearing down dams to let the salmon travel more easily. So who defeated Gorton? The Libertarian party that took 30 times his margin of defeat? The Indian nations angry at Gorton's attacks on their sovereignty? The Gore landslide in Washington State? Cantwell's millions of soft-money contributions she gave herself? Or the cyanide ads?

Like I said, pretty slim pickings.

Next Scott took credit for knocking off Sen. Spencer Abraham, targeted with $705,000 in spending by the LCV. Maybe, but he was likely hurt a lot more by the United Auto Workers negotiating election day off for their members and by a strong get-out-the-vote effort aimed at African-American voters in Detroit. Neither the autoworkers nor the black turnout were driven by green issues.

Green groups like LCV pump up their political reps by ostentatiously targeting vulnerable Republicans. Their so-called "Dirty Dozen" are not, as you would expect, the congressmen with the worst environmental ratings. Rep. Steve Kuykendall (R-CA) had an LCV rating of 33, as did John Ensign (R-Nevada). GOP moderate Mark Neumann (R-WI) had a score of 29, much higher than dozens of congressman left alone by LCV. These vulnerable moderate Republicans were defeated. But when the LCV actually targeted a hard-core environmentally incorrect congressman-Helen Chenoweth of Idaho, with a rating of zero-she won easily in 1996 and 1998.

Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, makes the same claims about the 2000 Michigan and Washington senate races. He concedes that labor was a major factor in Michigan and women's groups piled on in both states. But he argues that both Gorton and Abraham "positioned themselves outside the comfort level of their constituents." The environment, he says, may not help much as a positive issue, but it can be a powerful negative, and becomes a character issue if a candidate is "outside the zone." Pope credits Jerry Brown's 1978 re-election as California's governor to Mike Curb's support for offshore oil drilling, and says 14 of the 18 Republican House freshmen who lost in 1996 had environmental issues. Maybe.

On the other hand, the Bush-Gore race should have been gold for the greens. Gore ran as Mr. Save-the-Earth, pummeling Bush and Dick Cheney for their oil industry ties. Yet even in a time of prosperity, the environment was at best a wash for Democrats. The 46 percent of voters in Fox News exit polls who said the environment was more important than growth voted 59-36 for Gore. But the 48 percent who identified themselves as pro-growth voted 58-39 for Bush. It was West Virginia's electoral votes that put Bush over the top-thanks to coal miners threatened by Kyoto. One can argue that in West Virginia Kyoto cost Gore the entire election.

When environmental issues were put directly to the American people in November 2000 as state initiatives, the greens lost two efforts in Arizona to limit growth, one anti-sprawl measure in Colorado, an anti-logging measure in Maine and a ban on billboards in Missouri. Oregon voters passed a property rights initiative opposed by the greens.

Why do greens have so few confirmed kills?

Several reasons.

First, the polling can be deceptive. If you ask Americans if they are in favor of clean water, of course they say yes. Mom and apple pie, too. But when pollster Kellyanne Conway asked actual voters on election day 2000: "What is the most important issue facing the country, the one you yourself are most concerned about?" the environment came in at two percent. In March of 2001, Gallup also asked an open-ended question: "What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?" Once again, the environment came in at two percent, or sixteenth.

Republicans, gleeful when polls show them approaching parity on the environment, should think twice. The biggest advantage Democrats ever registered over Republicans on the environment was November 1984-the month Ronald Reagan won 49 states. In 1995, at the height of the Gringrich revolution, Linda DuVall's American Viewpoint poll found that Americans by more than a 3-2 margin said they wanted more environmental regulation. Only 21 percent felt there was too much environmental regulation and 36 percent felt there was too little. Did it slow the GOP juggernaut?

Second, when it moves from a piety to a personal issue, one that affects voters directly, the environment is generally such a powerful issue that all candidates agree.

In Florida's Republican primary to replace retiring Rep. Joe Scarborough, all six candidates opposed offshore drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. California Republicans and Democrats alike oppose offshore drilling. On the other hand, every Alaskan politician supports exploring for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In farm country, both Republicans and Democrats oppose the Environmental Protection Agency's limits on pesticides.

That that means is that politically there are two sorts of environmental issues: values issues, on which voters express a high level of environmental piety, but around which their votes rarely turn. And NIMBY issues, about which everyone agrees. Same effect.

So pro-growth candidates running scared should think again. Instead of caving into bad science and perverse plans, the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates argues that the GOP should master the art of turning environmental pieties into sound policies. Stay on the right side of the local issues, and, on the national level, take the case to voters that property rights and free-market solutions make for a better environment, just as they make better products and services. You can log trees, as long as you love 'em too.

Not convinced? Remember the GOP's long-standing anti-welfare sentiment went nowhere until voters were convinced that welfare was bad not only for taxpayers, but for poor people too. A similar political jujitsu is needed on the environment, persuading city-dwelling Americans that government mismanagement is as dangerous to the environment as any chemical. What good is it to stop timber harvesting if it leads to three times as many trees destroyed by forest fires? Why destroy the Hudson in order to save it?

But changing the framing of this issue will require consistent leadership. The green machine may be only a paper tiger, but if it scares the White House crooked on environmental issues, just its well-practiced roaring may be enough.