Pombo upset recharges environmental movement

Pombo upset recharges environmental movement
Defeat of property-rights champion called 'sweetest victory of the night'

Finally the environment has a voice in Congress.

Activists, emboldened by Democratic gains across the nation Tuesday, savored what Carl Pope of the Sierra Club called "the most successful mid-term election for the environmental movement" since at least 1974.

And the "sweetest victory of the night" was the toppling of Republican Rep. Richard Pombo by wind-energy consultant Jerry McNerney.

McNerney captured "Pombo country" by 10,350 votes, 53.2 percent to 46.8 percent with all precincts reporting. Pombo, a once-and-future rancher and real estate developer, chairman of House Resources Committee and easily Public Enemy No. 1 of Sierra Club & Co., goes home after 14 years in Congress.

The environmental movement campaigned heavily for McNerney, almost single-handedly putting in play a district that most media and political consultants had written off as unwinnable.

A Democratic win in California's District 11 was a sign that even some of Northern California's most conservative voters had had enough of the Bush administration's and the Republican Congress' efforts to undo environmental protections and exploit natural resources, said Pope, the Sierra Club's executive director.

"This sends a clear message to those who might share (Pombo's) ideology: When it comes to elections, the environment is a giant killer."

And not just in California. Environmental groups targeted more than 30 "top of the ticket" elections across the nation and came up winners in almost all cases, Pope said.

The green movement can now count 20 new environmental votes in the U.S. House of Representatives, five new votes in the U.S. Senate and at least four new governorships. Those include:

-- McNerney in California's District 11 race, a wind-energy consultant who presents almost a polar opposite of Pombo.

-- Former National Football League quarterback Heath Shuler in North Carolina, who defeated Rep. Charles Taylor, a reliable pro-timber industry vote on forest issues.

-- Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, who toppled Sen. Rick Santorum, perhaps the Senate's most right-wing voice on many issues, including resource protection.

-- Sherrod Brown and Ted Strickland in Ohio, the state's newest senator and governor, respectively, both members of the Sierra Club's "renewable energy hall of fame." Their opponents were both in the organization's energy "hall of shame."

-- Democrat governor-elect Bill Ritter of Colorado, who promises to add Colorado to a growing list of western states pushing for stronger environmental protections.

But the undoing of President Bush's environmental record will not come from the Congress, where analysts see great potential for gridlock after so many years of bitter partisan bickering. Rather, said Pope, it will come from states and cities, where much of the push for renewable energy and environmental protection is ongoing.

Six states, for instance, have called for the development of renewable energy -- though California, after Tuesday's defeat of Proposition 87, is not among them. Twenty-five have rejected the Bush administration's changes on mercury regulations. The federal courts have rejected the administration's efforts to open roadless areas of national forests to logging and mining.

And California leads the nation in its effort to curb greenhouse gases, and environmentalists hope soon to see a version of the bill Gov. Schwarzenegger signed earlier this year on the floor of a Democrat-controlled House.

"We have new leadership," Pope said. "We can only hope the administration's head-in-the-sand approach to global warming is no longer operative."