This labor day weekend I am holed up at a friend’s cabin in northern Idaho watching TV. Political season is in full swing and it’s the first full day of college football. Happy day!
On Friday me and a couple of my east coast liberal friends did a short hike up Lakeview Mountain near Priest Lake on the Idaho Panhandle National Forests, where we bumped into AJ, an Forest Service silviculturist laying out units of Lakeview-Reeder, a thinning sale in the early stages of NEPA planning.
“There’s gonna be a better view soon,” he beamed.
My friend Ayelet, who lives in D.C., has been working for environmental nonprofits for most of the past 15 years. “A view of what?” she said. “I want a view of trees!” AJ’s face fell.
I laughed and hunkered down for what I was sure would be an entertaining interaction between an Idaho forester and a DC environmentalist… The red state/blue state dynamic is much on my mind these days.
(AJ did a great job explaining the prescriptions he has planned for the Lakeview Reeder project. I think he even convinced the hard core environmentalists among us. He’s another FS employee who’s more than earning his pay.)
The U.S. system of checks and balances vests an undue amount of power in the hands of westerners. Western states with relatively tiny populations get as much representation in the U.S. Senate as populous eastern states. These western Senators have historically been beholden to timber, mining and grazing interests. Western Senators typically get elected when they’re relatively young, they rarely if ever faced serious election year challenges, and they generally serve a very, very long time in the U.S. Senate. Their seniority means they have their pick of committee assignments, which positions them to pass or block legislation that affects public lands. All these facts explain why for the better part of the post war period the Forest Service has been focused on resource extraction.
That started to change in the 1990s, and I think the pace of that political change will continue to accelerate. We may, in fact, be witnessing a tectonic political shift when it comes to western lands. The good old boys are riding into the sunset.
The first to go was Oregon Sen. Bob Packwood, the 10th most senior member of the Senate and chair of the powerful Finance Committee. Bob resigned in 1995 under threat of expulsion from the Senate for sexual harassment of Senate staffers. He was replaced by Democrat Ron Wyden. Then, Oregon’s Mark Hatfield—the 7th most senior Senator and chairman of the Appropriations Committee—retired in 1997, replaced by Republican Gordon Smith. Timber industry frontman Slade Gorton of Washington was beat by Democrat tech-mogul Maria Cantwell in 2000. Conrad Burns (R-MT), hounded by controversy and scandal, got beat by Democrat Jon Tester by 3,000 votes in 2006.
Then there’s Idaho Senator Larry Craig, who’s retiring from the Senate after getting busted last summer in an airport bathroom sex sting operation. Craig will be replaced by a conservative Republican, but the Idaho delegation will lose its seniority. And its power.
(I have noticed that Christianity has become a sort of morning-after pill for wastrel celebrities and scandal-plagued politicians. “For this situation,” former Quarterback Michael Vick—who shares an attorney with Craig—told the media, “I’ve found Jesus Christ.” I am sure Craig’s attorney advised his client to get born again. But the Senator seems to have relied instead on Alberto Gonzales’s PR people, who told him to go the half-witted semi-denial route, which never works.)
It’s senior Senators that matter, and there are now just three senior pro-industry Republican Senators from western states remaining. Ted Stevens (84 years old and currently under felony indictments for shady financial dealings with lobbyists) is the fourth most senior United States Senator, and chairs the Appropriations Committee when the Republicans are in power. Pete Domenici of New Mexico (#5 in seniority, and a senior member of the Appropriations Committee) and Orrin Hatch of Utah (#9 in seniority and a senior member of the Finance Committee) are both in their seventies.
Once these gentlemen and John McCain (age 71) retire, the list of senior Senators from western states becomes very blue. Seven of the eight most senior Senators from western states (not including the two Democratic Senators from Hawaii, I’m here just talking about AK, OR, WA, AZ, NM, NV, CO, WY, UT, and MT) will be Democrats. And the one Republican (Smith) is in a tight race this cycle. Seven out of the ten least senior Senators from western states will be Republicans.
The Senate seniority balance of power is shifting decisively from red states like Alaska and Idaho to blue and purple states like Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada and Montana. The Senators that will control western public land management legislation for the foreseeable future are folks like Max Baucus (66 years old, #10 in Senate seniority, D-MT), Jeff Bingaman (64, #17, D-NM), Harry Reid (68, #25, D-NV), Diane Feinstein, (#33, 74, D-CA), Barbara Boxer (67, #35, D-CA), Patty Murray (57, #37, D-WA) and Ron Wyden (58, #43, D-OR).
In other news, my Ducks thrashed the Washington Huskies for the fifth straight year. Happy day!
(Great photo of UO Running Back high stepping through UW’s high school-like defense here: www.registerguard.com/rg/Sports/story.csp?cid=128775&sid=7&fid=1)
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