NEW HAMPSHIRE WEEKLY

Group Urges The Gop To Take Lead On Environment

By Robert Braile, Globe Correspondent, July 4, 1999

CONCORD -- After being rebuffed by the party's presidential contenders in 1996, a group of New Hampshire Republicans is once again mounting an effort to persuade candidates in the current presidential race to seize the environment as a campaign cause, wresting it from Vice President Al Gore and the Democrats.

The group, led by two well-known Republicans from Kingston -- state Senator Richard Russman and Northland Forest Products president Jameson French -- says the environment was a Republican cause for much of this century, from Presidents Theodore Roosevelt to Richard Nixon, and should be now.

"Our goal is to raise environmental issues higher on the national agenda," French said. "We want to remind our candidates of the environmental history of the Republican party from Roosevelt to Nixon, and persuade them that the environment is a Republican issue, that there's no reason the Democrats should have top billing on this subject."

The group includes such prominent Republicans as Lancaster realtor Peter Powell, Wolfeboro state Representative Jeb Bradley, former Grantham state representative Merle Schotanus, and Concord state Representative Elizabeth Hager. It met last Tuesday in Concord with Martha Marks, president of Republicans for Environmental Protection, a national organization that is looking to New Hampshire as part of a broader campaign to green the GOP.

"Obviously, if we want to make the environment an issue Republicans will talk about this year, it will be better to start talking about it in New Hampshire, because it's the first-in-the-nation primary state and because, as everyone knows, the primaries are front-loaded this year," Marks said in an interview. The primaries following New Hampshire are on a more compressed time schedule than in previous election years.

The question is whether this green plea will resonate, not just with the dozen Republican presidential candidates, but within the party itself, especially its conservative wing. It did not in 1996, when a similar group was formed. That group climaxed its efforts with a forum held shortly before the New Hampshire primary that was co-sponsored by the New Hampshire Wildlife Federation, and shunned by virtually every candidate.

But the party prior to the 1996 elections was still flush with the anti-environmental rhetoric of the 1994 Gingrich Revolution, which seized control of Capitol Hill for the first time in four decades. It had not yet suffered the Election Day rebuke, when President Clinton was elected to a second term and several Republican congressmen were ousted. The party at that moment "was still in deep denial" over the environment, Marks said.

Since then, polls, some of them of Republicans themselves, have showed continuing concern over and support for the environment, "and the party is starting to wake up," Marks said. While there is still no strong environmental candidate among the field of 12, there does appear to be more interest this time around in at least considering the environment as a campaign issue, Russman says.

In 1996, "it didn't seem like the environment was enough of a priority for them to take the time and meet with us, to make something happen," Russman said. "We certainly hope that this time around, they will recognize that the only way to get elected is to recognize that the environment is an important issue." He said his group has had informal conversations with staffers of candidates Lamar Alexander, John Kasich, George Bush and John McCain, "who seem interested in meeting with us."

Brian Kennedy, the national political director for the Alexander campaign, said his candidate's interest in the New Hampshire Republicans for Responsible Conservation, as the group calls itself, "really depends on what its agenda is. If it's about common-sense solutions to environmental challenges, that sounds promising. But if they're aligned with the extremist positions of Al Gore, I doubt we'd find time to meet with them." Alexander recently made environmental news when he called for a ban on MTBE, the gasoline additive contaminating water supplies in New Hampshire and across the country.

Bruce Berke, a longtime Concord lobbyist and New Hampshire operative for the Kasich campaign, said his candidate would likely "welcome the opportunity" to speak with the group. But he added that, more broadly speaking, the idea of such a group should resonate in the Granite State, given its conservation history.

"I think it's a good fit, the environment and New Hampshire Republicans, because New Hampshire has been on the forefront of some environmental issues in years past," Berke said. He cited the state's efforts over the last decade on river management and air pollution, especially. "The state's leaders have been good stewards of the environment, and for the most part those leaders have been Republicans."

The group has yet to solidify its agenda of environmental issues, although Russman and French cited air quality, water quality, land conservation and sprawl as issues that might be taken up. It has no plans to endorse any candidate, seeking rather to persuade them to stand up for the environment. It is composed largely of moderates, with a sprinkling of conservatives. There are also some Independents among the Republicans.

Drawing the conservative wing into the fold will be a challenge, the group admits. It will be especially difficult, given that the political wisdom has it that the ideological extremes of hard left and hard right play more of a role in the outcome of primaries like New Hampshire's, while centrists play more of a role in general elections. And the group has already taken some heat from the conservatives in its party.

"There's this feeling out there among the Republican conservatives, who want to know, are we Republicans?" French said.

"But the hard right is just that," said Russman, an avowed centrist. "If the Republican candidates want to go in that direction on the environment, it will be another blueprint for a loss. Middle America, centrists and even some conservatives want our natural resources protected. They want clean air and clean water. Those candidates who might say clean air and clean water are not good things are mistaken. Such views will not bode well for their electoral prospects."

And with Gore in the race, the environment will eventually be tough to ignore. Gore, the author of the 1992 book "Earth in the Balance," enjoys broad, if not entirely enthusiastic, support from the national environmental community.

"Given the fact that Al Gore has a strong record on the environment, as the Democratic Party has had of late, the Democrats have seized the environment as a party and run with it," Russman said. "Yet looking back historically, the Republicans have had a very good record on the environment. It's just that in the last few years, they have not. So we think the Republicans are missing the boat in failing to come out strongly in favor of greater environmental protection. It's a serious mistake, for the party, and for any Republican candidate running."