 Energy... the country's life blood. | Casper -- If there was a single message from Wyoming's Republican voters in last Tuesday's lightly attended primary election for U.S. Representative, it might have been that moderation in the pursuit of oil and gas is no virtue, and extremism, no vice. And the allusion to Barry Goldwater's signature 1964 campaign sound bite, no accident. | As Goldwater did generations ago, so did victor Cynthia Lummis. She rallied the hard-core faithful of a slightly dwindled party in full-throated support of longtime party principles on the election's central issue, catching flat-footed the well-heeled and pragmatic leaders of the party's centrist faction, who mistakenly thought they were offering what the voters really wanted.
To the uninitiated, the rhetoric of Lummis and of leading challenger Mark Gordon on the vital issue of energy probably sounded quite similar: energy is the nation's life blood, and variety of and security in its supply is essential to our standard of living. Wyoming leads the nation in many forms of energy production and in the future can lead in many more.
But these high-minded pronouncements papered over an essential difference between the two Republican hopefuls. One, who won, enjoys the robust support of traditional fossil-fuel producers, and offers them hers in return. The other, who lost, showed a lifelong interest in crafting compromises on the energy issue. Debating on Wyoming Public Radio's "Open Spaces" Aug. 15, both Lummis and Gordon, and second runner-up Bill Winney, sketched out some of the battle lines subtly; too subtly, perhaps, for the ordinary voter driving home from her second job and tackling her weekday errands. | But the signs were there. Asked how more natural gas could be produced in the Pinedale Anticline, given the documented declines in wildlife and air quality there, Lummis instead detoured to criticize the pending Wyoming Range legislation that is a legacy of the late Sen. Craig Thomas. Citing the Lincoln County Commission, Lummis said the hallmark legislation should offer only temporary, instead of permanent, protection of portions of the remote mountain range from energy production impacts; that the bill's boundaries should be redrawn; and the policy focus be an incremental increase in gas production. |  | Moderator Elsa Partan had to cut in to ask what all that had to do with the Pinedale Anticline, 30 miles away and not a part of the Wyoming Range bill. She might have noted, but didn't, that the Sublette mule deer herd being damaged each winter by Pinedale-area drilling already underway also depends on the Wyoming Range forest lands for birthing and summer range.
Lummis however replied that the Anticline can be and must be drilled "in a timely manner," and that slant drilling and multiple-well pads would protect wildlife migration and air quality, without explaining why current production in the Pinedale area already has failed to do so. She went on to hint strongly that the area needs year-round drilling, not just the seasonal development currently enforced as a safeguard for wildlife.  | Not coincidentally, a long-running series of full-page newspaper ads from Pinedale-area energy producers has been making that last point for some time now, much to the dismay of conservation interests, the governor, and local residents already aghast at the rapid industrialization of Sublette County. | When Gordon's time came around, the Buffalo rancher demonstrated an easy command of the state's role in ensuring air quality (he formerly chaired the state citizen board which oversees this and other environmental protection work by the Wyoming D.E.Q.), and strong awareness that even three years ago local ozone limits were known to be in danger of being broken. Gordon, too, pointed to the importance of industry itself taking action, in conjunction with state planning, to address environmental dangers inherent in world-scale gas production. But unlike Lummis, he also explicitly signaled support for efforts by conservation groups, such as The Nature Conservancy effort to facilitate off-site mitigation of drilling-disrupted wildlands. Nor is Sublette County alone in development-related environmental impacts, Gordon added, given coalbed methane and surface-mining activity in the Powder River Basin. While he also pointed to technology and voluntary action by industry, the subtext was that government and conservation groups also have a role to play; which Gordon would respect. | Subtlety seldom goes far in primary election politics. And Gordon’s strength, as a rancher with an energy industry job who has been a leader in conservation groups and a bipartisan donor to politicians over the years, was a weakness with the rock-ribbed industrial and commercial advocates who hold sway in the Wyoming GOP. While politicians across the state, Lummis included, regularly tout their support for "balance" between development and conservation, many do so with a thumb pressing firmly on the development end of that scale. |  | When a candidate emerges who has taken action to back up that rhetoric, attacks on his supposed environmental radicalism swiftly follow.
So it was with Gordon, whose long-ago chairmanship of the Wyoming Chapter of the Sierra Club was branded across his cartoon forehead in belittling attack ads from the Lummis camp. Gordon's association with what is, in essence, a grassroots backpacking club with a public-lands advocacy program was touted as prima facie evidence of a sinister agenda counter to true Republicanism. One Lummis backer, in the Casper Star-Tribune's election-night reader blog, went so far as to label Gordon "a Manchurian Candidate" for having tried to work with the Club on public lands protection efforts a generation ago, even though he eventually parted ways with Sierra Club activists over differences on grazing management.
Ron Akin, a Casper veteran who sought the same seat in Congress six years ago, told me about an encounter at a local watering hole with a staunch opponent of the Sierra Club. Ron noted he had himself joined the group, in the hope that by being more involved, he could help steer the group toward useful compromise solutions. The critic seemed genuinely surprised, and confessed he'd never thought about it quite like that. There doesn't seem to be much room in today's Wyoming GOP for people who try to get involved and build common ground. The risk of being turned into a dancing cartoon stick-figure in an ad dripping with cynicism is simply too great, threatening to prevent one from ever being elected to anything and prompting commenters to compare you to a brainwashed, gun-toting assassin from an old Frank Sinatra movie.
The historically low turnout figures suggest that most Wyoming voters tuned out of this sorry affair. Perhaps on election day they were out enjoying the mountain air, somewhere it isn't yet too toxic to breathe.
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