Ray Ring

Senior Editor

How did a small phalanx of environmental groups use political trench warfare in the November 7 elections, to topple their chief enemy in Congress — the dreaded California Republican Rep. Richard Pombo?

(Former representative, that is.)

Rodger Schlickeisen, president of the national group, Defenders of Wildlife, explained it to me, in a frontline interview the morning after the election. It was Schlickeisen who orchestrated the anti-Pombo campaign, using the young Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund to apply newfound political money and muscle, and pulling in a few other groups. I caught him on his cell phone, at the Oakland airport, where he was hurrying to catch a flight back to Washington, D.C.

Schlickeisen has agreed to let me post a podcast of excerpts from our talk. It’s somewhat risky for him, because the talk is kind of rough, with airport noise in the background, and Schlickeisen talking informally, on the run. I think it’s better for you to hear it in his words, however unrehearsed he is, compared to any summing up I could do with writing. You can hear the excitement and triumph in his voice.

The environmentalists decided to target Pombo in the fall of 2005, when he sponsored a House bill that nearly succeeded in gutting the Endangered Species Act (Schlickeisen refers to the “ESA” bill). The campaign intensified up to the primary, when greenish Republican Pete McCloskey challenged Pombo, and climaxed in the general election, when Democrat Jerry McNerney — a wind-energy consultant nearly orphaned by his own party — carried the banner.

There’s a larger message that could resonate into the future. In this election cycle, environmentalists proved they can again be a political power where it counts the most: electing people they agree with, and driving their enemies out of office.

They did it, using tactics similar to what the pros within the political parties do: sophisticated polling of voters, TV ads and other media to mount a rising yearlong drumbeat, analysis of districts down to the street level, and knocking on thousands of doors.

And, Schlickeisen says, these enviros did it with little help from the Democratic Party — mostly on their own.

All good signs. For a photo of Schlickeisen, click here. And to hear Schlickeisen talking about it, in the airport, charged up with the realization that he and a few allies had beaten the seemingly unbeatable, click here.

And for my writing about it — and the rest of my Top 10 takeaways from the elections around the West — in High Country News, click here.