What I’m saying is, just in our recent history, that there’s a case where ONRC has softened, if you will. From the perspective of the commodity exploiters and the anti-environmentalists, they don’t even notice it. To them ONRC is the devil incarnate and to them if there’s any little blips in our position it’s not even worth recording. I think we tried accommodation, but I don’t think we benefited from doing so. David Brower made the comment that every time he compromised, he lost. I see that increasingly myself, [because] I don’t think you engender more favor by compromising.
There’s increasingly less pie to cut up?
Yes. I’ll give you another example of where we’ve been criticized. We have two corporations now, we have a [5011 (C) (4) which allows us to do unlimited lobbying and take [political] positions, so we endorsed Tom Bruggere [for senator] in the primary. He was clearly not a strong environmental candidate. The pragmatic argument for us [to endorse him] was that by being on his side early on, if he’d been the eventual winner–which he was not–we would have engendered more favor with him. I suppose that would have been the right decision had he won, although it might not have been. In other words, I think it confuses the public and confuses our members when we don’t do what we’re expected to do. It isn’t to say that you should always do what you’re expected to do, but I think we’ve tried a few things that were a little unconventional. That’s why they’re unconventional, because they usually don’t work. [This included] making deals with the Clinton Administration to give up old growth trees, and endorsing candidates–I think we hoped that Bruggere would have taken a stronger stance than he did, but were embarrassed by a couple of comments he made. I’ve said to Marc Smiley, our new executive director, and Ken Rait, our new conservation director, that they certainly have an opportunity to unite the grassroots [groups] and forest activists who we once worked with closely, by clearly defining ONRC1s position as “Yes, we want it all because there’s very little left.” I hope they do.
Andy Kerr has said that endorsements are a mistake, because once they’re given the group’s leverage decreases. He said that after the ’94 elections and meant, I think, that the candidate might not deliver that much since he already has the endorsement.
Possibly so. I think the philosophy behind the Bruggere endorsement was that by turning our backs on Harry Lonsdale and Jerry Rust–which we did–that he [Bruggere] would owe us for it. I think it works both ways. It was generally acknowledged in the Wyden campaign that the environmental community made the difference by making phone calls and so forth since it was so close. I’m still looking for the payback there–I don’t see it. Again, our restraints on the torture rack aren’t tightened down as much as they were, but we are still waiting for the proactive legislation. Politics is just what it is … what have you done for me lately … where everything is cold and calculated.
