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Politico...
Greens
not friendless among House GOP
By Darren Samuelsohn
8/4/11
No,
Theodore Roosevelt hasn’t been
reincarnated.
But
environmentalists playing defense
all year against the House GOP legislative agenda have found a few
helpful
friends among a 240-member conference steeped in tea party influence.
Dozens
of purple-state Republicans
have broken ranks with their party leadership to take the pro-green
position
during floor and committee votes spanning more than 100 bills and
amendments.
Granted,
the defections seldom come
all at the same time, meaning the number of actual environmental
victories can
be counted on one hand.
Still,
greens look at the list of
occasional allies as a reminder that lawmakers fear being penalized if
they
venture too far out against their districts’ interests on wildlife
conservation
and air, water and land pollution.
“Votes
for the environment are good
for the country, good for their reelection and ultimately good for
their
party,” said Scott Slesinger, legislative director at the Natural
Resources
Defense Council.
Republicans
have a variety of reasons
for taking their pro-green stands in 2011. Many sit atop the list of
potential
Democratic pickups because they represent districts and states that
went for
Barack Obama or John Kerry in the last two presidential campaigns,
including
Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and
Virginia.
Several
also said they’re not under
the same kind of GOP leadership demands that forced floor unity in past
sessions of Congress, where votes across the aisle could mean losing
out on a
cherished committee assignment or draw an officially sanctioned primary
challenge.
“The
leadership to their great credit
understand that we all come from diverse backgrounds and divergent
districts
and have been very gracious and understanding that we’ve got a job to
do and
they let us do it,” said Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, one of 37
Republicans to vote with Democrats last month to pass an amendment that
allows
the Interior Department to continue new listings under the Endangered
Species
Act.
Republican
veterans of past
environmental battles say the number of green allies this year really
isn’t all
that big, something they attribute foremost to the fear of getting a
tea party
primary challenger.
“It
should be an embarrassment for the
party,” said former Rep. Sherwood Boehlert of New York, now a vice
chairman of
the League of Conservation Voters’s board and an honorary board member
of
Republicans for Environmental Protection. “There are several more, in
magnitudes of 10, who’d like to do it but find it politically
inconvenient or
feel it’d create too much angst in certain segments of their
constituency.”
“I
still think there’s a hangover of
the ability of the tea party last cycle, the willingness to field
primary
challengers against people they viewed as moderate, people who weren’t
100
percent with their orthodoxy,” said David Jenkins, government affairs
director
at Republicans for Environmental Protection.
Several
House Republicans brushed off
concern about the tea party in 2012 challenging them because of their
pro-environment votes, or for that matter, the votes they’ve taken on
any
issues that can be seen as too liberal.
Read
the rest of the story at Politico
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