What's Gale Norton Trying to Hide? (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine June 2002

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What's Gale Norton Trying to Hide? (Cont.)

"AREN'T YOU GOING to ask me about hiking and skiing?" Norton asks near the end of our interview. "I'm an avid skier," she says, easing back into her sofa. "I can go down anything, I just look bad." She smiles at her joke. For the first time in an hour, she actually seems relaxed.

Norton says she has but one regret since moving to Washington: Less trail time. "My schedulers keep getting driven crazy by the fact that they can't fit hikes in my schedule." A few weeks before, on a trip to Yellowstone, Norton says she was thrilled to see the word "Hike" written on her calendar. "And we hiked, like, a hundred yards!" she exclaims. "That's not a hike!"

This is the face Norton wants you to see, the easygoing trail walker who, much to her surprise, woke up one day in charge of a whole lot of nature. So far, her success has depended on juggling public support of environmental protections with her far quieter maneuverings to undercut them. She may soon find that she's been too successful in fulfilling her energy goals, making her a fat target for the president's political enemies. With the help of greens and Democrats in Congress, even people who can't spell BLM will be inundated with television ads and direct-mail packets that put the words "oil well" and "national monument" in ominous proximity.

But environmentalists have plenty of their own problems. Norton's success has shown that their combat methods are getting tired—on the national level, they really only work when there's a Democratic majority in the Senate or House to back them up, or a sympathetic judge. For Democrats, making the environment the centerpiece of the fall congressional campaign has its potential drawbacks—the chief one being that most people don't vote the environment, even though they tell pollsters that green issues are important. Not that Democrats have much choice. The war on terrorism has made Bush so popular that, at least for now, he's vulnerable to attack on only a few issues—and the environment is one.

They'd better hope it works. If the strategy fails and Republicans win the Senate—which could happen—the greens' time-honored tactics won't do much good. Gale Norton will be heading back to Alaska, and this time, she'll be bringing more than a crate of oranges.

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