With All Due Respect to My Opponent, the Devil Incarnate ...
Those pols are out once more, pitching their peculiar brand of wool A look at six key environmental skirmishes of Campaign '98.

By Allen Freedman and Nancy Watzman

New Mexico: Udall vs. Redmond
The Players: Republican Congressman Bill Redmond has only been in office since May 1997, having snatched his seat after Democrat Bill Richardson, now Energy Secretary, was appointed U.N. Ambassador. The stoutly conservative nondenominational preacher faces an uphill battle against state Attorney General Tom Udall, scion of one of the West's most powerful conservation-friendly families (his father is former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall).

What's At Stake: The race serves, among other things, as a litmus test on the debate over public land use. It's an issue on which Redmond has unwittingly staked a position by virtue of his eagerness to pander to the hodgepodge of ethnic and resource-based special interests pouring money into his campaign. After hiring the public-affairs director of the hard-core Wise Use group People for the USA as his chief of staff, Redmond proceeded to defend the right of rural villagers to cut down trees in National Forest areas, back a campaign to return public property to Hispanic families that hold old land grants, and demand that the federal government be required to sell BLM parcels for private development before being permitted to purchase the 95,000-acre Baca Ranch in the Jemez Mountains (which has been described by a former director of the Park Service as "the largest piece of inviolate land anywhere near a major city"). Udall, on the other had, gets nothing but praise from environmentalists for pro-green stances like his opposition to the WIPP nuclear-waste dump in the new Mexico desert.

The Forecast: Udall should win handily, but the 23 percent of voters who are undecided or support the state's Green Party played a spoiler role in the Democrats' attempt to beat Redmond in '97 — and could give them nightmares again.

Colorado: Owens vs. Schoettler
The Players: Since Roy Romer, the growly, leather-jacketed, three-term Governor, is prevented from nabbing a fourth go-round by the state's term-limits law, the race is a toss-up between current Lieutenant governor Gail Schoettler, who is trying to emerge from behind Romer's shadow, and State Treasurer Bill Owens, a big-business, big-oil-backed Republican who is as exciting as you'd expect a gray-suited number cruncher to be.

What's At Stake: The state is riding the swell of nine-year boom: unemployment stands at 3.4 percent, housing starts are obscene, and new residents are still pouring in. Managing the problems created by this growth — sprawl, transportation, water usage — has become the issue of the campaign. The signature sound bite in the race concerns transportation, with Joe Commuter serving at the synecdoche for Owens's and Schoettler's platforms. Owens, a former director of the Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Association, wants to expand the highway system, a stance that's earned him the tag "12-Lane Bill." Schoettler, who has been endorsed by the Sierra Club, promotes a more environmentally friendly system of light rail. It will be a telling snapshot of the state of environmentalism circa 1998 to see which option Coloradans embrace: 1) Get me there faster on my own wheels, or 2) Keep the place beautiful.

The Forecast: Anyone's guess. Schoettler is expected to carry the Democrat-rich cities of Denver, boulder, and Pueblo, while Owens will pick up votes from those fiscally conservative — and increasingly numerous — Colorado suburbanites.

Washington: Smith vs. Murray
The Players: The nation's only woman-against-woman Senate race pits Democratic incumbent and self-described "mom in tennis shoes" Patty Murray against two-term Congresswoman Linda Smith, an iconoclastic Republican who once compared Newt Gingrich to "one fat kid eating all the food" and was subsequently exiled to committee-assignment limbo when she voted against him for Speaker.

What's At Stake: With the state's traditional timber, farming, and fishing sectors now eclipsed by a suburban economy fueled by software and other high-tech industries, education and the environment have become key issues. This is bad news for challenger Smith, a sharp-tongued upstart from un-hip, semirural southern Washington, who is "invisible on the environment" (according to the Seattle Times) and whose social conservatism and pro-logging stance doesn't resonate with most voters. Seattleite Murray, known for her deference to Puget Sound's explosively successful business community (Boeing, her biggest contributor, was recently fined for 21 hazardous-waste spills), is nevertheless viewed as a green giant in the Senate: She led the fight to repeal the infamous "timber rider," is spearheading the effort to designate the Hanford Reach of the Columbia as a Wild and Scenic River, and has an 89-percent-positive rating from the League of Conservation Voters. If Murray does have an Achilles' heel, it is her low-powered image: She recently claimed the top spot on Washingtonian magazine's "No Rocket Scientist" list.

The Forecast: Will Murray win? Well, is Bill Gates rich? Smith, who at press time was running 16 percent behind Murray in the polls, is simply too strident to nab a majority in fin de siˆcle Washington.

New York: Schumer vs. D'Amato
The Players: Alfonse D'Amato is the Senate's master quick-change artist: The Republican has won three elections with mendacious last-minute campaign ads designed, among other things, to cloak his consistently anti-environmental voting record and enable him to pose as a green-friendly moderate. Hoping to turn the race into an object lesson in the inefficacy of greenscamming, environmentalists are throwing support behind Brooklyn Congressman Charles Schumer, best known for pushing high-profile urban issues like gun control.

What's At Stake: Environmentalism, of course, will be barely audible amid the din of the vitriolic crime-and-ethics plank on which this race will hinge. However, if Republicans pick up Senate seats this fall, and especially if they gain a decisive majority, D'Amato's vote might prove instrumental in GOP efforts to push initiatives similar to the 1995 Dole regulatory reform bill — legislation that would roll back such environmental protections as clean-air enforcement by forcing federal agencies to jump through endless bureaucratic hoops. Convicted polluters might also face reduced fines: Some of D'Amato's biggest contributors are the New York-based insurers of large corporations like Shell Oil, which the federal government is determined to stick with the bill for cleaning up toxic-waste sites polluted before the 1980 Superfund Law. Schumer has vowed to increase such penalties and work to strengthen the Clean Air Act.

The Forecast: Senator Schumer? Fuggedaboudit! True, Schumer is a scrappy challenger — but D'Amato, the Mike Tyson of the campaign trail, is legendary for leaving his opponents bloody and beaten.

North Carolina: Edwards vs. Faircloth
The Players: A Senator who owns controlling interest in one of the country's largest hog-farming operations, Republican Lauch Faircloth has unabashedly defined statesmanship in terms of his ability to deliver Congressional pork to the corporate-agriculture fat cats who helped get him elected in 1992. In one of 1998's most watched races, Faircloth faces Raleigh trial lawyer John Edwards, a New South Democrat and political rookie trying to paint himself as the common man's candidate by playing up the fact that his father worked in a textile mill — and playing down the fact that, as one of America's most successful plaintiff's attorneys, he is worth $13.7 million. But many Tarheels prefer farmer millionaires to the citified lawyer variety.

What's At Stake: Since 1992, Faircloth has pushed hard to soften the definition of wetlands and to slash penalties for wetlands abuses, measures that would be decidedly beneficial to ... him: 558 acres of his Coharie Farms are classed as wetlands, and in 1996, when 250,000 gallons of sweet-potato waste from his cattle troughs killed thousands of fish in a nearby river, he was fined $48,442. Edwards is opportunistically calling hog-farm pollution his "top environmental priority" and stumping for "vigorous enforcement" of clean-water laws. Blurring the lines, however, is Faircloth's born-again green conversion: Recently he has been inveighing against the evils of logging subsidies and offshore drilling.

The Forecast: Dead even, in a race that recalls Harvey Gantt's 1990 and 1996 challenges of Jesse Helms. Faircloth's less-than-50-percent approval rating is debilitating for an incumbent, but Edwards's personal-injury background may cost him a hefty chunk of the essential urban Democratic business vote.

California: Fong vs. Boxer
The Players: Barbara Boxer, among the most pugilistically liberal members of the Senate, comes from affluent Marin County and is known for the strong support she enjoys among Hollywood Democrats. Running against the one-term incumbent is Republican State Treasurer Matt Fong, a lawyer and retired Air Force Reserve officer who makes up for his charisma deficit with savvy appeals to the restive moderate-to-conservative portion of the electorate.

What's At Stake: In myriad ways California is, of course, the Big One, and its environmental politics are no different. Green pols fear that Boxer's possible defeat would be a major setback for environmental clout in the Senate. Nevertheless, the campaign debate has largely been framed around issues specific to the Golden State, such as regulatory relief for California's gigantic agribusiness sector (Fong's for it; Boxer's opposed). The battle is as much about style as substance: Boxer has collected more campaign money from 90210 than any other zip code, counts Barbra Streisand as a fervent supporter, and has had to live down a reputation as something of a publicity-mongering flake; Fong, by contrast, presents himself as a sober-sided family-values man and a prudent property-rights advocate who will make business the business of California. Fong's cause may derive some benefit from spillover disgust with Monicagate; Boxer, whose daughter is married to Hillary Rodham Clinton's brother, found herself in a deeply embarrassing position by virtue of her aggressive defense of the President prior to his mea culpas about his affair.

The Forecast: While the race is too close to call, the way that enviro-issues play could have a crucial impact on the final vote. Boxer's best hope is that save-the-dolphins sentiment can win the day, while Fong might eke out a victory if he can convince enough voters that liberal and green are not necessarily synonymous.

Illustrations by Tim Bower