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Employment History

Rep. Paul Ryan (**R**-WI)

*Policy Assistant to the Speaker

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Representative Richard Pombo (R-CA) chaired the committee from 2003 to 2007 (during the 108th and 109th Congresses). During his tenure, the panel was officially named the House Committee on Resources. [1, 2, 3, 4]

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During Richard Pombo’s chairmanship of the House Committee on Resources (2003–2007), the committee focused heavily on property rights, domestic energy production, and rewriting major environmental laws. [1, 2, 3]

Environmental & Wildlife Laws

Energy & Public Lands

Water Infrastructure

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Representative Nick Rahall (D-WV) served as the ranking member of the House Resources Committee during the 108th, 109th, and 110th Congresses spanning from 2003 to 2007. The committee was known as the Committee on Resources during this period before being renamed to Natural Resources in 2007. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Twice Told-Tales: Gang symbols banned

The Tracy Press

March 10, 2016

City officials met with Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, seeking his help in securing federal funds for a Chrisman Road overpass over the Union Pacific switching yard, connecting 11th Street with Grant Line Road.

Twice-Told Tales: CHP plans Tracy station

The Tracy Press

February 19, 2016

City-owned property at 11th Street and Chrisman Road is the favored site. Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, is defending his use of a rented recreational vehicle to visit national parks in a government-paid trip.

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mashey 2012

Z.2005.10-6 Richard Pombo (R-CA), Jim Gibbons(R-NV) House Committee Leaders Issue Mercury Report Science shows scare campaignsunwarranted, study says “Mercury is a naturally occurring element that is ubiquitous in the environment. Most of the mercury existing in the environment is released through natural processes. Thus, we are all exposed to trace amounts of mercury no matter what levels are emitted through human activity, including power plant emissions.”

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Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2001 

Subject: MAXXAM's House task force ethics violation

Congressman Pombo May be Guilty of House Ethics Violations for Release of report on MAXXAM's Failed S&L

Headwaters, Steelworker and anti-MAXXAM compatriots and members of the media: 

A serious breach of Congressional ethics has taken place with the release of Congressman Pombo's report from his Resources sub-committee task force on how the debt for nature idea supposedly inspired the banking regulators to file court actions against Hurwitz, MAXXAM and United Savings. 

The breach is this: The task force which Pombo chaired is defunct--it no longer exists. Further, no vote of the resources committee occured to release the report. Instead, Pombo snuck it through to the public record by simply entering into the congressional record. 

In other words, a rogue Congressman Pombo, without any authorization at all entered a report declaring poor Charles Hurwitz to be a victim of a conspiracy between federal banking regulators and "eco-terrorists" to deprive him of his redwoods. News accounts even point to the highly unusual method of entering this into the public record. 

:{:{Last year, MAXXAM made contributions to many members of the task force, banking committee, and the Bush Inaugural that activists believe bought and paid for the Republican-led task force.

}:}:

U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA)

In 2003, Abramoff gave Richard Pombo's (R-CA) PAC $5,000. Abramoff also gave $2,000, the maximum allowed, to Pombo's congressional campaign committee that same year.

On January 8, 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported that "Pombo helped one of Abramoff's clients, the Mashpee Indians in Massachusetts, gain official recognition as a tribe; the congressman received contributions from the lobbyist and the tribe in that instance."[16]

Hidden Ties: Big Environmental Changes Backed by Big Industry

Wednesday, 08 March 2006 20:20:{

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Hidden Ties: Big Environmental Changes Backed by Big Industry

    By Paul D. Thacker

    Environmental Science and Technology Online

Wednesday 08 March 2006

Lobbyists and industry officials who once pushed for the president's Healthy Forests legislation now collaborate with Rep. Pombo to alter the Endangered Species Act.

    Since President Bush took office, Republicans have successfully pushed through major reforms that target regulations for power-plant emissions and the management of federal forests. During his 2004 campaign for reelection, the president praised his Healthy Forests initiative as "a good, common-sense policy." This year, the Republican-led Congress is gearing up for yet another "common-sense" reform to a major piece of environmental legislation - the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Critics of these reforms charge that they are little more than giveaways to the affected industries and note that the changes enacted with the Healthy Forests legislation limit citizens' ability to appeal logging sales on federal lands and emphasize cutting trees to prevent fires. However, the reformers point to support by "grassroots" groups as a sign that these changes are popular with citizens and not just industry.

ES&T has examined in detail one short-lived "grassroots" environmental organization that was based in Oregon - a state with vast forests and species-rich ecosystems. The leading figures in this group played a key role in passingPresident Bush's Healthy Forests legislation and are now promoting changes to ESA. From dozens of interviews and reviews of thousands of pages of documents, ES&T has found clear evidence that this "grassroots" organization has clear ties to timber corporations - an industry likely to benefit financially from legislative reforms.

Change - With Help From Your Friends

    The movement to alter ESA is being led in Congress byRep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), a rancher from California and the powerful chair of the House of Representatives' Committee on Natural Resources. The effort to change ESA cleared its first hurdle in September 2005 when the House approved Pombo's bill (H.R. 3824). Major provisions in the bill would remove requirements to designate critical habitat to protect endangered and threatened species and would also add a new requirement for the government to compensate landowners when the law impedes them from developing their land.

    To write the bill, Pombo called on the help of Steve Quarles, a lobbyist who works for the timber industry. "I spent a great deal of time with Pombo's staff," Quarles told ES&T, and during that time he helped write the bill.

But Pombo, Quarles, and other reformers face an important obstacle. For well over a decade, public opinion has run strongly against changes viewed as weakening environmental laws. An October 2005 Harris Poll found that 74% of Americans believe that "protecting the environment is so important that requirements and standards cannot be too high, and continuing environmental improvements must be made regardless of cost."

To counter possible negative opinion and shape a message that is palatable to political moderates, Pombo and other ESA reformers have drawn on a new form of grassroots environmentalism that sides with corporate causes. One example is the Save Our Species Alliance (SOSA), which has become a prominent voice in convincing voters that change to ESA is needed.

On its website, SOSA carries this message: "The Endangered Species Act is a good law with good intentions. The Save Our Species Alliance will work across the country to promote common sense, balanced, and scientifically supported changes to the ESA." Pictured next to the statement is an endangered reptile.

    SOSA's campaign director is Tim Wigley [MS Word], who is also the executive director of Pac/West Communications, a public-relations (PR) firm with offices in Oregon, Alaska, and Washington, DC. In an interview with ES&T, Wigley stated that SOSA is a grassroots group of farmers, labor groups, and others "who all care about modernizing the Endangered Species Act."

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    In January 2005, Wigley traveled to Washington, DC, to address a group of property-rights activists who also wanted to reform ESA. The gathering took place in a committee meeting room at the House of Representatives. Democrats contacted by ES&T said that they were not invited, but the participants included staffers working for a number of republicans includingPombo and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), chairof the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Wigley's presentation discussed how to best sell changes in ESA to the American public and included results from focus groups and polls, said Chuck Cushman, executive director of the American Land Rights Assoc., a private-property-rights group, and a participant at in the meeting. Of Wigley's talents at delivering a message, Cushman said, "He's very skilled, more skilled than I am. He has the grassroots at heart." Cushman added that he had even employed Wigley to help with various political causes.

Hidden Roots, Hidden Money

    Federal [records show](http://sopr.senate.gov/cgi-win/opr_gifviewer.exe?/2005/01/000/041/000041807|2) that SOSA's lobbyist is Steve Quarles, who told ES&T that he filed the paperwork to incorporate the organization. Practically a Washington, DC, institution, Quarles has long worked to shape environmental laws to favor corporations. During the debate over the president's Healthy Forests legislation, Quarles lobbied for its passage on behalf of the **American Forest and Paper Assoc.**, the largest trade group for the forest products industry. Previously, he represented the American Forest Resource Council (AFRC), a group that lobbies for management of public lands to favor industry.

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    Wigley, too, has a long history with the timber industry. Before joining Pac/West, he worked for the Oregon Forest Industries Council (OFIC), a trade organization that represents forest-products companies. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) records show that his work for OFIC included raising large sums of cash. For the 2002 elections,Wigley raised $327,100 from timber companies, such as Weyerhaueser and Boise Cascade. This money was then handed out to Republicans running for state offices in Oregon. Before joining OFIC, Wigley worked as a press officer for Georgia Pacific, one of the world's largest forest-products corporations. His biography also states that he is agraduate of the American Campaign Academy, a group**created**by advisers to former Rep. Newt Gingrich to train Republican political operatives. [1]

Wigley and Pac/West are no strangers to environmental reform movements. Several years ago, Wigley led Project Protect, which helped pass the Healthy Forests legislation by lobbying Congress and running advertisements and opinion pieces to influence the public in timber-rich states.

One example of this work was an opinion piece that ran in July 2003 in the Reno Gazette, a Nevada newspaper. Pac/West's community outreach associate, Liz Arnold, wrote, "[M]anaging our forests and rangelands instead of spending ... time responding to litigation and special interest politics is now an environmental necessity." She encouraged residents to support "scientific management" of our forests, adding, "Passage of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act is critical." The piece describes her as a "Project Protect grassroots coordinator."

    When asked, Wigley shied away from disclosing who financially backs SOSA and who funded Project Protect, saying Project Protect "was a grassroots organization." He added, "I am not a lobbyist. I think this line of questioning is misleading."

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    Project Protect was registered as a nonprofit in April 2003 by Wigley at Pac/West Communications. According to federal records, Wigley became the group's lobbyist and coordinated his work with the Bush Administration until the project disbanded in 2004, after the 2004 presidential race. In 2003, the address for Project Protect was a MailBoxes Etc. store in Portland, Ore., but the following year, the address changed to the offices of American Forest Resource Council (AFRC).

AFRC's president, Tom Partin, said the council's members weren't really involved in Project Protect, which he said was just a PR campaign coordinated by Wigley to pass the Healthy Forests legislation.

Project Protect's now-defunct website (www.landsense.us) billed the organizationas a "grassroots coalition of western communities, natural resource groups, labor organizations, and conservationists" whose mission was "to protect our over-populated, dense forests from catastrophic wildfire and disease."

    Until now, Project Protect has hidden its ties to industry and sources of funding. The first public mention of Project Protect was in the industry magazineInternational Wood Fiber Report [184KB PDF] in May 2003. In an article that month, Jim Peterson of the industry-funded Evergreen Foundation was quoted calling Project Protect a "hardball approach" to get the president's bill signed. "It's not a warm, fuzzy PR campaign," he said. "It's a fight to the finish. We intend to work behind the scenes with industry associations with much of the PR off the radar screen by design."

    In an email obtained by ES&T that Wigley wrote in February 2005, he revealed his own views on Project Protect. "When I directed the healthy forests battle two years ago, I had to change the way the forest products industry talked," he wrote. "We didn't change our goals - just the way we communicated."

The Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania estimated that Project Protect bought $10,000 in advertising in 2004. However, ES&T has learned that the organization actually spent $2.9 million on media and lobbying during its 2-year existencebefore evaporating after the 2004 elections, according to copies of Project Protect's 2003 and 2004 tax statements. The documents do not list the donors.

From newspapers and radio stations in Oregon, ES&T learned how some of this money was spent. In 2004, two full-page ads for Project Protect ran in The Oregonian; a salesperson with the newspaper said they cost more than $10,000 each. And a salesperson at Oregon radio station KEZI said that ads for Project Protect totaled more than $70,000 between August and November of 2004. "They made a real statement," said the salesperson. Tax forms for SOSA are not yet available.

    In November 2004, Pombo recognized Wigley's work with Project Protect by sending a letter [117KB PDF] to the Forest Resources Assoc. recommending Wigley for an award. "Tim's efforts in leading the grassroots campaign 'Project Protect' without question helped position the Healthy Forests Restoration Act for successful passage in the U.S. Congress," Pombo wrote. Wigley received the award and a cash prize from the association a few months later.

    In August 2005, Pac/West returned the favor by hosting a fund-raiser [1.2MB PDF] for Pombo in Wilsonville, Ore., where the firm is headquartered. Around this time, the Pac/West CEO Paul Phillips, a former Oregon state senator, donated $1000 to Pombo's campaign. Members listed on IRS documents as directors for Project Protect donated an additional $3000.

ES&T contacted Pombo's office on numerous occasions seeking comment about his ties to SOSA and to various officials who created the group. After a brief exchange, Pombo's office stopped returning calls and would no longer respond to inquiries.

Creating a Synthetic Movement

Larry Noble at the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics, said this type of corporate-funded countermovement only came to fruition in the 1990s after businesses suffered decades of poor public perception and lost numerous political battles to environmental groups. [2]

In the sixties, people heard the corporate message, "Better living through chemistry" but then discovered that this same industry was making napalm. The widespread disillusionment of the era led to a cynical attitude toward large companies. "People just began to discount them," Noble said. Industry responded, he added, by putting more resources into PR and lobbying groups that know how to get an industry message out to the media and to the public in an appealing way.

"There is this issue of balance in the media," he said. "So, a journalist will go out and interview someone from an environmental group and then someone from an industry [funded] environmental group."

And another payoff exists, Noble said, when it comes to advertising and shaping public perception. "When one of these groups takes out an ad, most people will not look to see who's behind it" or whether the sponsoring group is funded by industry or by a public-interest group, he said.

Noble said that it is shocking that Project Protect spent $2.9 million in advertising to pass Bush's Healthy Forests legislation. "It gives you some sense of what the real grassroots [organizations] are up against."

"Some people call it Astroturf," said Ken Gross, a lawyer who specializes in ethics and campaign-finance cases. Unlike traditional grassroots groups that may consist of local activists meeting in someone's living room, these new operations are backed by corporate money and run like professional political campaigns. "It's not mom-and-pop; it's highly sophisticated, with well-compensated people. [But] there's nothing unholy about it."

With a grant from the National Science Foundation, Drexel University associate professor of sociology Robert Brulle is analyzing the nearly 8000 U.S. environmental organizations that operated between 1900 and 2000. He found that while some groups prospered with large memberships, broad community support, and elected leaders, some of the newer groups consisted of an appointed board and had unknown financial sources. The new groups labeled themselves as grassroots, but they also had strong financial ties to corporations and leaders drawn from industry groups or PR firms.

The word grassroots "implies broad representation, but when you ask questions, you'll find that some groups get [mad]," said Brulle, especially when you ask them where they get their money. "I have yet to find one of these industry groups that was authentic. They are mostly top-down, short-term groups."

Douglas G. Pinkham, president of the Public Affairs Council, an educational group for lobbyists, said that current scandals in the U.S. involving disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, may lead to greater transparency in politics and lobbying.

"Most companies I talk with shy away from these tactics," he says, referring to PR firms creating industry-funded environmental advocacy groups. "They realize in the long run that it hurts their reputation."

[1] IRS Forms

Secretly funded and staffed by industry, Project Protect was a $2.9 million media campaign to persuade the public to support President Bush's Healthy Forests legislation.

2003 IRS form [2.4MB PDF]

    2004 IRS form [1MB PDF]

[2] Think Tank or Lobby Shop?

    The January 2005 meeting in Washington, DC, at which Tim Wigley spoke to activists in the property-rights movement about changing the Endangered Species Act was attended by representatives from several libertarian think tanks, including Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and David Ridenour of the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR). Ebell, Ridenour, and other "scholars" from these think tanks have been central to the advance of conservative policy and efforts at deregulation, say many observers.

    For example, Chuck Cushman, executive director of the American Land Rights Assoc., told ES&T that he had employed both Wigley and Ebell to help with various political causes in the property-rights movement. And when Wigley's Save Our Species Alliance sent out press releases in the summer of 2005, journalists were asked to contact Tom Randall with the consulting firm Winningreen. Before he started Winningreen, Randall and his wife Gretchen were employed by NCPPR, where they wrote environmental policy papers that supported corporate positions on topics such as forest policy and global warming.

Ebell, in particular, has emerged as a major force in shaping public opinion. At CEI, Ebell refashioned himself from a property rights adovocate to become a leading global-warming skeptic. He is now often quoted by media outlets such as the Washington Post as a counter to researchers whose studies point out the need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

Larry Noble of the Center on Responsive Politics said he wasn't too surprised to hear that a network of lobbyists, industry officials, and scholars from libertarian think tanks jump from one issue to the next in an effort to change environmental laws. "It's known that this is going on, just not all the exact details," he said. "It makes me think of the early 70s in rock, where all these music groups formed and then quickly died. But when you really looked at it, it was just the same musicians moving from band to band."

    NCPPR's current senior fellow on environmental policy is Bonner R. Cohen. A check of Internal Revenue Service documents showed that Cohen is also the director of TASSC, a science lobbying group which was started in 1993 by the communications firm APCO Associates to promote "sound science" on behalf of tobacco companies. As reported by ES&T in May 2005, TASSC is now run from the home of Steven Milloy, a FoxNews.com columnist, climate-change skeptic, self-described basher of "junk science", and an adjunct "scholar" at CEI. -PDT

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inset: Critics say that the tactics detailed in this email sent by Wigley are now commonly employed to persuade the public to support laws that favor large corporations.

View the email[168KB PDF]

--

    Paul D. Thacker joined the ES&T staff in early 2004, after four years as a freelance writer for publications such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, Science, and The Christian Science Monitor. He has covered a wide variety of stories, including an Ebola outbreak in Africa, urban butterflies inhabiting our cities, and the politics of restoring populations of prairie dogs. During his free time, Thacker enjoys reading books, following the news, and cooking. He is a recent migrant to Washington, DC, and loves exploring the city and its great restaurants and museums.

==

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_Pombo

 2006 http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=06-P13-00043&segmentID=2

  --

2013 http://blogs.rollcall.com/moneyline/former-congressman-starts-super-pac/

A former Congressman has planted a seed and started a super PAC in the central valley of California.

Former Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) is the new chairman of Empower Central Valley, a new super PAC that has registered with the Federal Election Commission.  The PAC is based in Tracy, California. The PAC will support conservative candidates, such as freshman Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) and freshman Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.).

The super PAC may receive contributions of any size and make independent expenditures for and against candidates.

Pombo served in Congress from 1992 to 2006 and was chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee from 2003-2006. His committee handled legislation about natural resources, Indian lands and Indian gaming.  He was also on the House Agricultural Committee.

To search detailed money-in-politics databases, visit Political MoneyLine.

September 30, 2005Back Issues« previousnext »

Environmentalists Decry House Passage of Endangered Species 'Reform'

By a vote of 229 to 193, the U.S. House yesterday passed a bill

that environmentalists say will completely cripple the

Endangered Species Act (ESA). Enacted into law in 1973 by

President Richard Nixon, the ESA has been a cornerstone of

America's environmental protection framework. The bill will move

to the Senate next week.

:{Sponsored by Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), a longtime foe of ESA,

the new legislation is entitled the "Threatened and Endangered

Species RecoveryAct," or TESRA. It has triggered a firestorm of

opposition}: across the entire spectrum of environmental

organizations, who have united in an all-out effort to kill it

in the Senate.

Finding the phrase "Recovery Act" more than ironic, Defenders of

Wildlife President Rodger Schlickeisen says TESRA "Runs counter

to the very intent of the Endangered Species Act," containing

"provisions that would severely cripple the federal effort to

recover endangered plants and animals." [1]

Environmentalists point out that the ESA through the years has

saved such species as the bald eagle, Florida manatee and the

key deer. If Rep. Pombo's TESRA had been in effect then, not

even the bald eagle would qualify for listing.

Drawing particular alarm is a provision that would end the

protection of critical habitat necessary for the survival and

recovery of plants and animals. Under the current law, areas

designated "essential to the conservation of species" qualify as

"critical habitat" and are subject to federal protection.

Pombo's bill replaces "critical habitat" with a recovery plan

that merely identifies areas that are valuable to the species,

but does not mandate any specific federal protection.

Critics charge that this change takes away the most effective

provision of the ESA. Species that live in designated critical

habitat are twice as likely to survive as those without this

form of protection. [2]

TESRA would also require taxpayers to pay developers and other

landowners to comply with the ESA--in essence paying people not

to break the law. It does this by requiring the Department of

Interior to respond within 180 days to a landowner's request to

implement a development plan; then, if the project is not

permitted, the federal government must pay for any value that is

allegedly lost. This, says Kieran Suckling of the Center for

Biological Diversity, literally "begs developers to plan

projects that allow them to extort money from the government."

[3]

Moreover, while the current ESA requires that all decisions be

based on the "best scientific and commercial information"

available, the Pombo bill removes that authority from scientific

experts and transfers it to Interior Secretary Gale Norton,

whose record consistently favors commercial interests over

environmental protection.

The Pombo bill also eliminates the protection for "threatened"

species, i.e. species not yet considered endangered, but whose

population levels have reached dangerously low levels. [4]

TESRA also makes it extremely difficult to list any species in

the first place. In order for a species to be listed under

TESRA, the Fish and Wildlife Service will have to duplicate and

store all data on habitat decisions in every state in which the

species exists. Environmental groups see this as a way to

"bureaucratize a system that is already working fine." [5]

###

SOURCES: 

[1] "Assault on Endangered Species Act: Pombo Moving Legislation that would Cripple Endangered Species Act," Defenders of

Wildlife, Sept. 19. 2005.

[2] "Pombo's Anti-Endangered Species Bill Leaked Again," Center

for Biological Diversity, Sept. 15, 2005.

[3] Ibid. 

[4] Ibid. 

[5] Ibid.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080509162511/http://www.bushgreenwatch.org/mt_archives/000297.php

Permanent link to this article

Richard William Pombo was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2007, representing the 11th District of California. He was defeated in the 2006 congressional elections by Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.).

In February 2007, Pombo joined the public relations firm Pac/West Communications as a "senior partner." The firm had previously supported Pombo's efforts to weaken Endangered Species Act protections and holds a $3 million contract from the Alaska state government, "to coordinate a campaign for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration," which Pombo has supported. [1]

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cycle=2006&cid=N00007516 2006

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cid=N00007516&cycle=2004&type=C&newMem=N&recs=100  2004

**National Wilderness Institute**

Dedicated to wilderness destruction, NWI boasts a board of heavy hitters including Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), Reps. Dick Armey (R-Texas) and Richard Pombo (R-Calif.), and former Bureau of Land Management honcho Don Hodel, architect of the famed Hodel policy which allowed county governments to bulldoze new roads across federal wilderness lands. Today NWI attacks the Endangered Species Act and the U.N. Biodiversity Convention, defends the petroleum economy, and publishes NWI Resource magazine, with articles like "The Magic of Property Rights" and "Ecosystems: Where Do They End?" Funded by: Hardwood Manufacturers Association.

http://motherjones.com/politics/1997/12/wingnuts-sheeps-clothing

Endangered book by Tobin 2010

2005 propsed Thr and End Spec Recovery Act would weaken (one draft had sunset clause that wd end act 2015) 220

had to consider economic factors, and in fact any info an admin or political appointee thought relevant p 221

western water and power co'sd/nog? would have to list cost of protecting species on mo bill 223  fed gov wd have to compensate for wolf on cow (enviros agtreed0  but also for any perceived loss of economic value (Sup[ Ct ruled in 92 that only if all value lost was it a "taking"; a developer coud buy say a wetland and then claim damage 223. bill votd on only 10 days after intro; 36 dems (west and so) voted for)  229-193, went to senate p 223

limited to empircal data (so no models) ; demands only perr-rev, but that excludes lots of imp docs such as academic thesis 221  eliminated habitat protection

2006 mojo

http://www.motherjones.com/print/15067

Revolt of the Elders

Where sprawl meets rangeland, a GOP warhorse sets out to save his party from itself.

By Dick Russell | Thu Aug. 31, 2006 11:00 PM PDT

Don't be under any illusions that I'm a great man," Pete McCloskey insisted, his steel-blue eyes fixed on his interlocutor. "I'm just pissed off." It was mid-May, three weeks before the Republican primary in California's 11th Congressional District, and McCloskey was holed up at his law firm, preparing for a debate. On one wall was a cartoon of Theodore Roosevelt shaking his fists at a corporate malefactor. Another held a painting that portrayed Richard Nixon's Oval Office as a shark tank. There was also a photograph of McCloskey's current nemesis, a rancher and property-rights advocate turned congressman by the name of Richard Pombo, being patted on both cheeks by George W. Bush.

Back when he was in Congress, between 1967 and 1982, McCloskey was a maverick -- the first Republican to challenge the war in Vietnam, an advocate for Nixon's impeachment, cochairman of the first Earth Day. But never before had he felt as if the party of his affection and long loyalty and the one that governed the country were entirely separate, and possibly hostile, entities. "I've been a Republican since 1948," he said, "before Pombo was born. But I'm ashamed of what my party has become, and to me, Pombo represents the very worst of it."

In announcing his candidacy late in January, the 78-year-old McCloskey had characterized his campaign as "a battle for the soul of the Republican Party." He'd left his Yolo County ranch to rent a room in Pombo's district some 90 miles away. He'd traveled thousands of miles through four counties looking to unseat the powerful chairman of the House Resources Committee -- a man whom Bush had nicknamed "Marlboro Man," whom the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington had dubbed "one of the 13 most corrupt members of Congress," and who had been engaged in undoing every stitch of the legacy left by McCloskey's generation of lawmakers. It was, McCloskey had cheerfully admitted earlier, a "damn foolish thing to do" -- not a pointless thing, and not entirely hopeless, but definitely the kind of errand a man would undertake when he saw no other way. "I'm under no illusions that my fight will be successful," McCloskey said, "but somebody had to do this."

By 4 p.m., it was 97 degrees in the San Joaquin Valley, and McCloskey's campaign RV, emblazoned with the words "Real Republican Values Express," was parked outside Williams High School in Pombo's hometown of Tracy. Pombo's motor home, with its "Rancher-Congressman" sign, sat 100 yards up the street; staffers handed out granola bars, "nourishment while you listen to Congressman Pombo's commonsense solutions on energy and transportation." (Cars, and their cost, were a hot issue in the San Francisco Bay Area bedroom community, where 91 percent of workers commute, some as many as five hours a day.) A man dressed as Abraham Lincoln arrived with a bullhorn and intoned: "The party I started has been riddled with corruption and lack of integrity." Inside, the crowd was standing room only.

McCloskey took the stage, a tan suit encasing his 6-foot-plus frame, his shock of white hair bright in the spotlight. Pombo made a late entrance with his wife, Annette, and their three teenage children. He had close-cropped dark hair and sported a mustache, goatee, and gold chain. More than half the audience rose in a standing ovation, with a lone voice yelling, "Down with the crook!" "Ride 'em, cowboy!" someone yelled back.

"I went to Washington because I wanted to change the way that Washington worked, and I felt like I could," Pombo said, his soft, high-pitched voice contrasting with McCloskey's theatrical baritone. McCloskey talked about the four generations of Californians in his family, and how he'd actually contributed $100 to Pombo's first campaign. When he said that Pombo had recently taken campaign money from "three people who've pled guilty to bribing congressmen," he was booed.

A week later, as McCloskey was handing out campaign literature outside a Stockton hall where Vice President Dick Cheney was holding a $500-a-head Pombo fundraiser, a much younger, much bulkier man approached him. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," the man said. McCloskey replied, "I think we ought to have ethics in Washington." When the man continued, "You're a liar," McCloskey cocked a fist and stepped up nose to nose. "Who are you calling a liar?" he said evenly.

"McCloskey has always been one of these guys who's fearless," says former Colorado congressman Jim Johnson, a longtime friend. McCloskey earned two Purple Hearts in Korea. He then went to Stanford Law; the firm he started after graduating, in 1955, is now California's largest. An outdoorsman who loved backPACking in the High Sierras, McCloskey left the firm in 1964 to form the state's first law office devoted exclusively to land use and environmental concerns.

In 1967, J. Arthur Younger, McCloskey's congressman in the San Francisco Bay Area's mid-Peninsula district, died from leukemia, and ex-child star Shirley Temple Black announced her intention to seek the seat as a Republican. "We had Ronald Reagan as governor, another actor named George Murphy as a senator," McCloskey recalls. "Something snapped." Temple Black was urging more U.S. involvement in Vietnam; McCloskey, after sequestering himself for a month of study, came out against the war. He was 39, sandy haired, and Kennedy handsome. Walking neighborhoods and knocking on doors, he pulled off a stunning upset. The campaign inspired a book titled The Sinking of the Lollipop.

In 1970, McCloskey became the cochairman of the first Earth Day, after which a group of environmental organizers declared war on a "Dirty Dozen" polluter-friendly members of Congress who were up for reelection. Ten were Republicans, and half would be defeated. "So when Congress reconvenes, suddenly everybody is an environmentalist," McCloskey remembers. "All these Republicans are asking for my speeches on air and water pollution." Over the next several years, Congress would pass a string of major laws for clean air, clean water, and conservation. McCloskey coauthored the 1973 Endangered Species Act.

Nixon gruffly embraced environmentalism, but McCloskey remained bitterly at odds with the White House over the war. He challenged the president in the Republican primary in 1972, garnering but a single delegate. The next year, as Watergate unfolded, he was the first politician from either party to call for Nixon's impeachment. After Nixon resigned, McCloskey was targeted for defeat by fellow Republicans, and in the primary he went down in flames -- or so it seemed: "I was behind and I'd even conceded," he recalls. "But we had managed to register a whole bunch of kids at Stanford, and after those precincts reported, I won by 831 votes."

For the remainder of the decade, McCloskey basked in his role as a troublemaker. He was part of a "Wednesday Group" of moderate Republicans who met regularly to discuss policies out of step with most of their brethren. "But nobody ever made us feel ostracized," says Johnson, the former Colorado congressman. "We were always treated with a tolerant attitude." And despite the occasional disagreement, McCloskey was proud to be a Republican at a time when Democrats, after decades in control of Congress, had grown arrogant. "I remember one colleague saying, 'When a bill comes out of your committee, it ought to go right to the grand jury,'" he says. "It did seem to me that power corrupts, and nobody ought to stay around Washington too long. But nobody bribed Republicans. We considered ourselves the party of honesty and ethics and fiscal responsibility."

In 1982, McCloskey gave up his House seat to make a bid for the Senate; he was defeated by future California governor Pete Wilson. Soon afterward he married his longtime press secretary, Helen Hooper, and they went on a honeymoon to Idaho's Snake River, where they did some fly-fishing with Dick Cheney. A few years later the couple moved to remote Yolo County. McCloskey continued practicing law on a part-time basis, often representing San Joaquin Valley landowners whose property had been condemned -- the same people who, two decades later, would be among his opponent's biggest fans.

What's known as Pombo country begins about 50 miles east of San Francisco, right where the I-5 freeway dips down into the San Joaquin Valley. Here, the town of Tracy was born in 1878 astride a new Central PACific Railroad line. The early settlers drained a huge inland tidal marsh and forged irrigation ditches, creating some of the best crop and grazing land anywhere. Pombo's grandfather, Joe, a native of the Azores, settled in Tracy in the early 1900s among a wave of Portuguese-speaking immigrants. Today, a two-lane boulevard bears his name.

Tracy was still a cow town when Richard Pombo was born in 1961, the second of five brothers all given names beginning with "R" to match their father's RP cattle brand. "We used to have to feed the cattle in the morning and work every day after school," he would later tell reporters. "I loved every minute of it." (Pombo didn't respond to requests for an interview.) Pombo led Tracy High's Future Farmers of America chapter to a state championship in parliamentary procedure. He studied agricultural business at Cal Poly Pomona College but dropped out after three years to help run the family's 500-acre dairy operation. Today he, his wife, and their three children (who also bear "R" names) share the property with his parents and three of his brothers, all living in separate houses that spread into the hills beyond Tracy's sprawling subdivisions.

The developer branch of the Pombo clan traces to Richard's late uncle. "Oh, Ernie was smart," Pombo's neighbor Tom Benigno said as he showed me Ernie's stone house with its pines, olive trees, and waterfall. A squat, mustached, retired farmer and grocer, Benigno was also running against Pombo in the Republican primary. "Ernie had one of the only escrow companies in town," he explained. "He'd sell folks' ranches for them, take his 10 percent, then do the escrow, sometimes buy their land back and sell it again. Basically any deal went through his office." Based on an analysis of property records, the weekly East Bay Express has estimated that Richard Pombo's father and his uncles grossed tens of millions of dollars selling off Tracy's farms and rangeland.

Driving past the Lammers Road Exchange, Benigno pointed out more than 1,500 acres of land owned by the Pombos. Nearby, two new freeways had been proposed to link the Central Valley and the Bay Area; Richard Pombo had obtained $21.6 million in federal funds for the study. If built, the freeways would send the Pombo property's value soaring.

Pombo's father also owns a 300-acre ranchon Altamont Pass that, for nearly two decades, has been home to a forest of enormous white windmills. The ranch is located in a migratory bird corridor, and numerous raptors (including an estimated 75 golden eagles) have been killed by the turbines' spinning blades. In 2004 Pombo wrote a letter to the Interior Department, asking that interim guidelines intended to reduce bird deaths from new turbines not be applied to existing wind farms on private land. His family's connection was not mentioned.

Half an hour up a mountain road about 15 miles outside Tracy, Mark Connolly, a lawyer and one of the moderate Republicans whom McCloskey tried to get interested in running against Pombo, still lives on the 9,000-acre ranch his family homesteaded in the 19th century. "In Pombo's mindset," Connolly told me, "land is simply real estate. Their dairy business today is a muddy mess of agricultural refuse. So it makes sense the way Pombo looks at a federal park or wilderness area as commodities -- if it's got oil or minerals, drill it. Richard's never been a mystery."

Just as the family business shaped Pombo's politics, so his political work has nourished the business. In 1990, Pombo was elected to Tracy's City Council on a pro-growth platform; there, he helped craft planning documents that spurred a development boom. The "Dry Bean Capital of the World" sprouted bedrooms. Young families raced in from the San Francisco Bay Area; between 1980 and 2000 the city's population more than quintupled, to nearly 80,000. "I don't know whether it's Stepford Wives or Desperate Housewives, but it's become a one-dimensional community," Connolly says. "Couples between 25 and 35 with an average of two and a half kids, and no diversity in neighborhoods because of the older members largely moving out. There's no job base at the local level. Tracy is horribly susceptible to being whipsawed by economic problems."

By 2000, unease about the town's transformation was running strong enough for voters to pass a slow-growth initiative pushed by Connolly. Its strongest supporters were longtime residents who realized, as Connolly put it, that "they'd been handed a lot of hooey." But the old-timers were, by now, a distinct minority. Pombo's original agrarian constituency had been supplanted by newcomers who knew little about the congressman except that through most of his tenure he kept his kids in local schools and flew back to see the family on weekends. Whether these folks were prepared to vote for someone else -- or, for that matter, vote at all -- was the question on which McCloskey's errand would depend.

By 1992 Tracy and environs had grown enough to become the centerpiece of a new congressional district; Patti Garamendi, the wife of California's insurance commissioner, was seen as a shoo-in. But while Clinton eked out a presidential win that year, congressional Democrats were in trouble. Of the 22 worst offenders caught bouncing checks in the House banking scandal, 18 were Democrats. Richard Pombo, just 31 years old and with two years on the City Council under his belt, decided to run. On the campaign trail, he drove a Ford pickup, wore jeans and alligator boots, and railed against big government and the "perks of the Hill." He defeated Garamendi by 4,000 votes, an early harbinger of the Gingrich revolution.

Pombo quickly joined the congressional chorus pushing for more energy exploration on federal lands, fewer logging restrictions in national forests, and fewer environmental laws, period. He particularly resented the Endangered Species Act, often relating a story about having run for office because his family's ranch had been designated "critical habitat" for the San Joaquin kit fox, and that this had "forced my family to operate our ranch with an unwanted, unneeded, un-silent partner, the federal government." (In fact, no critical habitat anywhere had yet been set aside for the tiny fox.)

In 1995 Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) -- the new House Resources Committee chairman who dropped the word "Natural" from its name -- gave Pombo the task he had been striving for: rewriting the Endangered Species Act. Eleven times during the following decade, Pombo proposed revisions to the act, which he considered an inappropriate imposition on, or "taking" of, private property rights. He became Capitol Hill's strongest proponent of the "Wise Use" agenda, which had emerged in the 1980s in reaction to the environmental movement's early successes, and had radicalized a generation of westerners. The victims of "eco-leaders," Pombo wrote in his 1996 book, This Land Is Our Land, "are everywhere...people whose way of life was threatened by activists and bureaucrats who can't tell a salmon from a salesman."

In practice, and even in Pombo's back yard, environmental sagas never quite played out as neatly, as evidenced by the epic tale of Rana aurora draytonii. The red-legged frog was once found all over California, but today it survives mainly in patches along the coast. "Dan'l Webster," the champion in Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," was most likely a red-legged frog. The species has been listed as threatened since 1996.

Robert Stack had been intrigued by the frog ever since he bought some property in the Sierra foothills near Angels Camp, the locale of Twain's tale. A Ph.D. biochemist, tall, gangly, and somewhat reminiscent of Ichabod Crane, Stack had been involved in developing new cancer therapeutics. Biochemists were looking to frogs to supply new medicines, and Stack had always loved amphibians -- and Mark Twain. But nobody in Calaveras County had seen a California red-legged frog since 1969; in the annual jumping contests, bullfrogs were used. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had been dragging its feet on writing a recovery plan.

Discovering that "nobody was really looking out for Twain's frog," Stack took on the cause. He formed an outfit called the Jumping Frog Research Institute and became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit that eventually forced the Fish and Wildlife Service to declare 4.1 million acres protected critical habitat for the frog.

That's when the Homebuilders Association of Northern California countered with its own lawsuit and, as Stack puts it, "Congressman Pombo decided to use the frog as his whipping boy for many things supposedly wrong with the Endangered Species Act." (Pombo would later blame the frog for causing nearly $500 million in "regulatory costs" for home-builders.) In 2001 the two exchanged a series of blistering op-eds in the Tracy Press, each man claiming Twain's mantle. Stack, taking offense at being labeled a "radical environmentalist," closed an article with a favorite Twain quote: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." Pombo's rebuttal ended with a line often attributed to Twain: "It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid, than to open it and remove all doubt."

The frog fight stayed bottled up in the courts. Then, in October 2003, Stack got a call from a rancher's wife in Calaveras County. Her children had found three curious-looking frogs in a stock pond on their property. Stack asked her to describe them. When she mentioned ridges on either side of the animals' backs, he put down the phone and jumped in his car. The first documented sighting of red-legged frogs in almost 35 years -- soon confirmed by the Fish and Wildlife Service -- was guaranteed to cause a stir, especially among the residential developers eyeing the region.

Pombo's response was to reintroduce his Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act, which proposed to eliminate mandatory habitat restrictions for any species, and to handsomely compensate landowners who claimed that their property values had suffered as a result of endangered-species protections -- a provision that likely would make the act unenforceable. The bill passed the House in late 2005, with virtually no debate.

The following spring, Danny Pearson, the Calaveras rancher whose kids had stumbled onto the frog, made the first airplane flight of his life, to Washington, D.C., to talk to senators about the Endangered Species Act. The frog's discovery, Pearson maintained, had neither hurt his property value nor impinged upon his ranching practices. "Pombo has done an excellent job portraying this as a bad thing," he told the Sacramento Bee. "I think it's a good thing."

Eventually, the Fish and Wildlife Service declared fewer than 500,000 acres critical habitat for the frog, barely 10 percent of what it had promised in response to Stack's lawsuit in 2000. None of it was in Calaveras County.

It was in the context of Pombo's alliance with the property-rights movement that the first signs of his ethics troubles emerged. In 1999, the congressman formed the international Sustainable Use Parliamentarians Union under the auspices of another group, the International Foundation for the Conservation of Natural Resources. The foundation was part of the Richard Mellon Scaife-funded "Arkansas Project," which had targeted President Clinton and was now active in promoting a "sustainable" renewal of commercial whaling and the ivory trade, as well as Monsanto's biotechnology business. Monsanto was a large donor to the foundation, along with the Japan Whaling Association and the International Fur Trade Association.

In October 2005, the Center for Public Integrity revealed that Pombo had taken more than $23,000 worth of trips sponsored by the foundation -- to New Zealand in 2000 with his wife, and to an International Whaling Commission meeting in Japan in 2002 -- but apparently had paid no taxes on the trips, as required by law.

Pombo also used his congressional authority to help Charles Hurwitz, a close associate of and leading contributor to his mentor, Tom DeLay. Through most of the '90s, Hurwitz was the target of an investigation by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for his alleged role in the collapse of a Texas S&L that cost taxpayers $1.6 billion. Hurwitz is the owner of Maxxam, a company best known for logging California's old-growth redwoods, and at one point in his increasingly contentious negotiations with the FDIC, a proposal surfaced under which Hurwitz was to pay off $300 million of his obligation by deeding the government some of his forestland. Conservatives were outraged at what they saw as environmental pressure tactics, and the House Resources Committee created a task force to investigate the alleged debt-for-nature proposal. Pombo was a member of the task force, and he used its subpoena power to obtain the FDIC's confidential memos on its legal strategies in the Hurwitz case. He then placed the documents in the Congressional Record where anyone, including Hurwitz's lawyers, could read them. It was, an FDIC spokesman said, "a seamy abuse of the legislative process" that effectively ended the agency's chances of recovering any of Hurwitz's millions. When the Los Angeles Times broke the story in 2006, Pombo said he was merely seeking to stop the government from "trying to take away someone's property."

In January 2003, DeLay engineered Pombo's elevation over seven more senior Republicans on the resources committee to become the youngest committee chairman in either chamber. In his new post, Pombo unveiled another rewrite of the Endangered Species Act; sought legislation aimed at opening up public lands, including 15 national parks, for development by oil, gas, and mining interests; and tried to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and U.S. coastlines to oil drilling. He also took on the National Environmental Policy Act, the cornerstone law that requires all federal projects to be reviewed for their environmental imPACt.

With Pombo's rise to power came more perks. In the summer of 2005 he took his wife and children on a two-week tour of national parks in a rented RV, billing the resources committee for $5,000. His wife and brother have been paid at least $350,000 out of Pombo's campaign war chest since 2001 for fundraising, bookkeeping, and clerical services, a practice that is not prohibited under House ethics rules.

The most eyebrow-raising of Pombo's financial dealings, however, have to do with his campaign contributors. He ranks No. 1 in support from the natural gas industry for the 2005-06 election cycle ($95,900 all told from oil and gas interests) and, as chair of a committee that also handles matters affecting Native American tribes, he has received more contributions from casino and Indian gaming interests than any other member of the House ($179,847 as of the end of May).

The casino donors brought Pombo into the orbit of Jack Abramoff, the influence-peddling DeLay ally since convicted of conspiracy, fraud, and tax evasion. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Pombo received $31,250 from Abramoff, his associates, and his clients, ranking him 14th among members who benefited from the lobbyist's largesse.

"Nothing that I did in trying to run the resources committee was ever influenced by anything that came from Abramoff," Pombo told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Still, the two clearly had interests in common, including the cause of the Mashpee Wampanoag, the Massachusetts Indian tribe that met the Pilgrims. The tribe had been seeking federal recognition for some years; if its petition was successful, it would qualify for numerous federal aid programs and have a shot at opening a casino on Cape Cod. Abramoff had been helping the Mashpees, who had paid some $40,000 to his firm, much of it originating with a Detroit casino developer. In September 2003, Pombo attended a meeting with Mashpee leaders and then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton; shortly thereafter he received more than $20,000 from the tribe. After he held a hearing on the Mashpee issue in 2004, at least $20,000 more went to two PACs that he controlled. Pombo next took up the cause of the Shinnecocks of eastern Long Island, whose drive for federal recognition is backed by Gateway Funding Associates, another casino developer out of Detroit. Two days before Pombo scheduled hearings on the Shinnecocks' land claims, people with ties to Gateway hosted a $5,000-per-head Pombo fundraiser at the 2005 baseball All-Star Game.

Pombo also joined Abramoff as part of a January 2004 delegation to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory where "guest workers" sew clothing in near-captive conditions. Sweatshop owners had retained Abramoff to block labor reforms; four months after Pombo's visit, nine donors with Marianas addresses contributed a combined $7,750 to Pombo's leadership fund, named Rich PAC. Abramoff's work on behalf of tribes and the Marianas has been investigated by two Senate committees, but Pombo's committee has made no effort to follow up.

At the time the DeLay and Abramoff scandals began to break, Pete McCloskey was happily growing organic oranges and raising horses. He was following the news from Washington, and occasionally venting with his friend Lewis Butler, who had been a top official under Nixon. They were both aghast when the House adopted a new rule under which the House Committee on Ethical Standards would have to approve any ethics investigation by majority vote -- a rule, it seemed, designed solely to protect DeLay. "I think we were both grumbling," Butler recalls, "when finally Pete said, 'Come on, we're a couple of old farts, why don't we try to do something!'" They drafted an open letter to the House leadership and enlisted nine other former Republican congressmen to sign, demanding that the old ethics rules be reinstated. (They were.)

As he researched the ethics guidelines, McCloskey began to grasp just how much Washington had changed. In his day, "PACs had been invented but were not a big thing -- they were deemed to be a Republican response to the power of the labor unions. Lobbyists maybe paid a hundred dollars to a campaign dinner for you, but they did not control the legislative process. The bulk of your contributions came from people or organizations within your district." Now, K Street had become "perhaps the most powerful branch of government," with congressional staffers routinely hired away by lobbying firms, where they would then hold fundraisers for their ex-bosses in exchange for favors. Many lobbyists even doubled as treasurers for congressional PACs. Meanwhile, leadership PACs distributed money from members in safe districts or with particularly massive fundraising bases to party brethren deemed to be in electoral jeopardy. Republicans held fundraising events for these PACs that they called ROMPS -- Retain Our Majority Party. "They've perfected an art which I think has caused the American people to view Congress as a cesspool," McCloskey told me.

That summer McCloskey and Butler, along with two other Republicans who'd left the House in the early 1980s -- Johnson of Colorado and Paul Findley of Illinois -- launched a group they called the Revolt of the Elders Coalition. It sought to find candidates to oust the new breed of Republicans. "DeLay incinerated himself," Butler notes, "but we discovered that he had two stooges in California -- Pombo and John Doolittle." They found a primary challenger in Doolittle's Sierra Nevada district, but no "reasonable Republican," as McCloskey put it, could be persuaded to go up against Pombo. "I sure didn't want to go back to Washington," he said. "I'd be about as popular as a skunk in church. But finally, Lew told me, 'Pete, there isn't anybody else.'" McCloskey advanced himself a personal loan of $50,000, Butler provided the RV, and the Revolt of the Elders metamorphosed into a full-scale campaign.

Defeating Pombo would not be easy. "This is a gerrymandered district and it's heavily Republican, so really the only way to beat Pombo is in the primary," McCloskey said. "But 60 percent of the Republicans live in these farm communities in San Joaquin County, and that's the majority of voters I have to convince. There's a vast ignorance and apathy about corruption in Washington. To them, the government is the enemy and Pombo is a sagebrush-rebellion hero." To succeed, McCloskey -- who eschewed PAC money and ended up raising about $500,000 in individual donations, while Pombo pulled in almost $1.7 million -- would have to convince voters that their congressman had become as entrenched in a political culture of arrogance as the Democrats Pombo had once fought. In that quest, his foremost ally would be the man who'd vowed to avenge the red-legged frog.

Robert Stack had made up his mind in November 2005 to quit his Silicon Valley job and "devote a year of service to my country" by helping whoever chose to challenge Pombo, and after McCloskey entered the race, he began working 80 to 100 hours a week as the ex-congressman's chief corruption investigator and fact checker. "I'd been doing high-tech bio-defense work," he says, "and it took a long time to realize any connection. Then I realized there was -- species extinction is low-level bioterrorism, the slow, gradual kind that nobody sees."

On Earth Day 2006, McCloskey reclined on a couch inside his Winnebago at the edge of a Stockton park, greeting voters and talking strategy with Scott Restivo, a software engineer who'd started a "Vote Pombo Out" website. "Frogman!" McCloskey exclaimed as Stack showed up at the door. Restivo and Stack had "dug up more about Pombo than the whole Democratic Central Committee," he told me, but the details -- Pombo's ties to Abramoff and DeLay especially -- had not caught on with the press. Restivo said reporters were leery of "pissing off Pombo's side too much, because they need access if he wins again."

"If he wins again," McCloskey said quietly, "it'll be a tragedy."

Toward the end of the campaign, McCloskey used Stack's fact sheets to feed questions about corruption in Washington to local reporters covering the Pombo-Cheney fundraiser. The campaign took a distinctly sour tone after that. Five days before the primary, the Stockton Record ran a story about a man named M. Yaqub Mirza who had given a contribution to McCloskey. The Pombo campaign issued a press release that read: "Self-described 'left-wing liberal' Pete McCloskey has agreed to return a $2,100 contribution to his congressional campaign from a man under investigation by federal authorities for financing al-Qaida and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad."

McCloskey, a friend of Yasser Arafat and over the years a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause, said he'd never met Mirza, whose Virginia offices had been raided by the FBI and U.S. Customs in March 2002 for an alleged role in laundering money to terrorists. Mirza was never charged, and the Stockton newspaper's review of state and federal records showed that he had given more than $17,500 in campaign contributions, including some to the Republican National Committee. Nonetheless, McCloskey returned the donation. "We'd expected to get blasted toward the end," he said, "the Karl Rove technique."

What he hadn't expected was seeing his old allies weigh in for Pombo. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), a friend from McCloskey's days in Congress who was now chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, called Republican voters to tout Pombo's record. Then Senator John McCain, one of the few GOP politicians McCloskey considered environmentalists, "began making calls, telling people to vote for Pombo. That finally reduced my wife to tears. We couldn't think of a single thing that McCain and Pombo agreed on. But I got the picture. I was persona non grata."

On Election Day, June 6, Pombo took 61.7 percent of the Republican vote. (The Elders' other candidate, Doolittle's challenger, was beaten by an even bigger margin.) Turnout was poor, around 28 percent. McCloskey wasn't entirely surprised. "About four weeks before the end of the campaign," he told me, "I realized my message of honesty and ethics clearly didn't excite anybody. I'd go into a restaurant and talk to people, and I'm afraid the percentage who were interested was about one in five. I saw apathy, disinterest, cynicism -- you know, 'Aren't they all crooks?' To find that people didn't care was the greatest blow."

But he had gone too far to turn back. After the election, McCloskey emailed supporters to say he planned to help Pombo's Democratic adversary, a wind energy executive named Jerry McNerney. "Clearly it is a time to fight back," he wrote. "Party loyalty be damned." A few weeks later, on a foggy afternoon in San Francisco, he met with Lewis Butler and "Frogman" to plan the Revolt of the Elders' next gambit. Movements, he said, "civil rights, the women's movement, the environmental movement, ending the war, were all essentially led by young people. So we're going to try to get as many young people as we can to agree with us, and turn the scoundrels out in November.

"Lew and I may be the last of the naive believers that the system works if you get folks involved in it. But nobody's said, 'You're a damned old fool.' Yet."

Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2006/09/revolt-elders

2008

Weekend Edition Aug 31-Sep 02, 2008

Valley Boy The Rise and Fall of Richard Pombo

The Rise and Fall of Richard Pombo

by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

The banner stretched across the entrance to the Crobar—a trendy New York nightclub—proclaimed, “Welcome to the Pombo-Palooza.” At the door, members of the Rockettes handed out cowboy hats to the A-list of invited guests. Inside, a model clad in rhinestone hot pants and a cleavage-enhancing top that might have chastened a Hooters waitress rode a mechanical bull. On the stage, the Charlie Daniels Band cut loose with fiddle-driven Southern funk as lobbyists and lawyers, politicians and tycoons danced the two-step and drank iridescent blue martinis.

Such was the scene in 2003 at Congressman Rick Pombo’s coming out party. The young legislator from Tracy, California had just been appointed the new chairman of the House Resources Committee. At forty-two, he was the youngest chairman on Capitol Hill. George W. Bush couldn’t attend the hoedown but he sent a herogram congratulating the congressman he calls “Marlboro Man.”

That night money flowed faster than champagne. Before Charlie Daniels had finished his first set,Pombo’s campaign war chest had been fattened by more than $250,000, courtesy of an assortment of real estate barons, oil and mining company executives, timber lobbyists, and casino operators. Many of these contributors would turn out to be the cream of lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s clientele. (Abramoff now faces many years in prison for his corrupt dealings.) And that was just their opening bid. Over the next two and half years, Pombo’s political accounts would be fattened by an additional $2 million from an ever-expanding retinue of lobbyists, real estate barons, and corporate PACs.

The arc of Richard Pombo’s career is an unlikely success story. He is a college drop-out from a dusty ranching town in California’s Central Valley. He showed no particular flair for politics during his early days and, when given the chance, nearly bankrupted the family dairy ranch. Politics was a last resort, and even in this arena Pombo’s future seemed uncertain: he was not a particularly gifted public speaker, nor possessed of an especially engaging personality.

Pombo likes to describe himself as a rancher. He strutted into congressional hearings in cowboy boots and a Stetson. He owns a ranch, but spends less time on it than Bush does clearing sagebrush in Crawford. Pombo did upload photos of himself on his website constructing a pink barn for his children’s pet pigs over a Christmas break. Pombo used to sport a thin Brokeback Mountain moustache. These days he brandishes a manly goatee. The new growth was detected shortly after the movie premiered.

Western myths aside, the Pombo family didn’t make their fortune selling milk from their small herd of dairy cows. The Pombos got rich by buying up ranchlands and subdividing them into ranchettes for Bay Area commuters. As a member of congress, Pombo pushed for freeway projects that caused the value of properties owned by his family to soar.

Some thought that young Richard might get a job selling real estate for his uncle, who owned one of the largest brokerages in the Central Valley. But Pombo never passed the real estate exam.

Politically, however, his uncle proved to be a huge help. The red and white Pombo real estate signs are ubiquitous across the congressional district. Thus, Rick Pombo, a tubby and slick-haired man of Portuguese descent, enjoyed huge name recognition before he ever considered running for office.

Pombo has spun various tales about the event that prompted him to run for Congress. For years he claimed that he was enraged by plans to turn an abandoned railroad near his family ranch into a bicycle trail which—he fumed—would lead to the entire valley being designated a “viewshed” where development would be restricted. Later, Pombo said he ran for office because the family ranch had been designated “critical habitat” for the San Joaquin kit fox, the world’s smallest wild canid and an endangered species.

Both stories are embellished to the point of fantasy. Pombo’s ranch was never at risk from either action. The allegation about the kit fox driving his family from their homestead is particularly outlandish, since the feds have never designated critical habitat for the tiny vulpine. Real ranchers look kindly on the kit fox, since it feeds almost exclusively on rodents regarded as crop pests. In any event, the habitat designation wouldn’t have restricted ranching operations, but developments. And, indeed, that’s precisely what ticked off Pombo. He was forced to pay $5,137 into a regional conservation fund as an impact fee for houses he built on his “ranch.” The houses went up; kit fox populations went down.

In 1992 Pombo won his seat in Congress after narrowly defeating Democrat Patty Garamendi, daughter of the hugely unpopular state insurance commissioner John Garamendi.

In 1996,Pombo published a book-length screed against the Endangered Species Act and environmentalists. Titled This Land is Your Land, the book was ghost written by rightwing columnist Joseph Farrah. Woody Guthrie wouldn’t recognize many of the sentiments set forth in the Pombo-Farrah tract, which called for the dismantling of the Endangered Species Act and disposal of public lands to private interests. Though not a bestseller, the book acquired the allure of a Gnostic gospel among the “Wise Use” crowd, whose concept of wise use derives from God’s commandment to Adam in the book of Genesis to pillage the earth’s natural resources as he thinks fit. The book put Pombo on the ledger as an apex berserker in what Ron Arnold, the P.T. Barnum of the Wise Users, has billed as the War Against the Greens.

But the Wise Use Movement’s backing of Pombo certainly doesn’t explain his rise to power. The Wise Users have had their congressional champions in the past, notably Helen Chenoweth, of Idaho. But they’ve tended to labor in obscurity, deemed as coarse Visigoths even in their own party. For his first few years, Pombo toiled in a similar kind of isolation. His speeches at property rights confabs denouncing Bruce Babbitt as an agent of the United Nations and the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone as an example of “political paganism” garnered only the occasional comical notice in the gossip pages of the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. Pombo’s annual introduction of bills to dismantle the Endangered Species Act rarely attracted more than a few dozen co-sponsors and usually went extinct without a hearing.

In Bushtime, though, Pombo got on a roll. His McCarthyesque hearings on the dangers of “eco-terrorism,” where environmentalists were hauled up before the House Resources Committee and forced to endure harangues from both Democrats and Republicans, culminated in the FBI’s arrest of nearly a dozen environmental activists on charges of sabotage, conspiracy, and arson. Rod Coronado, an editor of the Earth First! Journal and probably the most famous animal rights activist in North America, was also arrested for giving a speech in 2003 at UC San Diego where he demonstrated how to make and use a Molotov cocktail.

Pombo’s scheme to sell off millions of acres of federal forest and range lands, once considered political poison, was adopted by the Bush administration in the fall of 2006, with a proposal to dispose of 200,000 acres of public land to mining and timber companies and real estate speculators, all in the name of funding rural schools.

In 2005, Pombo came close to realizing his wildest dream when the House of Representatives passed his bill to annihilate the Endangered Species Act by a hefty margin of 229 to 193. Soon after this mighty triumph, the Washington Times announced the onset of “Pombomania” among young Republican ultras.

Ironically, Pombomania probably owed more to his enemies than to the shock troops of the property rights movement. Plucking bellicose quotes from his book and his stump speeches, the Sierra Club turned Pombo into the personification of environmental villainy. In dozens of mass fundraising appeals, Pombo was presented as the new James Watt, the dark agent of the looting of the public estate. Pombo glories in his role. “I’m their bogeyman,” Pombo gloats. “They need me to raise money.”

TheSierra Club’s threat inflation of Pombo almost certainly factored into Tom DeLay’s decision to catapult the congressman over the heads of more senior members to the chair of the Resources Committee, one of the most prized seats in Congress.

Pombo also got help from the Democrats. His rewrite of the Endangered Species Act, which eliminates the designation of “critical habitat” for listed species, sets in legal stone many of the practices implemented administratively by his former nemesis Bruce Babbitt when he served as Clinton’s Interior Secretary.

In Clintontime, Babbitt simply refused to designate critical habitat for dozens of at-risk animals and plants, forcing environmental groups into court to compel the Fish and Wildlife Service to live up to its legal obligations. The suits were slow in coming while Clinton was in office, but they began to proliferate after Bush came to power.

Bush and Pombo used those lawsuits, most of which resulted in favorable verdicts for the greens, to charge that the law was outdated and was being exploited by militant environmentalists and litigation-happy lawyers. The Bush-Pombo team got some unexpected help from one of the liberal lions of the House, George Miller, the former chair of the House Natural Resources Committee. In the summer of 2006, Miller pronounced that the law needed to be reworked.

“There is a recognition that the current critical habitat arrangement doesn’t work for a whole host of reasons,” said Miller. “There are some in the environmental community who think the answer is just no to any change, and I think that’s a problem.”

At those words from a politician once regarded by greens as the most enlightened member of the House, critical habitat went extinct without a fight. There were warning signs of Miller’s impending collapse. Shortly after the Democrats lost control of the House, Miller gave up his leadership position on the Resources committee. Friends said he was too tired to fight the likes of Don Young and Pombo.

Another congressional Democrat, Dennis Cardoza, Representative from California’s 18th District, worked closely with Pombo to craft his assault on ESA—an assault that includes a provision that is likely to bankrupt the U.S. Treasury faster than Halliburton’s Iraq contracts. Pombo’s bill instructed the federal government to pay off developers for not violating the law. Under this rule, the feds would have to compensate property owners for value of a “proposed use” for land inhabited by endangered species. It’s a shakedown provision. A Central Valley rancher could propose to build a casino in kit fox habitat, and the feds would be required to pay out millions to keep them from building it. Then the next year the same landowner could come back with new plans for a golf course and get another payoff.

Sound absurd? A similar law was passed by the voters of Oregon in 2004. The law was initially stuck down by a state court as unconstitutional, but a few months later the Oregon Supreme Court reinstated the statute, which virtually wipes out the state’s vaunted land-use planning regulations.

Fortunately, Pombo’s bill ran aground in the Senate, whereLincoln Chaffee, the Republican from Rhode Island, has vowed to keep the Endangered Species Act from being “Pomboized.” (It may be a coincidence but one of the only zoos in the country that maintains a kit fox exhibit is the Chaffee Zoological Gardens in Fresno.)

Chaffee stood up against his fellow Republican, but you didn’t hear similar objections from California’s senior Senator Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein and Pombo have worked closely over the years on everything from water policy in the Central Valley (more water for farms, less for salmon) and logging in the High Sierra near Lake Tahoe. The real estate caucus sticks together.

During his campaign, Pombo targeted other laws for obliteration in the coming few years. At the top of his hit list was the National Environmental Policy Act, the law that requires Environmental Impact Statements for all federal projects.

It was a dramatic run, but, alas, Pombo did not survive to witness the promised land. The ethical noose fatally tightened around his political career.

Back in the 1990s, Pombo made rich sport of attacking Hillary Clintonfor her role in the Travelgate affair. But it turned out that Pombo’s office had its own travel-related problems. Pombo’s political Svengali was a man called Steven Ding, who had long served as his chief of staff. When Pombo landed the Resource Committee chair, he also made Ding chief staffer for the committee. Ding was double dipping, getting paid by both the committee and Pombo’s office.

Ding lives in Stockton and traveled back to California from DC every week. The House Resources Committee picked up the tab. From 2003 through 2004, Ding billed the committee $87,000 in commuter charges. Some of those visits may not have been to see Mrs. Ding. Even though he had two positions with Pombo, Ding enjoyed enough free time to also hire himself out as a private consultant to corporations and lobbyists seeking his insider knowledge. In 2005, Ding earned $57,000 in outside consulting fees. On four occasions, the House Ethics Committee has cited Ding for low-balling or failing entirely to report such outside remunerations.

Ding wasn’t alone though. He was merely traveling down a trail that was blazed by his boss. Each year Pombo’s office spends nearly twice as much on travel as do the offices of the adjacent congressional districts. The biggest freeloader was Pombo himself.

In the summer of 2005, Pombo took his family on a two-week vacation, touring the national parks in a rented RV. He sent the $5,000 bill to the Resources Committee. When Rep. Ellen Tauscher questioned the reimbursement, Pombo said he was doing research. And perhaps he was. A few weeks after he returned from his grand tour, Pombo’s office leaked a white paper to the Washington Times calling on the Bush administration tosell off a dozen national parks.

What about Pombo’s wife, Annette, whose recipe for Apple-Walnut Crosscut Pie was the most popular page on the congressman’s website? Surely, Annette’s travel expenses shouldn’t have been covered by the committee? It turns out that since 2001 Pombo has paid his wife and his brother at least $465,000 in consulting fees from his campaign fund.

This wasn’t Pombo’s first infraction. In 2004, he used office funds to pay for the printing and mailing of a flier to a nationwide list of property rights fanatics urging them to write letters in support of Bush’s plan to allow snowmobilers to run amok in Yellowstone Park. The Ethics Committee ruled that the flier violated the rules on franking and slashed his mail budget. Later that year, Pombo gave all of the Republican staffers on the Resources Committee a paid vacation in October so they could disperse across the country to work in GOP election campaigns—another ethical foul.

In October 2005, the Center for Public Integrity reported that Pombo had taken two overseas junkets to New Zealand and Japan. Both trips were paid for by a group called the International Foundation for Conservation of Natural Resources, which receives funding from bioengineering firms such as Monsanto and also from pro-whaling interests. Pombo did not report the trip on his income tax form, though the IRS considers overseas junkets gifts on which taxes must be paid.

“I really have no idea what is going on with that foundation,” said Pombo, when confronted with the report. “Obviously I will have my accountant check into this.” Even by the high standards of congressional evasiveness, this was a spectacular bout of memory loss. Pombo was a founder of the International Foundation for Conservation of Natural Resources and served as its chairman until July of 2005.

Then there’s the Jack Abramoff connection. Like Bush, Pombo pretended to have only the foggiest recollection of the beleaguered super lobbyist. “I think I met the guy a few times,” Pombo said last month. “But he never stepped foot in my office. Never lobbied me about anything.”

Unfortunately for Pombo, Abramoff left a distinct paper trail across Capital Hill, with much of the forensic evidence found in the chambers of the Resource Committee, where the business of his clients was so often decided.Duane Gibson, a former top staffer on the Resource Committee, left the committee to work in Abramoff’s firm, where he represented mining companies and Indian tribes. Gibson helped Pombo draft a legislative rider that would have transferred thousands of acres of prime federal lands to mining companies. Three months before Pombo inserted the measure in the budget bill, Gibson hosted a $1,000-a-head fundraiser for the congressman.

In 2002, Pombo went to bat for Charles Hurwitz, owner of Maxxam and infamous looter of redwoods and of Savings & Loans. Pombo and Tom Delay intimidated federal regulators into dropping an investigation of Hurwitz’s banking practices. Most of the legal footwork was done by Gibson, who later came under legal scrutiny by federal prosecutors. Hurwitz, of course, was a top contributor to Pombo’s campaign war chest.

Republicans were so worried about Pombo’s ethical dilemmas that they recruited an old war-horse to challenge him in the primary: Pete McCloskey. McCloskey is a former congressman and a sponsor of the original version of the Endangered Species Act. McCloskey called Pombo the “Duke Cunningham of the environment,” a reference to the now imprisoned congressman from San Diego who memorialized his menu of bribes on his congressional stationery.

Pombo fended off McCloskey, but he couldn’t overcome the changes in his district that he had done so much to facilitate, as more and more Bay Area commuters (and Democratic voters) moved onto subdivisions sprouting up on the old ranches and farms of the Central Valley. This merciless demographic did him in. Sprawl bites the hand that feeds it.

Rich Pombo frittered away one of the safest seats in the House. He might have had a better chance of surviving if he had shaved the goatee and returned to that suggestive moustache.

This essay is excerpted from Born Under a Bad Sky: Notes from the Dark Side of the Earth by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR (AK Press, 2008).

JEFFREY ST. CLAIR is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest books, Born Under a Bad Sky and Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland (co-edited with Joshua Frank) are just out from AK Press. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net. 

Richard William Pombo (born January 8, 1961) is a former Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, having represented California's 11th congressional district from 1993 to 2007. Pombo lost a reelection bid to Democratic challenger Jerry McNerney on November 7, 2006.

On January 4, 2010, Pombo announced his candidacy for Congress in California's 19th congressional district to succeed retiring fellow Republican George Radanovich,[1] although he does not live in the district.[2] Mr. Pombo came in third in that four-way GOP race, with 20.8 percent of the votes.

Contents

Early life and career

Pombo was born in Tracy, California, 18 miles south of Stockton. He attended Cal Poly, Pomona,[3] for three years before dropping out to work for his family's cattle and dairy business. He is a descendant of Portuguese immigrants.[4] Pombo is married to the former Annette Cole and has three children. Even after being elected to Congress, he returned to his 500-acre (2 km²) ranch near Tracy every week.[5] Pombo is a member of the Roman Catholic Church.

From 1990 to 1992, Pombo served on the Tracy City Council.

House of Representatives

1992 election

In 1992, Pombo won the Republican primary by defeating several candidates in a race for an open seat in a district newly created by redistricting. California had added seven seats in the House after the 1990 census. Pombo's strongest opponent in the Republican primary was moderate Republican Sandra Smoley, a Sacramento County Supervisor.

In November, Pombo very narrowly defeated Democrat Patti Garamendi (wife of current California Congressman John Garamendi). Although the district had a Democratic majority and was carried by Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, most of the Democrats in this area are somewhat more conservative than their counterparts closer to San Francisco. In addition, Pombo was assisted in part by his family's name recognition in the Central Valley. His late uncle Ernie Pombo's real estate and land development firm, Pombo Real Estate, made the Pombo family the largest land owner in the 11th district.

1994–2000 elections

Pombo was handily reelected from this district in 1994, 1996, 1998 and 2000. Despite the district's Democratic majority, its residents generally shared Pombo's concerns about property rights and skepticism about environmental issues.

2002–2004 elections

Pombo's district was significantly altered as a result of the 2000 round of redistricting. He lost his share of Sacramento County to the neighboring 3rd District, and also lost most of Stockton to the 18th District. However, his district was pushed westward into the San Francisco Bay Area when it picked up some of the more Republican-leaning portions of the East Bay-based 10th District. This theoretically made Pombo safer, as his new district had a plurality of Republicans. However, Bay Area Republicans tend to be somewhat more moderate than their counterparts in the rest of the state, and this exposed Pombo to a primary challenge from a more moderate Republican. However, such a challenge didn't materialize, and Pombo was easily reelected in 2002 and 2004.

Political positions

Status within the Republican party

Pombo has a conservative track record.[6] In 1994, during the Republican Revolution, he was one of the signatories of the Contract with America. He was a member of the conservative Republican Study Committee. He was given the nickname "The Marlboro Man" by President George W. Bush.[2]

Private property rights

Pombo is especially known for his defense of private property rights. This was spurred by the Southern Pacific Railroad's abandonment of the Altamont Pass route through Tracy. Pombo owned land adjacent to the abandoned railroad line. Pombo argued that the abandoned easement should legally revert to the adjacent property owners (such as himself) rather than to the local park district. He argued that as the easement was granted based on a promise that the land would be used for railroad purposes only, that the easements ended entirely when they were abandoned. Pombo's case resulted in Congress passing the Rails to Trails Act.

In a New York Times editorial (October 30, 2005), Pombo was called "an outspoken product of the extreme property rights movement." In 2005, he proposed legislation that would allow mining companies to buy lands on which they have staked claims, even if there is no evidence of valuable minerals on that land. According to the editorial, "This has nothing to do with mining, and everything to do with stealing land that is owned by the American people."

Pombo has written a book with Joseph Farah, founder of WorldNetDaily, about private property issues, entitled This Land is Our Land: How to End the War on Private Property. St. Martin's Press, New York, 1996. (ISBN 0-312-14747-3)

Pombo was a co-founder of the San Joaquin County Citizen's Land Alliance, a group of farmers and other landowners who advocate private property rights and oppose government encroachment on these rights.

Iraq

Pombo has expressed support for the Iraq War. In August 2006, anti-Iraq War activists criticized him, citing an estimate that taxpayers in the 11th congressional district paid $974 million for the war by that time.[7]

Warrantless wiretapping

Pombo said at a May debate that "intelligence agents should obtain surveillance warrants before monitoring phone calls," but "less than five months later, he voted to allow warrantless wiretapping. "He told the Tracy Press that his vote was consistent with his statement.[8]

Committee and caucuses

Committee assignments

From 2003 to 2007, Pombo was the Chairman of the House Resources Committee.[9] The committee has oversight and sets policy on matters involving natural resources, Indian Country and Indian gaming. He was also a member of the House Agriculture Committee.

Pombo was also a co-chair of the *House Energy Action Team* (HEAT). This team's stated goal is to find alternative energy solutions.

Caucuses

Pombo was a member and former Chairman of the Congressional Western Caucus. The Western Caucus is made up of Western State members of Congress concerned about Endangered Species Act reform, water rights, private property rights and other issues affecting the western states.

Pombo was co-founder of the Portuguese Caucus, a coalition of Members of Congress who promote positive Portuguese-American relations.[10] He has hosted prominent visitors of Portugal to the United States. The Portuguese government bestowed Pombo with the Grand Order of Infante D. Henrique, Portugal's highest civilian honor, in recognition of his efforts to improve Portuguese-American relations.

Pombo was an early member of the Congressional Hispanic Conference, a Republican caucus that promotes the interest of Hispanic and Portuguese Americans.

Environmental record

Pombo proposed legislation to sell roughly a quarter of the land managed by the National Park Service. In November 2005, Pombo and Jim Gibbons (R-NV) co-authored an amendment to the Federal Budget Reconciliation Bill easing restrictions of sale of federal lands to mining companies. This amendment was opposed by environmentalists, anti-growth advocates, and even some Republican Senators concerned about the measure's effects on hunting and fishing.[11] The amendment narrowly passed the House, but was defeated in the Senate. The legislation was later described by his chief of staff as a "bureaucratic exercise" designed to evaluate the costs of not drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

Pombo has likewise pushed for oil drilling in the ANWR, despite concerns about the ecosystem and opposition from moderate Republicans.[12]

In September 2005, Pombo helped write a revision the 1973 Endangered Species Act. The proposed revision "was widely denounced by environmentalists as a disturbing retreat from habitat protection and a paperwork nightmare for agencies seeking to revive the 1,268 threatened and endangered plants and animals in the country, 186 of which are in California."[13] The bill did not pass.[14]

By March 2006, Environmental Science & Technology reported that Pombo was coordinating efforts with Pac/West Communications to weaken the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Pac/West has created the Save Our Species Alliance, an anti-environmental front group that is campaigning for Pombo's bill to change the ESA.[15]

The League of Conservation Voters, a nonpartisan PAC, assigned Pombo a lifetime average rating of 7 on a scale of 0 to 100. In 2005, he scored a 6. Subsequently, the organization has named Pombo as one of the "Dirty Dozen" in 2006.[16] LCV released an ad on October 31, 2006, citing Pombo's acceptance of $120,000 from oil companies and his ties to indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.[17]

Rolling Stone ranked him one of the worst congressmen and called him "Enemy of the Earth".[18] While the Sierra Club has called him an "eco-thug".[2]

As the chairman of the House Resources Committee, Pombo blocked legislation that would have created the Wild Sky Wilderness area in Washington state, despite broad support for the bill.[19]

His political revival was characterized as giving environmentalists "fits" by the San Jose Mercury News in addition to describing his perception by that community as similar to that of Exxon-Valdez Captain Joseph Hazlewood or the hunter that shot Bambi's mother.[2]

The League of Conservation Voters added him to their Dirty Dozen list in 2010, even though this list is typically reserved for sitting members of Congress, and Warner Chabor the organization's CEO stated that, "Having Pombo represent a district that includes Yosemite National Park is like electing Godzilla as mayor of Tokyo".[2]

Controversies and criticisms

In September 2006, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan watchgroup founded in 2005 by liberal and Democratic Party activists[20] released a report naming Pombo as one of the 17 most corrupt members of the House of Representatives; he had also been named in the group's prior report in January. The organization said "His ethics issues stem from accepting campaign contributions in return for legislative assistance, keeping family members on his campaign payroll, and misusing official resources."[21]

Corruption allegations

Main article: Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal

Pombo and his political action committee RICH PAC[22] was among a dozen leaders in the House of Representatives reportedly under investigation as part of the corruption and influence-peddling scandal centered around disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and his policy issues including Indian gaming. Pombo had taken more money from Abramoff than any other member of Congress ($500,000). Fundraisers organized by Indian gaming interests and tied to the 2005 MLB All-Star Game are among those activities under scrutiny.[23]

On January 8, 2006, the Los Angeles Times alleged that Pombo helped one of Abramoff's clients, the Mashpee Indians in Massachusetts, gain official recognition as a tribe. In return, Pombo received campaign contributions from both the tribe and Abramoff.[24]

In the 2006 cycle, Abramoff was one of the top donors to Pombo's political action committee.[25] Several of Pombo's top five donors are political influence brokers from Detroit, Michigan who mingled gambling with major league baseball when they hosted several $5,000 per person fundraisers for Pombo in their owners box at Comerica Park during the 2005 MLB All-Star Game. News reports indicated contributions from the two day fundraising event would go to RICH Political Action Committee. However, Federal Election Commission reports filed by RICH PAC show only one such contribution and apparently contributions were diverted to some other entity making it difficult to track who attended and contributed.

As it is, the Ilitch family, owners of the MLB Detroit Tigers and Detroit's MotorCity Casino, are also financial backers of various Indian Tribes including one (Shinnecock Indians) seeking to build an Indian casino in the Hamptons, Long Island, New York. Various issues and tribal disputes involving the Shinnecock were before the House Resources Committee chaired by Pombo just days after the fundraiser.[23]

On October 11, 2006 it was reported that Pombo "says he never worked with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff in his fourteen years in Congress, but billing records suggest at least two interactions between the two in 1996."[26]

Freeways that could enhance owned real estate

Various members of the Pombo family individually own more than 1,500 acres (6.1 km2) undeveloped near two proposed freeways. If even one of the proposed freeways is eventually built, the value of the property owned by Pombo's relatives and located near the proposed freeway will be worth far more than its currently assessed value.

Pombo led an effort to build a multilane freeway (State Route 130) through the mostly uninhabited Diablo Range to facilitate Bay Area-bound commuting from the greater Tracy.[27][28]

Windfarm regulations

Pombo's home town of Tracy is close to a large wind farm on Altamont Pass. In 2004, Pombo's office sent a letter to then-Secretary of the Department of the Interior Gale Norton, urging the suspension of environmental guidelines opposed by the wind power industry. Pombo's parents have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties from wind-powered turbines on their 300-acre (1.2 km2) ranch. Pombo owns an interest in his parents' ranch.[29]

Payments to family

Between 2000 and 2004, Pombo used his campaign and PAC funds to pay his brother Randall $272,000, and his wife (between 2003 and 2004) $85,000. In that 2003–04 campaign cycle, Pombo paid more to his family members — $217,000 — than his opponent, Jerry McNerney, spent on his entire campaign. The two were paid for duties listed as bookkeeping, fundraising, consulting and other unspecified services.[30]

After publicity about the payments to his family, Randall is no longer on Pombo's payroll (total payments between January 2005 and mid-2006 were less than $7,000). Pombo's wife continues to be paid at the rate of $3,000 per month.[31]

Mailings during 2004 campaign

In October 2004, Pombo used the franking privileges afforded members of Congress to mail approximately 175,000 copies of a two-page leaflet that openly praised the House Resources Committee and the Bush administration for overturning Clinton Administration limits on snowmobiling in national parks. The leaflets were sent to snowmobile owners in the swing states of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Pombo authorized the expenditure of $68,081 from House Resources Committee funds for the mailing of the leaflets as "official business." House members are required to seek prior approval and obtain advisory opinions before sending out franked mail; no such approval was obtained prior to the October mailing.[32]

2003 RV trip charged to the federal government

In August 2003, Pombo and his family rented an RV and "spent two weeks on vacation, stopping along the way to enjoy ... our national parks."[33] The 5,000 miles (8,000 km) trip included stops in the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Joshua Tree, Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon National Park and Mount Rushmore, Badlands National Park, and other parks. The $4,935 cost of the rental was charged to the federal government, but was determined to be a more cost effective alternative to flying, renting a car, and staying in a hotel.

When asked in February 2006 about the trip — rules forbid government-funded travel for personal vacations, but allow lawmakers to bring family members on official trips—Pombo said that he had looked into flying into the parks by commercial air or charters, but found the costs to be excessive. After choosing to travel instead by RV, he invited his family along with him.[34]

At Yellowstone, Pombo had a lengthy meeting with the park superintendent, which a spokesman charactizered as official. Pombo's visit to the Badlands National Park is in dispute: the secretary to the superintendent said he did not show; a spokesman for Pombo said that Pombo was certain he was there and met with a group of Native American tribal leaders nearby. Reports concerning Pombo's visit to Joshua Tree are also contradictory. The Los Angeles Times was told that Pombo had shown up for his meeting but "they were not there." The Tracy Press was told that Pombo met with the park's acting superintendent.

Officials from Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks did not return calls seeking comment.[35]

Investigation of Charles Hurwitz

One January 8, 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported that Pombo and Representative John Doolittle had joined with then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas to oppose an investigation by federal banking regulators into the affairs of Houston millionaire Charles Hurwitz. The Times reported that "When the FDIC persisted, Doolittle and Pombo — both considered protegés of DeLay — used their power as members of the House Resources Committee to subpoena the agency's confidential records on the case, including details of the evidence FDIC investigators had compiled on Hurwitz." The investigation was ultimately dropped.

According to the Times, "Although Washington politicians frequently try to help important constituents and contributors, it is unusual for members of Congress to take direct steps to stymie an ongoing investigation by an agency such as the FDIC." The article concluded, "in the Hurwitz case, Doolittle and Pombo were in a position to pressure the FDIC and did so."[24][36]

Corruption at the Interior Department

On September 23, 2006, the Central Valley Record reported that East Bay Representative George Miller and six other House Democrats had requested that Pombo hold "immediate" congressional hearings concerning oil lease payments to the Interior Department. The article noted that "Miller and his allies — including Pombo's challenger, wind power consultant Jerry McNerney — want oil companies such as Chevron to renegotiate contracts they inked with Clinton administration officials that failed to include language requiring the firms to pay taxes when oil prices pass $36 a barrel." Pombo "had a provision written into the House's offshore drilling legislation, which passed earlier this year, that would instead levy a fee on those firms that refuse to renegotiate their contracts."[37]

Probed oil firm linked to Pombo

An Alaskan oil services company under federal investigation in connection with allegations of influence peddling has contributed nearly $18,000 to Pombo.[38] The investigation sparked a Washington state candidate for the Senate to return his contributions from Anchorage-based VECO Corporation the day after the FBI raided offices of several Alaskan state legislators.

2006 re-election campaign

Main article: California 11th congressional district election, 2006

Amid these growing scandals, Pombo faced serious primary opposition for the first time since his initial race in 1992. His leading opponent was former congressman Pete McCloskey, a leading moderate Republican. Earlier, McCloskey had led an effort to find a viable primary challenger to Pombo. Despite a spirited contest, Pombo defeated McCloskey with 61 percent of the vote. McCloskey had been endorsed by the Sacramento Bee, the San Jose Mercury News, and the League of Conservation Voters. Seven weeks later, McCloskey endorsed Pombo's Democratic opponent, Jerry McNerney, who had won the Democratic primary over Steve Filson and Steve Thomas. McNerney received just over half of the Democratic vote and faced Pombo in the 2006 general election in November.[39] McNerney had been Pombo's opponent in 2004.

On October 3, 2006, a Democratic-commissioned poll was released with McNerney leading Pombo 48 percent to 46 percent.[40] There were two polls commissioned by the NRCC, but results weren't released. Based on these events, in early October, Congressional Quarterly changed their rating of this race from Republican Favored to Leans Republican.[41] This was a significant development; Pombo had soundly defeated McNerney in 2004, taking 61 percent of the vote.

On November 7, 2006, Pombo was defeated by McNerney.[42] McNerney got 53.1 percent of the vote to Pombo's 46.9 percent. Apart from prevailing national Democratic trends and the corruption allegations dogging him, Pombo was also the number one national target of environmental groups. Washington, D.C.-based Defenders of Wildlife spent more than $1 million on the race and commissioned the first poll in 2005 that showed Pombo to be vulnerable in his re-election bid. The Sierra Club sent over 300 volunteers and organizers to work for McNerney in the final weeks of the campaign. The group, allied with the League of Conservation Voters, also aired issue ads attacking Pombo. Pombo and Heather Wilson were the two Representatives targeted by the Humane Society, which spent over $100,000 in Pombo's district, including organizers.[43][44]

In a letter dated November 29, 2006 from PAC/West Communications, Pombo states, "I have accepted a position as Senior Partner at Pac/West, a full service political public relations firm with offices from California to Washington, D.C."

2010 congressional campaign

On January 4, 2010, Pombo announced his candidacy for Congress in California's 19th congressional district after Congressman George Radanovich, a fellow Republican, announced he wouldn't run for reelection.[1] The 19th neighbors Pombo's former 11th district and leans more Republican than the 11th. Pombo said he "didn't think [he] would ever run again, but when George Radanovich announced he wasn't running, my phone rang off the hook." Pombo faced Radanovich-backed state Senator Jeff Denham and former Fresno mayor Jim Patterson in the primary,[45] which Jeff Denham won.

Pombo followed up his candidacy for Congress announcement by signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge sponsored by Americans for Tax Reform on January 5, 2010. This marks the second time that Pombo signed the Pledge. He previously signed it as Representative of California's 11th congressional district. According to ATR, Pombo has a lifetime rating of 91% from their annual Congressional Scorecards.[46]

Jeff Denham has stated that Pombo is a liability to the Republican Party and has "given them a lot of material over the years", a reference to his various scandals and notoriety among environmentalists.[2]

^^

Pac/West Communications is a public relations firm with offices in Oregon, Washington D.C., Sacramento and Alaska.

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Anti-Enviro Front Groups Grow on Trees

Paul D. Thacker reports on "one short-lived 'grassroots' organization" based in Oregon, whose leaders "played a key role in passing President Bush's Healthy Forests legislation and are now promoting changes" to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that would reduce protections and require the government to compensate landowners if the law impedes them from developing their land. One key figure is Tim Wigley, the director of the PR firm Pac/West Communications. After working for a timber industry trade group and a forest-products company, Wigley led the group Project Protect, which supported the Healthy Forests bill and was run out of the offices of the American Forest Resource Council. Wigley is now the campaign director of the Save Our Species Alliance (SOSA), "which has become a prominent voice in convincing voters that change to ESA is needed." Other SOSA figures include Steve Quarles, a timber industry lobbyist; supporters include the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Center for Public Policy Research. [1]

Pushing For Drilling In the Artic Wildlife Refuge

In May 2006 PR Week reported that Pac/West Communications had won a $3 million contract with the state of Alaska to co-ordinate a campaign to gain access to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil exploration.

"At this point, it's research-based, [with] a number of phases," he said. "One, determining where the issue sits with the American people, with all the other discussion about energy floating around these days," Pac/West's president and CEO, Paul Phillips, told PR Week. [2]

Friends Formerly in High Places

In February 2007, Pac/West announced that former U.S. House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo was joining the firm as a "senior partner." Previous Pac/West campaigns had backed Pombo's "attempts to rework the Endangered Species Act and open the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to oil drilling." [3]

"What I will be doing is primarily working with grass-roots groups doing strategy and organizing, looking at a lot of the issues that I worked with in Congress -- resource issues, agriculture issues," Pombo told the Contra Costa Times. "What I'm doing really doesn't involve lobbying Congress." Pombo declined to say what Pac/West was paying him, but joked, "I'm doing OK." [4]

Personnel

Contact Details

Pac/West - Oregon

8600 SW Saint Helens Dr., Ste 100

Wilsonville, Oregon 97070

503-685-9400

Fax 503-685-9405

Web: http://www.pacwestcom.com/

Pac/West - Washington D.C.

2600 Virginia Avenue, Ste 505

Washington, D.C. 20036

703-360-2384

Fax: 202-333-0178

Pac/West - Alaska

3136 Pioneer Avenue

Juneau, Alaska 99801

907-586-1851

Cell: 907-957-1579

External links

Category:

Liz Arnold is Community Outreach Associate for the PR firm, Pac/West Communications. Arnold runs their office in Alaska

A biographical note states that "Arnold has supported natural resource industries, multiple use of public land, a balanced approach to environmental protection as well as the protection of private property rights both as an activist and as a grassroots consultant. She has served in various leadership positions in grassroots groups organizing volunteers and coordinating campaigns. Some of the groups she has worked with include Citizens for a Sound Economy, National Forest Homeowners Association, Partnership for the West, and Project Protect." [1]

The Pac/West Communications Alaska office is located in Juneau in Liz Arnold's home. Liz Arnold is married to Tim Arnold, Vice-President and General Manager for Couer Alaska.

Contact Details

Pac/West Communications - Alaska

3136 Pioneer Avenue

Juneau, Alaska 99801

Phone: 907-586-1851

Cell: 907-957-1579

Email: arnirish AT aol.com

External links

Tim Wigley is Executive Vice President of Pac/West Communications

"Prior to joining Pac/West, Tim served as the president of the Oregon Forest Industries Council (OFIC) - a Salem-based, statewide trade association representing the interests of Oregon's forest products industry. He also served as West Coast Director of Corporate Communications for Georgia-Pacific Corporation where he managed all internal and external communications for wood products manufacturing facilities as well as the timber division," his biographical note states. [1]

Wigley led the group Project Protect, which supported the Healthy Forests bill and was run out of the offices of the American Forest Resource Council. Wigley is now the campaign director of the Save Our Species Alliance (SOSA), "which has become a prominent voice in convincing voters that change to ESA is needed." [2]

Other SourceWatch resources

External links

pdf saved

http://sourcewatch.org/images/a/a9/Pt_bigindustry.pdf

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2006/mar/policy/pt_bigindustry.html

2010

ormer seven-time Rep. Richard Pombo, the Tracy GOP rancher who tried to dismantle the Endangered Species Act and pushed for more oil drilling in Alaska, wants to return to Congress - and national environmental groups said Tuesday they plan to return to the Central Valley to thwart him.

Four years ago, environmental organizations spent $3 million and joined liberal online activists to enlist hundreds of grassroots supporters to help political novice Jerry McNerney, a Pleasanton Democrat, roust Pombo from a congressional district that sprawls from the East Bay through Stanislaus County.

On Tuesday, Pombo confirmed his return - but in the neighboring 19th Congressional District, which is southeast of where he lives. The incumbent, Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, is resigning to take care of his ailing wife and has endorsed state Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Atwater.

"I'm ready to get back in the wars," Pombo told Fresno radio station KMJ host Ray Appleton on Tuesday in officially announcing his campaign. His first move, he promised, would be to take on the Endangered Species Act again. If elected, he would likely regain his seniority in Congress, analysts said, giving him more immediate clout in Washington than his opponents.

Environmental organizations from the Sierra Club to the League of Conservation Voters - which named Pombo one of their Dirty Dozen Congressional representatives in 2006 for taking huge contributions from oil companies - vowed to fight that scenario.

"We would be looking to protect our investment," said William Lutz, senior director of the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, which spent $2 million in 2006. "We wouldn't sit around and watch him cruise back into Congress."

The possible reincarnation of former GOP representatives like Pombo and three-term New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce is a sign that Republicans think the electorate is ready for a change, said Mike Franc, a congressional analyst for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Pombo's road back won't be easy, even in a district where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats 43 percent to 37 percent.

In addition to being labeled a carpetbagger for living 10 miles outside the 19th District, analysts predict that opponents will attack Pombo for receiving $35,000 in contributions from lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who now is serving time in federal prison on corruption charges, and the Indian tribes he represented.

Elected to Congress in 1992, Pombo routinely pounded his Democratic opponents, often getting about 60 percent of the vote despite serving in a district that was a mishmash of the liberal suburban Bay Area and the more conservative Central Valley.

Pombo, who turns 49 Friday, pinned his downfall to when the district was reconfigured to include more of the Bay Area in 2002 and environmentalists "started to come after me." In 2006, he was the only incumbent Californian to lose his seat.

Aside from Denham, Pombo will be facing former Fresno Mayor Jim Patterson in the GOP primary. Former California Secretary of State - and Fresno Assemblyman - Bill Jones and Fresno City Councilman Larry Westerlund may run, too.

Patterson is the only declared candidate who actually lives in the district. California law requires congressional candidates only to live in the state, not necessarily the district they'd serve.

But analysts said that is likely to be a minor issue. Last year, Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove, won a Contra Costa County-based seat despite living outside the district.

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