Green GOP

By NICK GEVOCK Chronicle Staff Writer

Dick Kendall's positions on environmental issues reads like the platform of an environmental, or even a Democratic, group: more protection for wild public lands, strong clean air and water laws, ambitious energy conservation efforts.

But in fact, Kendall is a lifelong Republican with deep family roots in the party.

Lately, however, his party's environmental policies, nationally and in Montana, are giving him second thoughts.

"I'm not a very good Republican anymore is the honest truth," the Gallatin Gateway outfitter said. "But I'd like to be."

Kendall recently found like company in Republicans for Environmental Protection, a loose-knit national group that has grown tired of its party's push for weakened environmental regulations and aggressive natural resource extraction on public lands.

It's a relatively quiet group. But nationwide, REP has more than 2,000 members and is growing. And it has a foothold in Montana with about two-dozen members, founder Martha Marks said.

Kendall concedes he and fellow REP members have done a poor job getting the word out.

"You have to try to reach the people who are moderate Republicans, who are less than rabid, right-wing Republicans," Kendall said. "When you have people like (Gov.) Judy Martz running around calling people an environmental terrorist just because they think wild lands should be preserved for the nation, it doesn't help."

REP's membership in Montana includes Gallatin County Commissioner Bill Murdock, who proudly calls himself a green Republican.

Murdock said he supports regulations to keep air and water clean, as well as designating more wilderness areas, and has never shied from those stands.

"This paradigm of rape and pillage with no regulation doesn't leave a good legacy, and Martz is touting it," Murdock said. "I'm for land-use policies, incentives that protect the environment, and those are not traditional Montana Republican values."

REP was founded in 1995 when Marks, a former GOP county commissioner in Illinois, saw the Republican-controlled 104th Congress, led by Rep. Newt Gringrich, attempt to gut key federal environmental laws.

She said President George W. Bush's policies are even more frightening.

"His environmental polices have been a disaster and potentially will cause long-term harm to the country," she said. "We're basically appalled."

REP's agenda includes strengthening environmental laws, developing alternative energy sources and protecting more public land as wilderness.

The Bush administration has charted a sharply different course, with efforts to open public lands to logging and drilling and weaken protections for clean air and water, among other things.

It's an all-out assault on the environment to benefit big polluters who gave heavily to the Bush campaign, said Gene Sentz, a Choteau schoolteacher.

Sentz, who fights to protect the Rocky Mountain Front from drilling, is a Montana REP member, although he no longer calls himself a Republican -- the party's policies have become too anti-environmental for him.

"I didn't leave the party, the party left me," he said. "I'd be ashamed to call myself a Republican."

Marks said she hears that often. But she's sticking with the GOP because on most other issues, such as limited government and economic growth, she agrees with the party. And handing a popular issue like the environment to Democrats would be bad politics, Marks said.

"Republican" and "green" aren't necessarily oxymorons, said Montana Republican Party Chairman Ken Miller, who contends all GOP members are pro-environment.

But he also believes that resource extraction must play a key role in the state's economy.

"Those are some of the best-paying jobs in the state," Miller said. "We want clean water, we want clean air, but we can still live and we can extract natural resources."

He said environmentalists "have a long way to go for me to prove that they want any natural resource development in Montana."

Stereotyping environmentalists doesn't really help, said Theresa Keaveny, executive director of the nonpartisan Montana Conservation Voters.

What is clear is the record, and laws passed by recent Republican-controlled legislatures have removed protections that would have allowed mining and logging while still protecting the environment, she said.

For example, the 1995 Legislature weakened Montana's Water Quality Act, she said. Then in 2001, lawmakers weakened the Montana Environmental Policy Act and designated water extracted during coalbed methane drilling, which is often salty, a "beneficial use," meaning it can be dumped directly into streams.

As a result, Keaveny said, coalbed methane development "means environmental degradation and polluting our streams with salty water. It means more of a priority for oil companies than it does for families."

The coalbed methane water law in particular drew the ire of some rank-and-file GOP members, including Roger Muggli, a Miles City farmer who raises alfalfa and owns a cattle feed plant.

He calls himself a green Republican, but supports coalbed methane development, as long as it's done right. But salty water will devastate his fields, threatening 10,000 farm-related jobs and 50,000 acres of cropland.

Instead, the water should be reinjected into the ground, he said. Reinjecting costs more, however and Muggli said Republican legislators were more concerned about tax revenue than farmers when they passed the bill.

"It's simply cheaper to buy a few lengths of pipe, run it down to the Tongue River and let her rip," he said.

Sen. John Bohlinger of Billings agrees. One of a handful of green Republicans who have made their way to the Legislature, Bohlinger has voted against most Republican-led efforts to weaken environmental laws during his 11 years as a lawmaker.

He agrees with his party's push for economic development and natural resource jobs. But he doesn't see the need for rolling back environmental laws when the technology exists to extract resources without harming air and water.

"We've got to be concerned about more than just today's profits," he said.

Like many other green Republicans, Bohlinger said he can do more to protect the environment by staying with the party and encouraging change within.

"It's important that people like me have a seat at the table in the Republican caucus," he said.

Kendall said green Republicans like Bohlinger are essential if the state is going to move forward on environmental issues. The environment used to be a bipartisan issue in Montana and Kendall said if he can get the word out, maybe more moderate Republicans will come forward.

"There would be more of them if people like me did a better job of engaging them and talking to them," he said. "We just need to be more active."

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