Sierra Club Officials Cool to Wilson, but Warm to Foe

Nine months ago, Republican U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson came before the Sierra Club and said he was studying controversial federal legislation to grant wilderness status to millions of acres of California desert land.

On Saturday, Wilson told an obviously disappointed gathering of Sierra Club officials here that he is still studying the proposal, which is looming as an important issue in this year’s Senate election.

“What he said is disappointing because what I think Californians are looking for is leadership, and Wilson gave statements that are very weak,” said Robert Hattoy, the Sierra Club’s Southern California regional director.

Effect of Endorsement

The California senator’s appearance at the meeting, along with that of his Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy, was important because what the two men had to say will have a strong bearing on the Sierra Club’s ultimate endorsement in the Senate race. And that endorsement, in turn, could have an effect on the votes of the state’s many environmental activists. Club officials say they will not make their endorsement before June 12.

The daylong meeting Saturday focused on three issues: the desert bill, which would create 8.8 million acres of new wilderness and bestow national park status on Death Valley and Joshua Tree national monuments; pesticide legislation that would allow California and other states to impose tougher standards than are required by the federal government, and a bill to permit offshore oil drilling along 100 miles of wilderness coastline in Alaska.

For McCarthy, greeted Saturday with the warmth of an old friend, the meeting offered a chance to reaffirm a kinship with environmentalists.

There was, perhaps, more at stake for Wilson, whose efforts to forge bonds with environmentalists in California have led him on occasion to break with the Reagan Administration. On the other hand, his hesitation on the desert bill, along with a voting record rated poor by the U.S. League of Conser vation Voters, makes him a question mark in the minds of environmentalists.

Before he spoke Saturday, Sierra Club officials indicated that the best Wilson can hope for is that the club remain neutral in the Senate race.

However, Democrats, knowing that the desert could prove to be a mine field for Wilson, had been looking forward to the senator’s second go-round with the Sierra Club over the desert bill. The bill is opposed by a variety of groups with strong Republican ties, including cattle interests, developers and, especially, the growing number of off-road vehicle enthusiasts.

Besides disappointing environmentalists, Democrats believe that Wilson’s continued equivocation over the bill could help his opponents portray the senator as a wishy-washy leader.

Even some Republicans have said it would be better for Wilson’s image to come out in favor of the desert bill.

‘Don’t Think It Hurts Him’

“I don’t think it hurts him to come out for it,” said Bill Roberts, one of the state’s pre-eminent Republican consultants.

On Saturday, Wilson wasted no time in reminding his audience of a record that includes doubling San Diego’s supply of protected open space while he was mayor of that city; writing the state’s first offshore coastal protection bill in 1970 when he was a member of the state Legislature, and joining with Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston in adding 1.7 million acres of California wilderness to the national park system.

“Whether we are talking about air, water, coastline or land, it seems to me the record is good,” Wilson said.

But to the issues uppermost in the minds of the Sierra Club officials Saturday, Wilson’s responses often seemed tentative.

Regarding the Cranston-authored desert bill, he said that granting national park status to Joshua Tree and Death Valley might be acceptable.

“I think that park status for those areas is, perhaps, one of the easier parts of the bill,” Wilson said.

He made it clear, however, that he was struggling with the prospect of granting restricted wilderness status to many other areas of the desert, especially in the eastern Mojave region, where, he said, cattle have grazed for 100 years and where there are major highways and railroads crisscrossing the landscape.

‘Terribly Fearful’

Wilson said he respected the objections of responsible desert visitors who are “terribly fearful” that the bill will deny them vehicular access to the desert.

“They want to be able to go out in a camper, enjoy the desert and leave it exactly the way they found it,” he said.

Wilson said it would be unfair to “lock up the desert and cut them off from the activities they enjoy.”

But the compromise that Wilson would like to work out--a more modest wilderness bill that would permit limited access to off-road vehicles--did not strike a sympathetic chord among Sierra Club officials here.

“He has a convincing line, but it is full of holes when you explore it a little,” said Sally Reid, a vice president of the national Sierra Club.

“Off-road access is the equivalent of destruction,” Reid said.

At least one Republican club member expressed the same reaction to Wilson.

“Frankly, I was disappointed. He’s had about a year and a half to think about it. I expected him to be coming to some conclusion,” Jim Dodson said.

Officials of both the California chapter of the club and the national club will vote on the endorsement in the Senate race.

Wilson declined to say whether he will oppose oil drilling off the coast bordering the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, saying that the pending bill to permit drilling probably will not make it out of a congressional committee this year.

Answer Doesn’t Excite Audience

Again, it was not an answer that excited his environmentalist audience.

“It’s something that will come up sometime during his next term, if he is reelected, and we would like to have an idea what he is going to do,” said Bob Hartman, a member of the club’s Public Lands Committee.

There was, however, one topic, pesticide control, in which Wilson gave his audience an answer that they could applaud.

Asked about his vote in 1986 to table a Senate action that would have allowed states to use tougher pesticide standards than those sanctioned by the federal government, Wilson said he was wrong to vote the way he did.

“I think I made a mistake. . . . In my judgment, they (the states) should go for the highest standard. It should be resolved in favor of health,” Wilson said.

In sharp contrast to Wilson’s misgivings was McCarthy’s ardent endorsement of the desert bill.

“I support the legislation unequivocally,” McCarthy said. “I am prepared to fight for the entire bill. I think it’s a good bill, and I don’t want to talk about compromise.”

Southern California’s Hattoy summed up the contrast in his fellow club officials’ reactions this way: “They were hungry. Leo McCarthy gave them red meat, and Pete Wilson gave them cold mush.”

McCarthy has received the Sierra Club’s endorsement twice in the past, when he ran for lieutenant governor in 1982 and 1986, and the glowing introduction he received from club officials Saturday was evidence of a continuing rapport.

Supported Past Legislation

The former assemblyman was an early supporter of state legislation, such as the California Environmental Quality Act and the Nuclear Safeguards Act, that put the state at the forefront of the environmental movement.

McCarthy said he would continue in the same vein as a member of the U.S. Senate.

“I will be a leader in the U.S. Senate. I will be one of the three or four in that body who will shape environmental policy. I want to make California environmental policy national environmental policy,” he said.

Wilson made one effort to discredit McCarthy’s environmental record. He reminded the club officials of McCarthy’s support for legislation known as the five cities bill. The bill was an unsuccessful 1981 effort, supported by McCarthy, to exempt five sites for housing development from local planning and zoning regulations. Wilson said McCarthy supported the bill at the behest of a real estate development group that had made more than $50,000 in contributions to members of the state Legislature.