Wilson Hasn’t Cooperated on Desert Bill--Cranston

Winning wilderness protection this year for millions of acres of California desert land is looking more like a mirage, according to Sen. Alan Cranston, who said Wednesday that the legislation he has been pushing for two years has failed to gain the needed cooperation of California’s Republican Sen. Pete Wilson.

In a state where environmental attention is often focused on the coastline, Cranston’s desert bill has become something of an election year litmus test of environmental purity.

Cranston’s pessimistic statement about the bill followed a meeting with Wilson and comes on the eve of an expected endorsement by the Sierra Club of Wilson’s Democratic opponent in this year’s Senate race.

Clearly angered, Wilson said Cranston’s statement on the eve of the Sierra Club’s endorsement “looks a little like a set-up” designed to pressure him into taking a favorable position on the desert bill. “I don’t intend to be blackmailed,” Wilson said. He said that he had left the meeting with Cranston optimistic about the desert bill and had written a letter to Cranston saying as much.

The desert bill has been an important factor in the Sierra Club’s thinking leading to its anticipated endorsement in the Senate race of Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, who is a supporter of the desert bill as well as being a champion of many environmental causes in the state over the last two decades. McCarthy was an early supporter of state legislation, such as the California Environmental Quality Act and the Nuclear Safeguards Act, that put the state in the forefront of the environmental movement nationwide.

McCarthy received the Sierra Club’s endorsements twice before, in 1982 and 1986, when he ran successfully for lieutenant governor.

Pollster Mervyn Field said Wednesday that the Sierra Club’s endorsement is important in a state where, he said, up to 90% of the voters identify themselves as “environmentalists.”

Field said that for Wilson the effect of losing the Sierra Club’s endorsement will depend on the senator’s ability to dismiss the endorsement as a predictably partisan move by a liberal group and to promote a record of environmental achievement that, in years past, has drawn praise from Sierra Club officials.

Wilson has downplayed his objections to the desert bill and has sought to emphasize other aspects of his environmental record, such as his opposition to offshore oil drilling and his sponsorship with Cranston in 1984 of a bill to give wilderness status to nearly 2 million acres of California timberland.

However, the desert bill, which is opposed by a coalition of miners, ranchers and recreational interests, has become an easy way to differentiate between Wilson and McCarthy, who are in agreement on other topical environmental issues. For example, both men have come out against a controversial plan by Occidental Petroleum Corp. to drill onshore for oil in Pacific Palisades near Will Rogers State Beach.

Cranston’s desert bill would give wilderness protection to an arid expanse nearly the size of Ohio and would grant national park status to Death Valley and Joshua Tree national monuments. Wilson has said he does not object to park status for Joshua Tree and Death Valley, but he has objected to limiting vehicular access to other areas of the desert that would be put off limits under Cranston’s bill.

Despite Wilson’s reservations, he and his staff have met periodically with Cranston, ostensibly to come up with a piece of legislation that both men could support. However, Cranston has been expressing a growing frustration with what he says is Wilson’s unwillingness to say just what kind of compromise he would support.

“I am pessimistic that we can reach an agreement in time to vote on the legislation this year. We will try again next year,” Cranston said Wednesday in a statement released by his office.

Supporters of the desert bill who have been following the negotiations between Wilson and Cranston argue that Wilson, who is well ahead of McCarthy in early polling, feels no pressure to come to an agreement on the proposed legislation. Sources close to Cranston say that Wilson has struck them as supportive of the bill “in principle,” but that he is unable to reconcile that support with the adamant opposition of a number of likely Republican voters.

Sierra Club officials have said that their reservations about Wilson stem only in part from his failure to support the desert bill. Club officials cite Wilson’s poor rating--about 40%--on environmental votes by the League of Conservation Voters.

From the outset of the campaign, club officials have said that the best Wilson could hope is that the Sierra Club would remain neutral on the race.