CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS GOVERNOR : Van de Kamp Preaches Ecology in Central Valley

Hurtling north on Highway 99 through the heart of California’s farmlands, John K. Van de Kamp appeared a little bemused at the hoopla attendant to Sunday’s widely publicized celebration of Earth Day.

“Everyone today is an environmentalist,” he said dryly, hunched forward in the front seat of a car en route here.

And he was no exception. It was Van de Kamp, environmentalist, who plowed through back-to-back press conferences in Bakersfield and Fresno Tuesday. It was not--at least explicitly--Van de Kamp, candidate.

His campaign for governor didn’t merit a mention in two speeches. A new poll that boosted him to dead-even with former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein in their tug-of-war for the Democratic nomination earned no chest pounding.

Tuesday’s business did, however, cut to the quick of Van de Kamp’s effort, as he tried to sell to the skeptical Central Valley the sweeping environmental initiative he and a host of ecological groups hope to place on November’s ballot.

The initiative--and others on crime and ethics--form the bulk of Van de Kamp’s platform, and Tuesday he introduced it for the first time in the stronghold of the farming and pesticide industries that oppose it.

Gathered around him were symbols of poisoning: a Bakersfield mother who blames her 11-year-old son’s death from leukemia on the pesticides that were sprayed near their home, and a Fresno-area farmer whose ill health prompted him to quit spraying pesticides and grow fruits organically.

“Everyone in California has to worry about pesticide residues on the food we buy in the market,” Van de Kamp said in a speech given in both locales. “But here in Fresno County, people also have to worry about pesticides carried by fog, seeping into the ground water, and poisoning neighbors who work in the fields or live close by.

“No one should have to live like that. Children shouldn’t have to grow up like that. We deserve better.”

Van de Kamp is trying to win over--for both the initiative and his own campaign--residents throughout the state and particularly the valley whose own lives have been touched by environmental troubles. In Fresno, for example, while farming interests may oppose the initiative and its sponsor, it is likely to strike a responsive chord among those whose water supply has been tainted by chemicals. More than 200 wells have been affected by chemicals in Fresno alone, local activists said.

He also is trying to take the edge off what is expected to be a hammering opposition campaign mounted by farming and pesticide interests. Van de Kamp disputed the word spread locally that the initiative would ruin the farming industry--”that’s just so much fertilizer,” he said.

“This is an attempt to have a rational approach to pesticides,” he said in an interview. “In the long term, it’s going to be to the benefit of the valley.”

So far, the environment is virtually Van de Kamp’s turf in the Democratic primary. Feinstein has yet to announce her approach to solving environmental problems, but she is expected to do so within weeks.

She also has held off a decision on whether to endorse the initiative, the broadest ever introduced in the state. The initiative--called Big Green by its supporters--would ban 24 pesticides that are known to cause cancer in humans, ban imported food grown with pesticides, create an environmental advocate, ban clear-cutting of redwood forests and prompt deep cuts in gases that affect the Earth’s ozone layer.