Boxer, Fong Offer Stark Contrasts on Environment

He is the favorite of the Farm Bureau. She is the darling of the Sierra Club.

On issues involving land, air and water, the U.S. Senate race pitting Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer against Republican challenger Matt Fong offers a head-butting confrontation between agribusiness and the environmental movement.

It is a classic California clash. This, after all, is the nation’s leading state in agricultural production, and likewise the birthplace of the Sierra Club, Earth Island Institute and a list of other like-minded groups.

Both sides are marshaling their considerable forces and putting their money behind their ideology. Hardly a day goes by without opposing fund-raising efforts in the salons of the San Francisco Bay Area and the farms of the Central Valley.

Officials of the California Farm Bureau, American Farm Bureau, Western Growers Assn. and California Cattlemen’s Assn. toured the state’s agricultural heartland last week to tout Fong as the best hope for California agriculture to regain its once formidable clout in Washington.

“We’re here in what is virtually an unprecedented shoulder-to-shoulder endorsement,” said Bill Pauli, president of the state Farm Bureau. “It’s time for agriculture to be invited back to the table where decisions affecting our industry are being made.”

On the other side, the Sierra Club had television commercials endorsing Boxer during the primary and plans to reprise them during these final weeks of the fall contest, which polls suggest is deadlocked. Boxer’s survival is at the top of the organization’s political agenda.

“Boxer has been a leader in environmental matters in the Congress for a long time,” said Sierra Club spokesman Michael Paparian. “Matt Fong really has no environmental record to speak of, and many of the things he’s said are counter to what we believe.”

Fong thinks the proposed Auburn Dam on the American River north of Sacramento and the proposed nuclear waste dump at Ward Valley in the Mojave Desert are essential to keeping California’s economy on the uptick. Boxer believes both are environmental disasters in the making, and she is leading the opposition in Washington.

Fong is seeking votes by saying that the Endangered Species Act needs loosening, the Clean Water Act is too picayune and costly, and the federal government should go slow in adopting safe food regulations. He is also sympathetic when farmers say that air pollution laws are unfairly applied to dust and diesel fumes during planting and harvesting.

Boxer is seeking votes by saying the opposite.

“Matt Fong says we should go slow when adopting food quality standards,” Boxer said in a voice thick with incredulity. “Meanwhile, our children are afraid to bite into a hamburger because they might die of E. coli,” she added, referring to a deadly bacteria.

The two are pitching messages tailored to geographic areas where they can expect to be strong: Fong in the Republican-heavy Central Valley, Boxer in the high-density urban and suburban coastal areas. Their differences are symbolic of a philosophic gap as sizable as the distance between Yreka and San Ysidro.

To Boxer, laws meant to safeguard endangered species or drinking water or food in the supermarket are an expression of government at its most noble. (She does bend on occasion, however. Last spring she intervened with the Environmental Protection Agency to allow growers of peaches, plums and nectarines to use a restricted type of fungicide.)

To Fong, environmental laws, however noble in intent, are too often an example of what happens when government is captured by “enviro-crats” who ignore the real-life economic consequences of their actions.

“Generations of farming families sweated and toiled and took risk to develop California land into our greatest industry,” Fong said during the Central Valley trip, “and now some in the environmental movement, with Barbara Boxer’s help, are attempting to lay claim to it.”

Boxer is having none of it.

“In 20 years of elected life, no one has ever come to me and said, ‘Barbara, you’ve got to do something, there’s too much clean water,’ ” said Boxer.

Fong Emphasizes Boosting Exports

It would be an overstatement to assert that Fong has no friends among environment-friendly voters or that Boxer does not have farmers in her camp.

Boxer has received money from several agricultural political action committees and earned praise for her work for crop insurance, disaster relief and breaking foreign trade barriers for almonds, dates and sugar beets. Boxer also recently filled a vacancy on the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee.

But for the Farm Bureau and other large agricultural lobbying groups, it is too little, too late. Fong has pledged that getting a spot on the full Agriculture Committee would be his top choice among committee assignments.

“These apples should be going to Japan and all of Asia,” Fong said as he ate an apple at a Stockton packing plant. Refusal of Asian markets to drop trade barriers is a major complaint of California farmers.

“I can’t say that Barbara Boxer has done nothing for California farmers--she’s helped with markets and with some things for the dairy and wine industries,” Pauli said. “But philosophically she’s not with us, and we don’t feel she listens.”

The bureau does not feel the same way about Boxer’s Senate colleague and fellow Democrat, Dianne Feinstein. In a controversial move among its membership, the Farm Bureau endorsed Feinstein in 1994 against Michael Huffington; other agricultural groups were split that year, some for him, some for her, some staying neutral.

“Feinstein will listen, not that she’ll always agree with us, but she listens,” Pauli said.

While she was a congresswoman from Marin and San Francisco counties, Boxer supported the sweeping 1992 reform of the Central Valley Project, which cut water allocations to farmers but increased the amount of water dedicated to wildlife projects and made it possible for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to buy water. Fong says that he would have opposed the legislation, which is still bitterly resented by farmers.

Although Fong admits that he will be lucky to get 30% of the votes from dedicated environmentalists, he is not conceding the “green vote.” He went rafting on the American River in July to show he cares about the river--only to be met by river-borne protesters--and plans a television commercial stressing his promise to preserve California’s beaches and forests.

“A major overhaul of the Endangered Species Act like Fong has proposed does not sound like a good way to protect the rivers and fish he supposedly enjoys so much,” said Charles Casey, associate conservation director of the Sacramento-based Friends of the River.

Boxer sponsored an amendment to the Safe Drinking Water Act that will set drinking standards based on what constitutes a danger to children instead of having all standards, as she often notes, geared to “a 155-pound man.” She supported federal funding to clean up Lake Tahoe, the Salton Sea and the U.S. side of the Tijuana River Valley.

She successfully pushed a bill to demand that all playgrounds be safe from toxic materials, and co-authored a Dolphin Protection Act with Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.). She also helped get federal funding for the joint state-federal project to save the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the state’s major watershed. The League of Conservation Voters rates her support for environmental causes as 100%.

In a speech delivered in Stockton, Fresno, Clovis, Lodi and Salinas, Fong lashed out at the “proliferation of environmental laws” that “sometimes make it impossible for a grower to keep his land in production.” Another term for Boxer, he said, “will lead to a paving over of the Central Valley” because farming will be unprofitable.

Boxer has a quick rejoinder to Fong’s allegations: “Fong is wrong. Fong is wrong for California.”

Elemental Differences

On matters of water, land and air, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and her Republican challenger, state Treasurer Matt Fong, are as far apart as Yreka and San Ysidro.

Water

BOXER: Supported federal legislation decreasing water given to Central Valley farmers from federal projects and increasing amount for wildlife.

FONG: Opposed Central Valley legislation.

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Proposed Auburn Dam in Northern California

BOXER: Never. Too expensive, would destroy a fork of the American River.

FONG: Absolutely. Would provide badly needed flood control and water storage.

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Endangered Species Act

BOXER: Supports, with minor changes.

FONG: Says it violates property rights; would make it easier to have species removed from the list and protect farmers from prosecution.

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Oil Drilling

BOXER: Opposes offshore drilling. Wants to block inactive leases from becoming active.

FONG: Opposes new leases for drilling but says holders of inactive leases deserve compensation.

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Air

BOXER: Thinks federal clean-air standards should be enforced.

FONG: Thinks the standards are often unreasonable and harm farming.