Norton Attuned to Big Business, Property Rights

The rugged landscape of the American West brings out both the enraptured naturalist and the partisan ideologue in Gale A. Norton.

In June 1991, soon after she took office as Colorado’s attorney general, Norton hiked into the snowy upper reaches of Rocky Mountain National Park. Walking with aide Trish Bangert, Norton rhapsodized that the scene was “like a spiritual experience for her.”

Norton’s ardor for the outdoors seemed less in evidence four years later, when she intervened in a dispute over water rights in the same park system. A fishermen’s group was pressuring the U.S. Forest Service to stop a Colorado water utility from cutting off a mountain stream, and Norton was quick to warn the government off.

In letters to the Agriculture Department, Norton insisted any federal attempt to maintain the park’s trout stream could harm private property owners and would be “unjustified legally and factually.” Her stance on the still-unresolved dispute baffled federal officials. “Her whole thing about rivers and waters is that the national forest doesn’t have water rights,” one federal government lawyer said.

As President-elect George W. Bush’s Interior secretary nominee, Norton--whose Senate confirmation hearing opens today--would fit snugly with the new White House philosophy. Bush has promised that the voices of property owners and mining and energy companies will get a warmer reception than they did in the Clinton years.

The biggest battles facing the Interior Department in the Bush years will be over gaining greater access to public lands--to mine, drill, log and develop recreational facilities.

In her eight years as Colorado’s top legal officer and as a lawyer representing big business clients and property rights advocates, Norton sided with private interests against wildlife groups and federal intervention.

In recent years, she also founded a group whose stated mission was to improve the GOP’s image on environmental issues. But the organization in fact has been funded by many of the mining, chemical and coal companies that covet the lands that the Interior secretary is charged with monitoring.

“I hate government telling me what to do,” she once said as attorney general. “And I assume other people do.”

Yet Norton’s rightward political stance is not reflexively doctrinaire. Abortion rights sympathies cost her crucial conservative support in a failed 1996 Colorado Senate race. And as attorney general, she reined in her anti-government views when necessary--pursuing strong state roles on such hot-button issues as tobacco advertising, gun control and the toxic waste cleanup of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. Despite a history of provocative statements likely to be scrutinized during her confirmation hearing before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Norton has tempered her youthful Libertarian leanings while nurturing ties with Bush and other Republican leaders.

“She’s in the political arena because policy matters to her,” said Jeanne Adkins, a former Colorado state legislator who is one of Norton’s closest friends. “She’s not wedded to what other people have done--or even what she’s believed in the past.”

Norton Choice Is Seen as a ‘Natural Disaster’

Her wonkish enthusiasm for policy and pet causes is what has turned Norton’s nomination into a battleground. At the hearing, say those familiar with the proceedings, she likely will be questioned about both her pro-property rights leanings and her lobbying relationships with businesses such as NL Industries, a Houston lead products company targeted by federal and private lawsuits.

“Gale Norton would be a natural disaster as Interior secretary,” said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, one of a consortium of environmental groups trying to scuttle her nomination.

When she crystallizes her views on paper and in speeches, Norton sometimes stumbles. She dismissed a handicapped ramp at Denver’s state Capitol as “a really ugly addition” and summoned Confederate Civil War ghosts to explain her passion for states’ rights. But those provocative stands have cheered conservative Republicans and pro-business groups.

“It’s evident that the Bush team selected her, very deliberately, because they wanted to make a point,” said Robert G. Varady, director of environmental programs for the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona.

With 436 million acres of government land, 378 national parks and 500 wildlife refuges under her aegis, Norton would have a sprawling laboratory to test her property rights leanings. Pilot programs placing some public parks under private management might become a priority, said Jerry Taylor, director of natural resource studies for the Cato Institute, a Washington-based Libertarian think tank.

Bush already has signaled plans to turn back much of the Clinton administration’s last-minute flurry of executive orders that expanded wilderness refuges and limited commercial activities on federal lands. And he campaigned openly in support of oil drilling in the unspoiled Arctic National Wildlife Refuge--a plan Norton co-authored while serving as a Ronald Reagan administration lawyer at Interior.

Property rights advocates in the West are ecstatic over Norton’s nomination. “She is one of the most sophisticated nominations Bush could have made,” said Taylor, who added that Norton “comes from a camp that has been generally ignored by the GOP for years.”

Norton prefers a skeletal government role in public life--a belief that bloomed from her early infatuation with the free-market writings of Ayn Rand. “When it comes to personal liberties,” Adkins said, “she feels the government ought to stay out.”

Norton, 46, was born in Kansas--living in Wichita until her aircraft-mechanic father moved the family to the Denver suburb of Thornton in 1959. At Merritt Hutton High School, said close friend Mark Von Hagen, Norton and a group of “nerds on the end” embraced the early ‘70s in a countercultural rush. She campaigned for anti-war presidential candidate George S. McGovern.

But at Denver University, Norton fell in with students attracted to Rand’s philosophy of Libertarian “objectivism.” She was fascinated by land issues, attuned to the “approach that private property is private property. It’s not the public’s or the government’s,” recalled law professor Jan Laitos.

After law school, she worked at the property rights-oriented Mountain States Legal Foundation--founded by Colorado lawyer James G. Watt. When Watt headed to Washington as Reagan’s Interior secretary, Norton soon followed as an Interior Department solicitor.

Although she kept a framed photo of herself and Reagan in her state office, Norton supported Libertarian presidential candidate Ed Clark in 1980--even attending the party’s political convention as a delegate. But Watt, who had directed legal challenges against the federal government’s land policies, saw Norton as a kindred spirit in the Reagan Revolution. “She seemed to be dedicated to the kind of cause” that he believed in, the former Interior chief now says.

Yet while Norton supported Watt’s attempts to bypass congressional restrictions on energy exploration in protected Western lands, she was not a blind supporter, friends say. When Watt self-destructed, flailing out against minorities and a Beach Boys concert on federal land in Washington, Norton stayed on to work for his more muted successor, Donald P. Hodel.

Norton returned to private practice in Colorado in 1987 and in 1990 married John Hughes, who friends say is a commercial real estate developer. (Her first marriage had ended in divorce in 1978.)

Norton set her sights on a career in politics. She attended a nine-month Republican Leadership Program and told friends that she had an eye on a state legislative seat. But GOP officials steered her toward running for attorney general. “Here was this modest person, very bright and an accomplished lawyer,” said Mary Dambman, a top GOP official.

Norton had liabilities, however. “She was a little reserved,” Dambman conceded. Other political pros worried that she was a poor campaigner. But Dambman said Norton “sparkled” when she expounded on her property rights views in meetings with rancher groups.

She Views Government as a Major Obstacle

Norton, elected in 1990, rarely took on corporate polluters. She preferred using a 1994 “self-audit” law that granted companies immunity from state penalties if they disclosed environmental violations before they were caught.

“She’s very thoughtful, but she passionately believes that government is the problem, that all of these problems can be solved through the marketplace,” said Martha Rudolph, a Denver lawyer who served as her senior deputy.

But the self-audit law proved porous. Environmental groups said it hampered their ability to file suits against polluters. And private industry used the law only sparingly.

Norton turned proactive, however, when she saw the federal government at fault. She opposed forest officials when she felt they impinged on private water rights. And she appealed a state lawsuit against the federal government over its cleanup of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. The Army and Shell Oil Co. had left a pool of toxic pollutants at the chemical weapon site near Denver in the early 1980s. Norton argued the case before a federal appeals court and won, forcing concessions from both the government and Shell.

At times Norton overrode her own principles when she saw higher issues at stake. After declining to join a multi-state lawsuit against tobacco firms for aiming cigarette ads at teenagers, Norton reversed course after reading a damning report by her own staff. When a 15-year-old Coloradan fatally shot a patrolman in 1993, she put aside strong 2nd Amendment concerns and backed a proposal to criminally penalize teens caught carrying handguns.

She also defied easy categorization when it came to family issues. Norton is a strong abortion rights advocate, although her stance has less to do with feminist impulses than with “her Libertarian beliefs,” Adkins said.

Norton’s views were “a liability” in 1996, Dambman said, when she ran for a Senate seat. In the GOP primary, Rep. Wayne Allard used the issue to siphon social conservative support and defeat her.

Her abortion stance, however, became an asset after Norton left the attorney general’s office in 1999 and returned to private practice, where she began representing property rights groups and states in lobbying--and suing--the federal government.

According to Douglas Kendall of the environment-oriented Community Rights Council in Washington, Norton began lobbying for NL Industries on lead paint issues after she joined the law firm of Brownstein Hyatt & Faber in 1999 as a senior counsel. The firm’s clients include Delta Petroleum Corp., Timet-Titanium Metals and the Shaw Group, an oil pipe manufacturer.

Norton also serves on the advisory board of the Defenders of Property Rights, a Washington law group that represents private landowners who take on environmental regulations.

She also performed legal work in a suit filed against the Interior Department on behalf of a group of GOP Alaska legislators seeking more state control over regulation of fishing. Joining with Watt’s Mountain States Legal Foundation, Norton billed the state of Alaska $60,000 for her work, Kendall said.

In 1998, she and several Colorado friends also founded the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, the interest group aimed at improving the GOP’s image on the environment.

CREA won support from such abortion rights advocates as Julie Finley, a GOP donor and national committeewoman who joined as a CREA co-chairwoman.

Finley was one of several influential Republicans who became key conduits between Norton and party leaders when CREA moved from Boulder, Colo., to Washington in 2000. Another friend was Texas consultant Karl Rove, Bush’s closest political advisor, who also had worked with Norton on her 1996 Senate race.

After a 1998 coming-out party for CREA that was attended by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), Norton gradually withdrew from her leadership role and became an “informal advisor.” CREA’s profile has steadily lowered until Norton’s recent nomination.

The group has been criticized by environmentalists for taking donations from commercial interests while using its “neutral” status to avoid disclosing precise details about its sources and benefactors.

Among the sponsors of the 1998 CREA dinner that Norton hosted, however, were the National Mining Assn., the Chemical Manufacturers Assn., the National Coal Council, Amoco Corp. and the American Forest Paper Assn. The group’s steering committee included lobbyists who have worked for Shell, Texaco, BP America and ANR Coal. “It’s pretty clear where the money was coming from,” Kendall said.

And CREA’s lauding of GOP leaders with poor environmental records has prompted even conservationist Republicans to fume that the group is little more than a party public relations front.

“What Norton and her friends did was create their own little circle to make certain party leaders look better on the environment than they really are,” said Martha Marks, an Illinois Republican official who heads a rival GOP conservation-oriented group.

While Norton has declined to comment before her Senate hearing, intimates say she expects to win confirmation.

Still, Adkins acknowledged, the firebrand legal author who sometimes turns inward at political brunches has been under “the natural stress of anyone who has to explain herself before the U.S. Senate.”

“There’s still a part of her that’s in awe of being there. She has a fair amount of humility that she is the president’s choice.”

Times staff writers Julie Cart in Denver, Esther Schrader and Elizabeth Shogren in Washington and researcher Lianne Hart in Houston contributed to this story.

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Interior Department’s Domain

The U.S. Department of Interior manages 436 million acres of public land, mostly in the West, including 500 wildlife refuges and 378 national parks, plus Indian lands, rivers and dams. It also oversees offshore oil drilling and mining on public lands.

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Under Interior’s Umbrella

* Bureau of Indian Affairs

* Bureau of Land Management

* Bureau of Reclamation

* Fish and Wildlife Service

* U.S. Geological Survey

* Minerals Management Service

* National Park Service

* Office of Surface Mining

* Office of Insular Affairs

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The Secretary’s Main Duties

* Manage all federal lands under department’s jurisdiction.

* Enforce laws that protect threatened and endangered species and that govern the management of national wildlife refuges.

* Work closely with Indian tribal leaders to ensure that reservations receive adequate economic, educational and social services.

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The Department of Interior’s responsibilities are divided between protecting enivironmental treasures, such as Yosemite National Park....

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...and also managing extractive industries that are potentially harmful to the environment, such as offshore oil drilling.

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Source: U.S. Dept. of Interior