Sens. Cory Gardner and Steve Daines, two of the chamber’s most endangered Republicans, are touting their leadership in advancing a major bipartisan conservation bill, which is expected to get a vote soon. The legislation could be a critical asset to help them hold onto their seats.
“The far-left environmental groups that have attacked me for the last 10 years are not going to change their mind, but it’s very difficult to say I don’t support public lands when I helped pass the most significant public lands package going back to Teddy Roosevelt,” said Gardner, an incumbent senator from Colorado who will likely face off in the general election against former Gov. John Hickenlooper, in an interview with the Washington Examiner. (Hickenlooper still faces a June 30 primary, in which he is a heavy favorite.)
But in a rarity in politics, a domain where self-preservation is the norm, Democrats and environmental groups are not faulting Gardner and Daines for seeking credit.
“However it came about, there is not a Democrat backing away from the bill thinking it might help the chances of a Republican getting reelected,” said Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a bill co-sponsor, in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “I am so proud of that.”
Manchin, an avid fisherman, hunter, and hiker, says he has worked on the substance of the conservation bill since he joined Congress in 2010.
“Democrats have been much more engaged on this than my Republican colleagues,” Manchin said. “But this bill is bigger than politics.”
The “Great American Outdoors Act,” while massive in scope, doesn’t do anything all that new.
It really functions as a do-over for sins of the past, supporters say, a no-brainer that is only now coming due because the politics aligned.
“Oftentimes, good policy can result in good politics,” said Daines, a Montana senator and “passionate outdoorsman” who spoke with the Washington Examiner from his Ford F-150. “It’s important to note that it’s public lands and conservation that will bring a divided Congress together,” added Daines, who is defending his red seat from Montana’s popular former Gov. Steve Bullock.
The bill, like most sausage-making in Washington, combines longtime priorities that have struggled to gain traction on their own.
It provides full and permanent federal funding to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which provides money to federal, state, and local governments for buying land and waters to improve national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, and other public areas.
It marks only the second time the LWCF has received full federal funding, $900 million annually, since the program’s creation in 1964.
“The LWCF has literally touched every county in the country. The pool you went to as a kid, the pocket park in your neighborhood — it is highly likely LWCF paid for those,” said Tracy Stone-Manning, a former chief of staff to Bullock who leads the public lands program at the National Wildlife Federation.
While the fund uses offshore drilling revenue from energy production on federal waters, not taxpayer money, to pay for the projects, conservatives had balked at providing mandatory, permanent funding for it, without subjecting it to the annual appropriations process.
The second part of the bill would create a separate fund to pay for a $12 billion maintenance backlog in national parks and other federal lands, using energy revenues to pay for repairs to broken bathrooms, visitor centers, roads with potholes, trails, and campgrounds.
“Congress is acknowledging its mistakes of the past by not fully funding the LWCF and by letting a giant backlog of maintenance accrue to our national parks and public lands,” Stone-Manning said. “And now is a terrific time to fix that problem because the fix is going to drive jobs.”
The legislation has similarly pleased the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental group whose action fund has endorsed Hickenlooper and Bullock. The league has been a thorn in Gardner’s side concerning his support for the Colorado oil and gas industry and his voting record supporting Trump administration nominees and priorities.
“We welcome the breadth of support on this bipartisan bill,” said Alex Taurel, the director of the League of Conservation Voters’s conservation program.
President Trump, who has expanded fossil fuel development on public lands and rarely talks about conservation, has nonetheless pledged to sign into law what he called a “HISTORIC” bill for our “beautiful public lands,” crediting Gardner and Daines for the achievement.
Gardner and Daines cinched Trump’s support, a prerequisite for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell giving the bill a vote, after a Feb. 27 meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, an aptly named setting recognizing the former Republican president who was known for his conservation legacy.
“We showed [Trump] some great pictures of beautiful lands out West. He listened intently, sat back, and crossed his arms and said, ‘if you get this on my desk, I will sign it,’” Daines said. “That was all I needed to hear.”
Despite the cohesiveness, there are still politics at play. Gardner, in the interview, said he sees the legislation as a “jobs bill” that could lift ski towns in his purple state that have been rocked by the coronavirus. “It makes perfect sense to be included as part of our economic response to the crisis we are facing today in Colorado,” Gardner said.
The office of GOP Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, another bill co-sponsor, has projected that the national parks maintenance portion of the legislation would create 40,000 jobs.
Gardner is also using the legislation to bolster his environmental record and as a wedge to attack Hickenlooper as a hypocrite.
“He wants to see oil and gas eliminated,” Gardner said of Hickenlooper. “He wants to see one of Colorado’s economic drivers be destroyed. It’s kind of funny. He likes to attack me on public lands but supports my public lands actions.”
Hickenlooper has said he would support Gardner’s conservation bill, but he has not endorsed the progressive Green New Deal and has opposed efforts to restrict fracking in Colorado.
He’s criticized Gardner for being insufficiently devoted to addressing climate change, a challenging issue in a major energy-producing state divided among oil, gas, and wind. Gardner supports research and tax incentives for clean energy and energy storage technologies — along with streamlining permitting for renewables on public lands, but he opposes more aggressive carbon taxes and mandates to reduce fossil fuel use.
“LWCF is long overdue and not enough,” said Hickenlooper for Colorado spokeswoman Alyssa Roberts. “Sen. Gardner’s election-year deception is exactly why Coloradans are so fed up with Washington.”
Sen. Angus King of Maine, a bill sponsor and an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said he acknowledges the unique characteristics of the conservation legislation that makes it able to overcome normal partisan tribalism. But he hopes it’s a “harbinger, not a coda” for what can happen when lawmakers work together to “get things done.”
“One hundred years from now, no one will know the names Gardner, Daines, King, or Manchin, but someone is going to go to a trail outside in Wyoming, or New Hampshire, or North Carolina, and experience the wonder of the natural world because of the work we do,” King told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “It is one of the few things we can really do around here that is permanent.”
