Sierra Club sets sights on Allard/ Group says senator voted against

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Oct 1, 2002 | by Ed Sealover

The Sierra Club is waging one of its most active campaigns - including a full-scale assault on U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard - because it thinks environmental regulations are in jeopardy, national executive director Carl Pope said during a stop in Colorado Monday.

Pope was in Denver to unveil a series of ads against Allard, the third such attack the national environmental organization has made against the Republican senator.

The group endorsed Democrat Tom Strickland and has been accused by the Allard campaign of partisanship.

The Sierra Club picked 10 races nationwide it thinks will decide the fate of Congress and is pumping millions of dollars into them. It targeted Allard, Pope said, because he repeatedly voted against toughening clean air and water regulations.

Pope said he thinks Colorado residents should listen to someone from a San Francisco-based organization because he speaks for roughly 20,000 club members in this state. He also said he wants to highlight Allard's record, not his own opinion.

"There are serious efforts in Washington right now to roll back the progress that all American people have been proud of," Pope said in a telephone interview. "Are we going to keep making environmental progress in this country? . . . Or are we going to start sliding backward?"

Pope identified three big environmental issues he expects Congress to confront in the next two years. Legislators could decide whether to roll back air-pollution standards for factories, make it easier to leave waterways polluted and impose new rules on logging in national forests.

The Sierra Club is pushing Strickland because Allard voted with it just 9 percent of the time, Pope said. Allard voted to allow the government to reimburse polluters who clean up their own messes and, therefore, is out of touch with Colorado voters, he said.

Allard's campaign sees it differently.

Dick Wadhams, the senator's campaign manager, characterized the Sierra Club as "a bunch of elitist liberals" bent on supporting Democrats.

He said Pope was quoted in 2000 as saying a Democratic majority in Congress will put America "on our way to getting rid of the internal combustion engine."

"They're trying to inflict environmental fraud upon the people of Colorado," Wadhams said. "They're also trying to take people's cars away from them."

Pope said the group supports members of both parties and pointed to its endorsement for Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. But when asked who he and other organization leaders are campaigning for, he reeled off a list of 10 Democratic congressional candidates.

- Ed Sealover covers city government and politics and may be reached at 636-0184 and sealover@gazette.com