Inslee, McKenna battle for environmental vote
As part of my ongoing coverage for the green side of election 2012, check out this report from KPLU on Washington's close gubernatorial race. If polling means anything, the results will not be decided on election day, November 6th. In fact, candidates Jay Inslee and Rob McKenna are virtually tied.
This race also has an aspect that is a contrast to rhetoric of the Presidential race - both are vying for the environmental vote. They are also very different when it comes to environmental issues.
From the KPLU report:
One of his [McKenna's] proudest moments, both as a lawyer and an environmentalist, he said, was winning in Supreme Court against the Canadian mining and smelting company, Teck Cominco. McKenna says it had been dumping slag into the Columbia River, that wound up in Lake Roosevelt.
“We won in the 9th-Circuit on the question of whether or not they could be sued, under American environmental laws. We prevailed. And then I personally worked the issue with the US solicitor general, to keep that decision intact at the 9th circuit, so it wasn't appealed up to the US Supreme Court.”
Inslee, on the other hand, has mad environmental credentials, fighting polluters and often frames the need for clean energy innovation as a similar endeavor to America first putting a man on the moon.
Inslee earned the first gubernatorial endorsement from the Washington Conservation Voters in 42 years. Brendon Checovic, the WCV executive director commented on KPLU: “We’re big believers in states as drivers of change. And to have the opportunity to have somebody like a Jay Inslee, one of the strongest environmental champions in the United States, in our governor's office, is just tremendously exciting for the national environmental movement.”
It's not all rosy for McKenna. As a King County Council Member, Rob McKenna strongly supported a proposal to build an oil pipeline through small communities and sensitive environmental areas. That project was cancelled after the 1999 pipeline tragedy in Bellingham. Despite the case against Teck Cominco, as Attorney General, he was even sued for refusing to defend Washington's public lands— and he lost.
Listen to the full story HERE.
