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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
Worried there won't be any wilderness left to hunt or fish in, increasing numbers of American sportsmen are tuning out the NRA and turning to Kerry.
Oct 31, 2004 | New Mexico native Alan Lackey is disgusted at how "George Bush's energy policies are running amok" and degrading the natural splendor of his state and its bounty of elk and deer. A former hunting guide, Lackey, 46, and his family have been Republicans for generations. An industrious, middle-class businessman -- he, his father and brother now own a car dealership in Raton, N.M. -- Lackey has always identified with the socially conservative GOP.
In 2000, Lackey voted for George Bush and Dick Cheney, who were endorsed by the National Rifle Association, as they are this year. At the time, like many hunters, Lackey was swayed by the NRA's party line that gun owners' Second Amendment rights were going to be stolen from them in the middle of the night by liberals in black ski masks. Which Lackey now realizes is a crock. Indeed, Sen. Kerry supported the Brady Bill, which placed some common-sense new restrictions on gun registrations; and like President Bush, he backed a ban on assault weapons. But Kerry has stated countless times that he supports the right to bear arms and has no intention of undermining it.
"I'm a life member of the NRA but now I'm ashamed to admit it," Lackey says. "They say they're trying to protect hunters' rights. But there are two things that go along with hunting: the firearm and the game. And the NRA is so focused on the Second Amendment that everything else is undermined. I guess I let their propaganda get to me last time. But it turns out we were duped. Because President Bush, right after he was elected, promised an energy plan that would be environmentally sensitive and would protect our resources. That wasn't true at all. They had no intention of doing that."
There are 40 million sportsmen of voting age in the United States -- nearly a third of the entire vote -- and they heavily populate swing states New Mexico, Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida. Most voted for Bush and Cheney in 2000 but an unprecedented number of them would rather sell their pickups than do so again. They feel betrayed by how the duo has sold out the American wilderness to their compatriots in the oil and gas industry, whose derricks and wells now taint the countrysides and streams where they hunted and fished since they were kids.
Out of their anger and rage, and it's deep and true, sportsmen have mobilized in rural America and roused a sleeping giant to side with Sen. John Kerry. But even if impassioned sportsmen don't make history by pushing the Electoral College toward the lanky New England Democrat, their efforts in the past year underscore why the two good ol' boys in the White House, often photographed with shotguns and fly rods in hand, are now seen by many as serious posers, neither in tune with sportsmen nor the wild spirit of the country.
You might imagine Republicans have corralled the country's hunters, who, according to a recent bipartisan survey, are superactive voters and plan to turn out at the polls in record numbers -- 80 percent, to be exact. But Dubya and company have not sewn up the outdoors vote and they know it, which explains why they have invited more than 40 hunting and fishing groups to the White House and the president's Texas ranch, and why Bush and Kerry each gave lengthy interviews to Field & Stream magazine.
"Without question, the reason we landed those interviews is because no one can really count on the sportsmen vote," says Sid Evans, editor in chief of Field & Stream. "This is a passionate group that does not vote along party lines."
Lackey has lent his energy to an unlikely coalition of New Mexican ranchers, hunters, environmentalists and Native American tribes -- all striving to halt Bush and company from erecting hundreds of natural gas wells in Valle Vidal, a 40,000-acre basin of grasslands and meadows, spread out beneath the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, where thousands of elk graze in winter. Lackey appreciates the irony of a car dealer striving to block further energy development but insists he is concerned less with immediate profits than with the prosperity of New Mexico's wilderness and wildlife for his kids and theirs.
"You might think, as a patriotic American, this is what we need," Lackey says. "Fossil fuels support the lifestyle we're accustomed to. But is it worth destroying our last wild areas for?"
Immersing himself in the Bush energy policy, he says, spurred an awakening in him. "What you find," he says, "is our government has become a government by the money and for the money. This energy policy and blatant raid on our public resources is indicative of what's going on in Washington. That's why I'm voting for Kerry this year. I can't support the party that I belong to because it's become the party of arrogance and greed."
Lackey's love for America's wild lands and antipathy toward Bush and Cheney are shared by countless Republican sportsmen. How many is impossible to tell, of course, but they represent a rising tide, says Trout Unlimited's David Stalling, who for the past year has crisscrossed the country more times than he can remember, talking to thousands of hunters and anglers. "They're up in arms about this issue," he says, savoring the pun. "They know the policies going on right now are destroying the places they hunt and fish." Stinging evidence of Republicans in revolt came in 2002 when conservative Wyoming -- Cheney's home state -- elected Democrat Dave Freudenthal over gas and oil executive Eli Bebout for governor.
