Environmental
Jul. 20, 2002
A Bit of Nader Campaign Fallout Laid to Rest
SAN FRANCISCO - A San Francisco environmental group earlier this month issued a formal apology of sorts to a Washington lawyer with whom it had clashed in the closing days of the 2000 presidential election, suggesting some ugly scars from that contest have yet to fully heal.
The July 2 statement from the Rainforest Action Network culminated a bitter war of words that in many ways reflected the wider national battles between moderates and more liberal activists fueled by the Green Party candidacy of Ralph Nader. Many still bitterly blame Nader's divisive campaign for handing the White House to George W. Bush rather than to Vice President Al Gore, who came into the campaign as perhaps the candidate most closely identified with environmental issues since Theodore Roosevelt.
Those tensions reached critical levels in the closing weeks of the campaign. Helping to exacerbate them were groups such as RAN, which attempted to inject its fight against a South American oil project into the presidential campaign.
RAN has long been active in trying to block oil drilling by Occidental Petroleum Corp. in Colombia. The organization championed the cause of a Colombian native group, the U'wa, whose members had purportedly promised to commit mass suicide if drilling occurred on land they considered theirs.
Activists supporting the U'wa noisily dogged Gore's campaign, demanding the vice president do more to stop the project. They also alleged significant financial ties between the Gore family and Occidental.
RAN's Web site still contains dozens of press releases and news stories from the period, touting, for example, protests at more than a score of Gore campaign offices in an effort to pressure the candidate into taking a stronger stand on the issue.
Nader also seized on the cause of the indigenous Colombians and denounced Gore's alleged lack of action as "another example of the corporate grip on our political system."
At about the same time, New York lawyer and investment counselor Spencer Adler weighed in with an opinion piece meant for publication in college newspapers in key battleground states. Adler's message reflected the alarm felt by many Democrats that the Nader insurgency could cost Gore the presidency.
A vote for Nader was not a vote for the U'wa, Adler argued.
"Instead, you'll be sacrificing the tribe's best interests for Ralph Nader's. And the U'wa won't owe you their thanks. You'll owe them your apology," Adler wrote.
Adler said in a recent interview that he acted because "I felt that what was going on was wrong. The manner in which the U'wa issue was being used or abused was wrong."
Adler was no stranger to the U'wa issue. In 1998 and 1999 he had worked to place a resolution before Occidental's shareholders that, among other things, called for a report on the effect of the company's stock if 5,000 Indians did, indeed, kill themselves.
In his column, which was widely distributed by the Democratic National Committee, Adler called himself "the original attorney who took up [the U'wa] case against Occidental Petroleum."
The reaction from the coalition of groups hounding Gore, including RAN, was swift and hostile.
Press statements from the organization, which have been removed from the RAN site but are still floating around the Internet, denounced the letter from the "fake U'wa attorney" and called the Adler piece "false and misleading."
A release that remains on the RAN site denounces the "Halloween trickery" of the Democratic National Committee for distributing Adler's statement and cites Gore's "deep and complex relationship" with Occidental.
At the same time, the pro-U'wa coalition insisted it was not endorsing any political candidate.
Following the initial objections to his letter, Adler responded with a second statement. He wrote that his role in the case had been minor and that the U'wa's primary lawyer "from the very beginning" was Martin Wagner, a San Francisco attorney for Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund. Adler also wrote a $5,000 check for the U'wa effort.
Adler said he was taken aback by the vehemence of the response.
"I knew emotions were running high," he said. "I knew there would be a strong negative reaction from people on the other side. I did not expect the backlash to be so vicious and so personal."
Wagner, who dates his representation of the U'wa to 1997, said he believed Adler's original statement was misleading but that the New York attorney wasn't being malicious. Adler, he noted, had himself been trying to help the Colombian group.
"In a sense, it was a heat-of-the-battle sort of thing," Wagner said of the dispute. "My sense is that everyone in hindsight would handle things differently."
It didn't end there, however. Adler said he asked Christopher Hatch, RAN's executive director, to "reevaluate what they'd done." Hatch said that Adler threatened legal action.
"We got in a public spat with him," Hatch said, "which he felt was harmful to him personally."
What followed was a lengthy negotiation over the wording of the apology RAN released this month. In its written statement, RAN praised Adler's "considerable efforts to stop Occidental's assault" on the Colombian tribal territory and noted he had worked on the case without pay.
"It was never the intention of the Rainforest Action Network to disparage Mr. Adler's professional reputation as an attorney, nor to interfere in any way with his right to voice his personal opinion," the RAN statement reads. "In the event RAN's press release was misconstrued, RAN hereby offers this public apology to Mr. Adler."
As for the U'wa, Occidental announced in May that it was ending its attempts to drill in the disputed territory. While Hatch called the decision a "really big victory," he said other companies are still interested in the region.
Occidental, according to Business Week, said it simply found no oil.
In their respective interviews, both Adler and Hatch appeared saddened by the dispute, despite the positive outcome for the U'wa. But neither backed down from his position.
Adler said ruefully that he "suppose[s] it helps that I was right by a few hundred or a thousand Florida votes." But he said it is a "shame that people working for the same ends can't work more cooperatively."
Hatch, insisting RAN is not "particularly political," said he believes the larger rift between mainstream Democrats and Nader-leaning voters remains unresolved. Hatch suggested environmental activists take a page from the Christian right, which has magnified its influence in the Republican Party by threatening to withhold votes from candidates who deviate from their positions, even if it means losing.
He said he has no regrets about the way the U'wa campaign was waged, even in light of the election result.
"Frankly, my only criticism is I wish we could have mounted more pressure," he said.
But he also conceded: "It was definitely one of the most hugely ironic events that Gore's nemesis should be the Green Party."
Dennis Pfaff
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