Democrats eye South County representative Richard Pombo for
defeat
Gilroy – Richard Pombo’s rise to power has been rapid. The media machine at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee hopes his fall will be just as swift.
For months, the DCCC has been issuing a volley of colorful press releases hoping to stir up negative coverage of Pombo, the Republican congressman from Tracy who also represents Morgan Hill and San Martin. The releases have titles such as “Pombo the Grouch: Pombo Votes Against Public Television,” “Pombo Opposes Military Healthcare,” and, playing up Pombo’s relationship with embattled U.S Representative Tom DeLay, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Richard Pombo,” “Crony of the Week,” and “Tom DeLay’s House of Scandal.”
The attack is unprecedented. More than a year before Pombo faces reelection for his 8th term in the House, the DCCC is trying to paint Pombo as an anti-environment, anti-healthcare, anti-veteran friend of big business who will destroy the Endangered Species Act and ignores his own district to serve the Republican leadership. But in this far-flung corner of Pombo’s district, the portrait of Pombo drawn by Democrats and Republicans alike is distinctly different. For every concern about the congressman’s environmental record, there’s someone grateful for his important contributions to South County.
“He’s done a great job for us,” Dennis Kennedy, the Democratic Mayor of Morgan Hill said Friday. “We’re fortunate to have someone who’s a leader in Congress and has direct access to the president.”
Pombo, 44, is a Central Valley rancher of Portuguese descent who favors 10-gallon hats and black cowboy boots. He was born and raised in Tracy and frets each Monday morning on the long flight back to Washington D.C., where he’s chairman of the House Resources Committee, a powerful body that holds sway over the nation’s environmental and energy policy. He made the leap to congress after just two years on the Tracy City Council.
“I was young and naïve enough to think it was possible,” Pombo, 44, said of his first successful congressional campaign, in 1992. “A lot of the stuff I was working on and cared about were federal issues so I said I was running for congress. At the time, I didn’t know it was a Democratic district. I didn’t know you didn’t jump from the council to Congress. I just went out and campaigned and I ended up winning. It doesn’t happen very often.”
And last year, Pombo jumped over several senior colleagues to land one of the most important jobs on Capitol Hill. He attributes his quick climb to the top of the resources committee to his tireless work and initiative on environmental issues. Democrats, however, contend that Pombo’s meteoric rise to power has more to do with his cozy relationships with President George W. Bush and the man whose name they hope to turn into a four-letter word: Tom DeLay.
Off the record, Democratic staffers say DeLay installed Pombo as head of the committee in part to gut the Endangered Species Act to make it easier to build houses, cut down trees or drill for oil on protected lands. Later this year, Pombo will introduce legislation that will scale back an act he says is a complete failure. That bill is just one reason the DCCC is already on the attack.
“It is early, but we’re an aggressive committee,” DCCC spokeswoman Sarah Feinberg said. “It’s going to take an aggressive effort to unseat Pombo and that’s what we’re working toward. We think Congressman Pombo has made himself vulnerable on the issues.”
This week, the DCCC announced that after a few false starts, it had a found a candidate to take on Pombo next November. Steve Filson, a retired Navy pilot from Danville who has no real political experience, says that his centrist views will appeal to a wide constituency unhappy with Pombo’s performance.
“I’ve just gotten more upset with what Mr. Pombo has done over the last couple of years,” Filson said, adding that Pombo failed to get money for improvements to Interstate 205. “His environmental record is widely known and he’s fully neglected transportation in his district.”
But there’s no denying the dividends Pombo’s rise to power have paid in South County. Pombo has helped secure funding for the flyover project at the intersection of highways 152 and 156, has appropriated millions for perchlorate research in San Martin, and promises to use his position to fund a Morgan Hill flood protection project that has stymied less well-connected politicians for decades.
“One of the benefits of being the chair is that you have the ability to put pressure on them,” Pombo said of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has refused to finance the flood project. “We control their funding levels and whether or not they get their bills through. … It’s not their authority to program that money for other projects.”
Tom Mohr, an engineer with the Santa Clara Valley Water District, said that Pombo has been instrumental in funding efforts to cleanup South County’s perchlorate plume and has renewed hopes that the $100-million flood-control project in Morgan Hill will finally be built.
“He’s been very responsive to the community’s needs,” Mohr said. “We’re a small community competing with big cities and other major projects. We really appreciate that he takes notice of the community and has recognized the importance of securing a reliable alternative water supply.”
But it’s equally true that Pombo is beloved by business interests and loathed by environmentalists. Energy companies are among his biggest donors. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce praises Pombo for supporting economic and trade legislation that boosts small businesses. In very sharp contrast, the League of Conservation Voters says that Pombo votes against environmental protections at every opportunity.
“Richard Pombo’s lifetime record on environmental record is atrocious,” said Rico Mastrodonado, northern California director of LCV. “He wields a very heavy hand. He’s done horrible on endangered species and open space issues.”
Pombo says that the Endangered Species Act is an ineffective law with a success rate of less than 1 percent in saving the species on the list.
“Seventy-seven percent of the species on the list is either in decline or we have no idea what the populations are,” he said. “That’s not a success in anybody’s book. What I would like to do is modernize the act so its focus is on recovery and we have less conflict with property owners.”
Pombo’s plan is to determine the most sensitive habitat areas and then encourage developers to build elsewhere with a package of incentives.
“I think we can be a lot smarter about development,” he said. “We need to try to push housing growth into areas that are least productive in terms of agriculture. I don’t like seeing farmland put under subdivisions.”
But as cities expand and grow closer to one another, inspiring some to advocate for more regional planning, Pombo says he doesn’t see a role for the federal government in local land use decisions. He will use all the weight of his office to protect Morgan Hill from flooding, but he has no interest intervening on the city’s behalf to stop or slow controversial development in Coyote Valley.
“I think it’s a big mistake for the federal government to get involved with local land use decisions,” Pombo said. “I know what city councils have to go through looking at projects.”
As for the DCCC attacks, Pombo shrugs them off. He says Democrats fear him because he provides the liberal Bay Area with an intriguing alternative to the typical local politician.
“I’m the only Republican in the Bay Area,” he said. “They don’t like that there’s someone to compare and contrast them to. It just shows how far out of the mainstream they are.”
