Around the corner from the Cheyenne Club in downtown
Cheyenne, Wyo., Democrats are throwing together a campaign to
unseat incumbent Republican Gov. Jim Geringer. Their man is
48-year-old John Vinich, a 24-year veteran of the state legislature
from the town of Hudson who filed for governor just five minutes
before the deadline. In the Republican primary, Geringer staved off
a challenge by sheep rancher Bill Taliaferro, who may now throw his
support to Vinich. But it is still an uphill race for Vinich –
Republicans outnumber Democrats almost 2-to-1 in the Cowboy State.
Vinich has focused on: Wyoming’s lagging
economy (HCN, 7/6/98); controversies surrounding sales of state
trust lands (HCN, 5/11/98); and the perception that Geringer is not
as accessible as former governors. Wyoming, with only 482,000
residents, has prized easy access to elected officials. But when
Geringer came to the governor’s office, he closed off one of two
office doors and hired a bodyguard.
Some Utah hunters are worried that activists
may have their sights set on their favorite hunt, whether it be
chasing bobcats with a pack of dogs or luring bears with bait. So
they have gone on the offensive with an “anti-initiative”
initiative called Proposition Five. It is the brainchild of Utahns
for Wildlife Heritage and Conservation, a group supported by the
Utah Wildlife Federation, Utah Sporting Dogs Council and others. If
it passes, all future citizens’ initiatives in Utah that seek to
change state wildlife policy must collect a two-thirds
supermajority. The proposition has plenty of opponents. Sandy Peck
of Utah’s League of Women Voters says the scheme would set a
dangerous precedent by limiting the power of the
vote.
“That means your vote
counts half as much as someone voting against it,” she
says.
In Oregon, loggers
clear-cut more than 80,000 acres every year – a practice that will
come to a halt if a state ballot initiative passes in
November.
A group called Oregonians for Labor
Intensive Forest Economics (OLIFE) is pushing Measure 64 to ban
clear-cutting on private and public lands.
The
“Healthy Forests Alliance,” a collection of timber companies, says
that what initiative backers call “devastation” is a necessary
forest practice.
But Joshua Binus of OLIFE told
the Oregonian, “We can’t sustain this rate of ecological
devastation.”
From the other side, Mark
Laukkanen of Banks Lumber in Banks, Ore., says environmentalists
are actually trying to ban a process that mimics fire, strong winds
and disease. “We’re trying to duplicate nature and that’s the way
nature operates.”
” Dustin
Solberg
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline On The Trail: Election 1998.
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