Glenn Hurowitz, WILD PAC

Glenn Hurowitz is the associate director of WILD PAC, a political action committee that works to elect leaders at all levels of government who will champion protection of America's wilderness and public lands.

Today, I worked on one of WILD PAC's most exciting efforts -- a project to plant conservation firmly on both of our major political parties' agendas. It will involve lots of tough, grassroots organizing, but could pay off in both the immediate future and in the long run with parties and candidates strongly committed to the protection of public lands, wilderness, and the environment.

In conjunction with other national and local conservation groups, we're planning a national organizing effort to mobilize the millions of conservationists in this country into a powerful political force. For too long, the tens of millions of dollars in campaign donations from the oil, timber, and mining industries have influenced candidates across the country. These special interests throw fancy parties at political conventions and provide generous financial support to candidates who agree to advance their agenda. Butwe have a powerful force on the side of conservation: democracy. Although money can play a powerful role in the selection of candidates, our parties are basically democratic: Ultimately it's the voters who choose nominees.

However, in many cases, this is not a democracy of all the people, but rather a democracy of those who show up. Although rules vary from state to state, most states hold county- or-district wide nominating meetings or caucuses. These groups often decide a party's choice for a state assembly or state senate nominee, as well as choose the delegates to the state party convention. In most cases, any registered party member can participate in the process. Attendance is often low, meaning that a little bit of grassroots organizing to turn out conservationists can have a big pay off.

A well-organized bloc can often choose the party nominee from among its own members. They can also choose the district party officials. This is the party apparatus that gets to dispense party funds, recruit candidates, and represent the party to the public. District party officials play important roles at the conventions. Presidential candidates court their endorsement. Office-holders turn to them for policy guidance. In short, they represent the feelings of the party and the office holder's base.

I've had personal experience with how one person's involvement in a convention can bring great results. Last year, I lived in North Dakota and organized citizens to encourage Sen. Kent Conrad (D) to vote to protect Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Though I hadn't been in the state for a very long time, I was there long enough to meet the residency requirement for participation in the state Democratic convention. I started by going to our district nominating convention in Bismarck -- a meeting of about 35 people in a public school. They had recently selected the district party chair in a closely contested election in which a few more people showing up for either side would have made a decisive difference. The people who were present nominated candidates for state assembly and passed a platform. Finally, they chose a delegation to the state convention. Everybody who wanted to be a delegate was chosen -- and the slate wasn't even filled, leaving it up to the party chair to fill the remaining slots.

At the convention a few weeks later, I had incredible opportunities to further a pro-conservation agenda. I was able to talk to Sens. Conrad and Byron Dorgan (D) and present them with a picture of the Arctic Refuge signed by many of the delegates (delegates who formed their political base and had the power to choose the Democrats' nominee for Senate).

But better than the access were the results. Working with a handful of other pro-conservation delegates, I was able to organize a floor vote to strip the platform of a long-standing plank urging the abolition of the Endangered Species Act, and insert a plank urging a clean energy future. Both passed overwhelmingly. The vote apparently caught the attention of many office holders and candidates, because pretty soon they were coming up to me to tell me how pro-environment they were in hopes that I would swing my "bloc" of voters to them. And their commitment lasted beyond the convention. When I called them to follow up afterwards, they were a lot quicker to take my calls than they had previously been -- and their conservation positions improved as well.

Of course, I didn't really have a bloc; just myself and those sympathetic delegates I could find. The whole time I was at the convention, I was thinking how great it would be to actually have an organized bloc pursuing a common agenda and how far that could go toward furthering conservation issues in politics and ultimately electing conservation champions to office. Many others have had similar feelings, so WILD PAC is working with other groups to make that vision a reality in 2004, on the local, state, and national levels.

Right now, we're in the research stage. My interns and I have been working the phones, calling state parties across the country to organize the often intricate rules and regulations into an easy-to-understand, state-by-state manual that organizers and delegates can use to navigate the road -- from an initial organizing meeting to the selection of a pro-wilderness champion as a nominee for office. It's hard work, but it will pay off with a template for organizing the conservation community for the first time in nearly two decades.