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ministration asks us to put riders on bills; environmentalists ask us to put
riders on bills.” There’d been riders since the first Congress in 1789.^15
The $15 billion spending bill—gold mine and reindeers intact—passed
Congress. Clinton signed it, wagging his finger about all the ornaments.
The final twist was that Gorton had voted no, which outraged the gold
mine opponents all the more. If you could do your “dirty work” in the
dead of night, then vote against it in the light of day and still see it pass,
something was terribly wrong, they said. Gorton said it was more impor-
tant “to stand on principle” and vote against the “folly” of the NATO air-
strikes than support the spending bill just because it included his rider.
Clinton hadn’t convinced him that military intervention in the Balkans
was necessary or working.^16
onhR eA t dAy 2000 the Sierra Club kicked off an $8 million campaign
to elect a more environmentally friendly Congress by targeting Gorton.
The club’s Cascade Chapter hoped to reach a million viewers with TV
ads—some of them set to air during Mariners games—slamming Gor-
ton for “sneaking in special deals for polluters, even letting lobbyists
write our laws.” Poised to name Gorton to its Dirty Dozen, the League of
Conservation Voters was readying a $700,000 blitz of its own.^17
A few weeks later, Cantwell chartered a plane to haul Seattle reporters
and a film crew to Buckhorn Mountain. Standing on a bluff overlooking
the fir-covered hills, she denounced Gorton for his “insensitivity” to the
environment and open government. Mining company officials had trailed
her party to the site, angry that she didn’t tell them she was coming. “See
these kids?” said the company’s environmental superintendent, showing
Cantwell’s staff photos of his children. “You are putting us out of work.”^18
Gorton said it was strange indeed that a politician who was promising
to listen to the people hadn’t bothered to ask the locals how they felt about
the mine. “It does show that the rest of the state outside Seattle can expect
the same kind of treatment from (Cantwell), and I expect the other one
(Senn) as well,” Gorton told reporters. “She will tell them they are to take
down their dams. She will tell them how they’re going to live. She shows
no interest in listening to what people’s concerns are.”^19
The other one couldn’t afford a plane but she agreed with Cantwell
that Gorton’s “backroom maneuver” was an affront to democracy. Both
Democrats said they opposed breaching the dams.
Secretary Babbitt, meantime, was touring the Hanford Reach, one of the
last wild stretches of the king Columbia River, its flow swollen by the spring
runoff. The former Arizona governor found the vista “staggering.” The