Pombo considers options in wake of stunning defeat
7-term GOP congressman seething over tactics of foes
Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Monday, November 20, 2006
(11-20) 04:00 PST Washington -- This is not what Rep. Richard Pombo expected to be doing in the weeks after the election.
He's packing up his congressional office. His wife, Annette, is moving personal items from their townhouse on Capitol Hill. He's preparing to hand his gavel as chairman of the House Resources Committee to a Democrat. His staff will soon turn over files to the man who stunned the political world by beating him, wind engineer and political neophyte Jerry McNerney.
The seven-term Republican lawmaker is already thinking about other things, like attending his kids' sports games and landscaping the yard on his cattle ranch in Tracy.
"My wife's got a to-do list that's 14 years old," he said, with a laugh that's half-wince.
The brash 45-year-old conservative, who's led a decadelong crusade to rewrite the nation's environmental laws, isn't sure what he'll do next. He's already getting job offers, but must wait because of ethics rules. He hopes to continue to push the agenda of property-rights groups. And he's not ruling out running to regain his congressional seat.
He's convinced that his successor, McNerney, will be ousted two years from now.
"There's no doubt," Pombo said. "We're already hearing guys are talking about running against him in the primary because they know in a different atmosphere the chances of him holding that district aren't that great. Because he's going to have to vote. Nobody would cover him before, who he was, but as the incumbent they will have to. He's going to be voting on things that the people in that district don't like."
He said there are several Republican mayors and state legislators in the district who would make good candidates. And he added, "I may consider running again for Congress. I really haven't made that decision, and I don't want to make that decision right now."
McNerney, who spent last week in Washington for the orientation for newly elected members, said through a spokesman that he would delight in a rematch with Pombo.
"The voters soundly rejected him, so we say 'bring it on' if he wants to come back for more," said McNerney's campaign manager, A.J. Carrillo.
Many of Pombo's colleagues in Congress were shocked by his loss. He was the only Republican committee chairman defeated. During votes last week on the House floor, lawmakers of both parties approached him to ask, "What happened?"
Pombo is still digesting the loss. In a wide-ranging interview, he used humor to deflect questions about how he's coping with his defeat. But his post-election sentiments are clear: He's furious at his opponents for the very personal campaign they waged against him, and he is still stunned because they pulled it off.
Pombo said he respects McNerney -- "there's probably nothing I agree with him on, but that doesn't make him a bad guy" -- but he's livid at the major environmental groups who targeted him for defeat two years ago and ran a well-financed campaign to do just that.
Sitting at the long conference table in his committee office, Pombo dissected the numbers from election day. In 2004, he beat McNerney by 22 percentage points by winning 96,000 votes in San Joaquin County, which makes up the bulk of his 11th Congressional District and has been his political base. But two years later, he got less than half that total, just 45,000 votes.
He said the figures show how his opponents -- with a barrage of anti-Pombo mailers, billboards and TV and radio ads -- persuaded his voters to stay home.
"They couldn't win with the Democrats. They had to suppress the Republican vote," he said. "The last couple weeks what they were doing was walking, calling and mailing Republicans with a heavy, 'He's corrupt, it's time to get him out' thing to try to drive down the vote of Republicans. And it worked."
Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife and a leader of the effort against Pombo, sees it a little differently. When his group first polled voters in September 2005, about a third of the district's voters viewed Pombo as anti-environment and too close to special interests. By May, after the environmentalists' campaign began, more than half of voters held that view, he said.
"All we had to do was reinforce and broadcast the very reasons that voters were unhappy with him and why their approval of him was so low," Schlickeisen said.
Pombo acknowledged that his own polls in the last week showed the only way he would win was with a big GOP turnout. Pombo believes California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's romp depressed turnout for him and many other Republican candidates statewide.
"It was a done deal. There was no reason for the Republicans to show up," he said.
Analysts say other factors also hurt Pombo, including anger over the Iraq war and frustration with President Bush and the GOP Congress, which persuaded many independent voters nationwide to vote Democratic. An influx of new voters also may have helped McNerney in this swing district, which twice backed Bush but also voted for California's two Democratic senators.
Although his clout is diminished, Pombo remains chairman for a few weeks. He's still negotiating with senators over separate bills approved by the House and Senate to boost offshore drilling. The Senate bill, which Pombo dislikes because it opens only a limited area of the Gulf of Mexico to drilling, is seen by most lawmakers as the only bill with a chance to pass in the final days of this Congress.
He is proud of several policy successes as chairman, including passing President Bush's Healthy Forests legislation to thin fire-prone forests with logging and a recent deal to restore the San Joaquin River. But his signature initiatives -- approving oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and overhauling the Endangered Species Act -- stalled in Congress and are unlikely to be taken up by Democrats.
His likely successor as House Resources chairman, Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., praised Pombo for working closely with Democrats on the committee, although they often clashed over environmental issues.
"He felt that some of the safeguards that have worked over the decades were not working," Rahall said. "I think the vast majority of Americans believe they are. That's a balance I'll seek to restore as chairman."
Pombo never liked the Washington scene -- the cocktail parties and black-tie dinners -- and he appears ready to be back in his blue jeans and cowboy boots with the 3,000 head of cattle on his family's 500-acre feedlot. He said he won't miss the twice-weekly cross-country flights or seeing his name in headlines. Too many lawmakers, he thinks, grow addicted to the attention.
"A lot of these guys think they are important, and they buy off on their own press," he said. "I think it's important work, I think what we do here has an impact on people's lives, but the guys doing it aren't important."
Some close to Pombo believe this could be his last campaign. He has never shied away from political combat, but the race left hard feelings for many in his tight-knit Portuguese family, who felt the Pombo name was dragged through the mud.
"Everyone was disappointed I lost," he said. "But it got so ugly and so personal, I think they were happy it was over with."
E-mail Zachary Coile at zcoile@sfchronicle.com.
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