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Tracy Republican Richard Pombo said today he will seek the congressional seat of George Radanovich, who announced last week that he would not seek re-election. Pombo said he will make an official announcement Tuesday afternoon on KMJ radio in Fresno. The decision by Pombo is a potential game-changer, political analysts said. State Sen. Jeff Denham of Atwater and former Fresno Mayor Jim Patterson already have announced their intentions to replace Radanovich, but Pombo has Washington experience and the backing of some influential San Joaquin Valley agricultural interests. Pombo served seven terms in the 11th Congressional District before being ousted in...

WASHINGTON — Local congressman Jerry McNerney, a freshman Democrat, has emerged as one of the Republicans’ top targets in Congress this year, making the race in his district that rarity in California politics — a national battleground contest and a true toss-up. In 2006, McNerney pulled off one of the big upsets of the year when he knocked out Republican Richard Pombo, a committee chairman who earned the ire of environmental groups. Now efforts by the GOP to retake the district, which stretches from Stockton through Alameda County to Morgan Hill, ensures an expensive campaign and one of the state’s...

Registration tilts the GOP's way. A California secretary of state's report from December shows the 11th District is 42.1 percent registered Republicans and 37.5 percent registered Democrats. Carl Fogliani, a political consultant based in the district who worked with Pombo two years ago, said Republicans have every reason to think they'll take back the seat this year. Party registration and Andal's strong name recognition without the baggage Pombo had are two reasons, he said. And there are others. "You have a Congress with lower approval ratings than President Bush, which is what Democrats are always talking about," said Fogliani, who...

WASHINGTON -- If you want to know what Rep. Jerry McNerney has been up to since he won national recognition in November as the Democratic dragon-slayer who knocked controversial House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo out of office, just look at his campaign fundraising reports. McNerney is working around the clock to keep his job. When the House is in session, fellow Democrats are giving him lots of help adding small victories to his growing pile of legislative accomplishments. When he's in his district, which is just about every weekend -- he spent one weekend on a congressional tour of...

So far, two Republicans have emerged as likely challengers: Dean Andal, a former state assemblyman, and Guy Houston, a current assemblyman. Andal served in the legislature in the early 1990s and gained a reputation as a hardline conservative. Wysocki, who is working with Andal, called him "one of the most conservative members who ever served in the state legislature." He is expected to announce his campaign kickoff May 1. With Pombo's loss, Houston is the only elected Republican left in the Bay Area. He has a reputation as a pragmatic conservative. He is term-limited for 2008, and his local state...

Rep. Jerry McNerney, the first-term Democratic congressman from Pleasanton who unseated seven-term lawmaker Richard Pombo in November, is a marked man -- targeted by his own party and the Republicans with the next election almost two years away. McNerney, a wind energy expert by training and a newly elected official by will and circumstance, is a prime beneficiary of what could be called the Democratic Party's Freshman Protection Act. Party leaders have given him prime committee assignments, coveted floor time during legislative debates on ethics and renewable energy in the opening weeks of the 110th Congress, and plenty of strategic...

Pombo: Noon It's bedlam at the Tracy soccer field where Pombo stops to watch Rená, his 13-year-old daughter. Nine games are under way simultaneously on a massive expanse of grass that Pombo helped, as a Tracy councilman, convert from a flood basin into fields. Annette Pombo, his wife, is team mom and missing the game is not an option no matter how close the election. And except for two journalists and an aide looking on, the campaign fades into the background for the next hour. Between plays, Pombo, like any parent, loves to talk about his children. Rená, pronounced Renee,...

7-term GOP congressman seething over tactics of foes - 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...

Annette Pombo wants her husband home. Because of last week's election, that's right where he's going. "She's got a list, a long list, of stuff that needs to be done," Richard Pombo said with a laugh Wednesday afternoon. For the next six weeks or so, Pombo still will be formally known as Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy. As he has for the past 14 years, he will remain the congressman for a district that now includes parts of San Joaquin County. He'll continue as chairman of the House Resources Committee, responsible for public lands bills that retain a sliver of a...

Around midnight, Jerry McNerney was talking to supporters when a campaign staffer thrust a cell phone in his hand and hustled him out the back door. The crowd at his election-night party started to buzz: was Richard Pombo calling to concede their hard-fought race for California's 11th congressional district? No such luck. It was only Bill Clinton on the phone. "He came out for me," McNerney said, standing alone on a clear night as TV news vans hummed in the lot behind him. "He liked that I offered an alternative view on energy." That might be an understatement. Fourteen years...

LOS ANGELES - GOP Rep. Richard Pombo, the powerful chairman of the House Resources Committee, plunged to stunning defeat at the hands of an almost unknown Democrat, Jerry McNerney, as Democrats wrested control of the House from the GOP. GOP Rep. John Doolittle beat down a strong challenge from Democrat Charlie Brown in Tuesday's midterm election, surviving a boisterous campaign that focused on the incumbent's ties to a congressional corruption investigation. San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi was in line to be the first female House speaker ever as Democrats captured more than two dozen GOP-controlled seats around the country. McNerney,...

This just in: Actor and stem cell research activist Michael J. Fox has endorsed Democratic nominee Jerry McNerney of Pleasanton for congressional District 11. McNerney is in a tight race with GOP incumbent Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy. Fox has been actively campaigning this year with the Democratic Party for embryonic stem cell research. Pombo, along with many conservative Republicans and President George W. Bush, oppose the practice because it involves the destruction of human embryos. Here's the text of the Democrat's press release: MICHAEL J FOX ENDORSES JERRY MCNERNEY FOR CONGRESS Cites Support for Stem Cell Research Today Michael J....

Republican Rep. Richard Pombo, who has faced of wave of attack ads from national conservation groups, is an "enthusiastic steward" of the environment and a friend of wildlife, first lady Laura Bush told GOP supporters Friday. The first lady defended the environmental record of the seven-term congressman, seeking to give him a boost in his unexpectedly tight re-election campaign. Environmental groups have spent heavily to defeat Pombo, angered by what they say are anti-environmental policies he has championed as chairman of the House Resources Committee. Appearing with Pombo at a campaign rally, Bush told supporters that the congressman has led...

The first independent poll in Congressional District 11 shows incumbent Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, and Democratic challenger Jerry McNerney locked in a statistical dead heat. In another sign of the tight campaign, the Cook Political Report, which tracks congressional races, has upgraded its ranking of the race to a tossup. "This doesn't mean that we're saying McNerney is going to win," said analyst Amy Walter at the Cook Report. "But it's close enough that we can no longer give Pombo the benefit of the doubt." The Cook decision was unrelated to the poll because "it was an automated poll," Cook...

The GOP has launched a rescue mission in the final weeks of the campaign to save two powerful northern California Republican congressmen hurt by deep discontent over the Iraq war and corruption in Washington. President Bush attended fundraisers for both Rep. Richard Pombo and Rep. John Doolittle, and first lady Laura Bush plans to campaign for them later this week. The GOP's House campaign committee recently pumped in more than $1 million to help Pombo on next Tuesday's ballot. But the non-partisan Cook Political Report this week shifted the Pombo race from ``leans Republican'' to a tossup, and a poll...

First Lady Laura Bush will visit Northern California later this week to campaign for two GOP incumbents in hot re-election races, John Doolittle and Richard Pombo. Her trip comes on the heels of a fundraising swing President Bush made for the two candidates at the beginning of October. The first lady will appear at a get-out-the-vote rally for Doolittle on Thursday evening in Rocklin. She'll do a rally for Pombo in Pleasanton Friday morning.

STOCKTON-Richard Pombo, clad in a beige polo shirt and jeans, is leaning back in a folding chair, his trademark ostrich-skin boots under a table. He's bantering with a reporter and an aide, and appears at peace. But he really isn't. Pombo, a seven-term Republican congressman, is in the tightest race he has seen in more than a decade to hold on to his once-safe seat -- and he knows it. Despite the comments of his Democratic opponent, Jerry McNerney, and the accumulated evidence of national voter surveys, Pombo thinks his troubles have nothing to do with Iraq, ethics or the...

Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, has demanded a Sacramento area cable company pull a campaign ad placed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The television spot said Pombo voted to hike his congressional salary eight times while voting against a $1,500 bonus for troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. "The ad is entirely false," wrote Pombo campaign consultant Wayne Johnson in a letter to Comcast, which broadcasts in the San Joaquin County portion of District 11. "The advertisement contains patently false and deliberately deceptive information that is little more than a smear and should not be allowed to air." The Democratic...

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has entered the contentious race between Democratic nominee Jerry McNerney and GOP Rep. Richard Pombo, signalling that the party's internal polling may be favorable for the challenger. An ad funded by the committee starts running today in the Sacramento TV market, according to spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield. The cost won't be known until the committee posts its expenses on the Federal Election Commission website, per 24-hour reporting rules. Click here to view the ad. The spot accuses Pombo of voting to raise his own salary eight times -- worth $31,000 -- but voted in 2003 against...

by Mark Finkelstein October 19, 2006 Shades of Jimmy Carter! The NY Times editorializes this morning against the proposal by California congressman Richard Pombo to lower the federal royalty on oil-bearing shale, condemning it as "an extraordinary giveaway of federal revenue . . . and a huge incentive to wreak environmental damage." The Times apparently can't stand the thought of oil companies making a profit, even if in return we can significantly reduce our dependence on foreign oil. As the paper acknowledges, "the estimate of the petroleum locked up in these deposits is enormous: perhaps 800 billion barrels of recoverable...

SINCE THE 11TH Congressional District was redrawn to include suburban parts of the Bay Area, Rep. Richard Pombo has faced stronger challenges from Democrats. This year turned out to be a particularly tough race against Pleasanton wind energy consultant Jerry McNerney. McNerney was not the choice of the Democratic Party in the primary. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee viewed him as too liberal for the district and refused to include him in its fundraising program. Like many politicians from both parties, McNerney has moved toward the center after the primary. He, in fact, changed answers to 55 questions on a...

LINKS TO disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, efforts to gut wildlife protections and sell off national parks, and a blessing to offshore oil drilling. That's the profile of U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo. In seven prior elections, the Tracy Republican has had an easy time. He's run low-profile races in a GOP-leaning district that straddles the low hills separating the Bay Area and the San Joaquin Valley. But this time his ethical stumbles and radical positions should catch up with him. His opponent, engineer Jerry McNerney brings a low-key probity that the district and House deserve. Pombo's positions are simply out of...

Tracy Republican Richard Pombo took office vowing to change the Endangered Species Act. In the 14 years since, he's delivered speeches, staged events and written bills. He's enjoyed perfect positions to pursue his signature issue, including, for the past four years, chairmanship of the House Resources Committee while his party has controlled both the House and the Senate. The Endangered Species Act, though, remains unchanged since the day Pombo took office in January 1993. The same 22,300 words in the U.S. Code then are intact today. Which raises the fundamental election-year question: Why is it so hard to change this...

BERKELEY — The congressional fundraiser was at a pub in the heart of this liberal political stronghold. A local band, The Flux, entertained with a tune titled "Impeach the President." The focus of attention: two candidates vying for seats in bedrock conservative districts to the east, currently occupied by Republicans John T. Doolittle of Granite Bay and Richard W. Pombo of Tracy. Although most experts still give them a narrow edge, Doolittle, 55, seeking his ninth term, and Pombo, 45, pursuing his eighth, are in the toughest fights of their political careers going into the Nov. 7 election. Their Northern...

The Democratic challenger to Republican Rep. Richard Pombo on Monday said the congressman should demand the resignation of House Speaker Dennis Hastert over his role in the congressional page scandal. Democrat Jerry McNerney also said Pombo should return any money Hastert, R-Ill., had raised for him in the past. McNerney's demands come as the page scandal is roiling Congress a month before the Nov. 7 election, when Democrats hope to take control of the House. Republican Rep. Mark Foley resigned from his Florida congressional seat after it was reported that he had sent suggestive e-mails and instant messages to teenage...

TRACY - Middle ground went unclaimed Thursday night as Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, sparred with Democratic challenger Jerry McNerney for the 11th District House seat in a charged, partisan debate before a lively crowd, many of them McNerney supporters eager to shake the seven-term GOP stalwart with shouts and accusations. The debate drew a crowd of more than 300 people to watch the two candidates trade barbs from low plastic chairs on a grade-school stage in the heart of "Pombo Country." It was the lone debate between the two candidates vying for a House district that stretches from Danville to...

President Bush traveled to California today to speak at fundraisers for Congressmen Richard Pombo and John Doolittle. Later, the president visited with the students and faculty at the nearby George W. Bush Elementary School, named in his honor. Click here for the complete transcript at the Pombo fundraiser. And click here for the president’s remarks during the school visit. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met with Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolanos and Latin American defense ministers in Managua, Nicaragua. Enjoy your Tuesday visit to Sanity Island

WASHINGTON -- President Bush assumes the role of campaigner in chief in California today as part of a monthlong drive to help Republicans keep control of Congress. He will be in El Dorado Hills to campaign for Rep. John Doolittle, R-Roseville, after appearing in Stockton on behalf of Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy. In the last midterm congressional elections four years ago, the president's efforts paid big dividends for his party, but since then the political ground has shifted. He's still a big draw for Republican fundraisers, but some candidates who proudly campaigned with Bush in the past are keeping their...

Each weekday, tens of thousands of former Bay Area residents drive west from their new homes in San Joaquin County to jobs in the East Bay and Silicon Valley. Less expensive housing has lured them east, but the draw of higher-paying jobs west of the Altamont Pass keeps them tied to the Bay Area. Nowhere has the area's growth been more pronounced than in Tracy -- the hometown of Rep. Richard Pombo, the Republican rancher and powerful House Resources Committee chairman making his bid for an eighth congressional term in a year when a Democratic, anti-incumbent wave seems to be...

President Bush is aggressively taking on his Iraq war critics as he prepares to travel to Northern California next week. On Friday he accused opponents of advancing an argument that "buys into the enemy's propaganda.'' The day before, the president accused Democrats of being the party of "cut and run.'' Earlier in the week, Bush said he considered it "naive'' to believe that going to war was a mistake. Bush arrives in Stockton in advance of a Tuesday morning fundraiser for Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, the chairman of the House Resources Committee. The president then travels north to El Dorado...

Republican Reps. Richard Pombo of Tracy and John Doolittle of Rocklin are preparing for President Bush's visit to California next week to generate campaign cash for their re-election bids, while Democratic activists are urging the party faithful in the Bay Area to head to San Joaquin County and the Sacramento Valley to help unseat the incumbents. "With the Bay Area's help, we can take back these districts," said Gary Lucks, founder of the group Progressive Action-East Bay, which is helping organize ground troops and raise money for the two Democrats running against Pombo and Doolittle. "Over the next five weeks,...

President Bush will visit California next month to raise money for Republican Reps. Richard Pombo of Tracy and John Doolittle of Rocklin, who are seeking re-election amid ethics questions. Bush will attend a breakfast for Pombo on Oct. 3 and a fundraising lunch at an El Dorado Hills country club for Doolittle the same day, the campaigns said separately on Friday. The Doolittle event, which his campaign hopes will raise as much as $500,000, will be Bush's first appearance on behalf of Doolittle. The congressman's friendships with former Majority Leader Tom DeLay and convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff have provided...

The Record Published Thursday, Jul 27, 2006 SACRAMENTO - It's official: Every candidate who ran in the spring primary race has now endorsed Democrat Jerry McNerney against seven-term incumbent Rep. Richard Pombo. Right after the June 6 primary, the three Democratic candidates held a "unity breakfast." Then this week, word got out Republican Paul N. "Pete" McCloskey, who took 32 percent of the GOP vote against Pombo, would endorse McNerney. On Wednesday, McNerney announced that Republican Tom Benigno, a perennial candidate from Tracy who took 6 percent of the June vote, will also stand with him. "I have been a...

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Richard Pombo, the Tracy Republican who heads the House Resources Committee, stirs conflict with almost every major initiative he launches, from offshore drilling to Indian gambling. Few members of Congress have as much influence over the nation's environmental laws as Pombo. And no topic has been more contentious than his legislation to overhaul the Endangered Species Act. The House approved Pombo's sweeping rewrite of the 1973 law on a 229-193 vote in September. It was widely denounced by environmentalists as a disturbing retreat from habitat protection and a paperwork nightmare for agencies seeking to revive the country's...

Congressional District 11 Democratic candidate Jerry McNerney has prevailed in an on-line voting contest to determine which candidate would win fundraising support from Democracy for America. Democracy for America is a grassroots liberal organization inspired by the presidential candidacy of Howard Dean and now run by his brother, Jim. According to DFA's web site, "here's what your contributions to McNerney will mean: $25 brings Jerry's message to 50 voters via mail. $50 buys 25 lawn signs for grassroots supporters. $100 gets Jerry valuable time on a local radio station. $250 helps Jerry compete with (incumbent Rep. Richard) Pombo (R-Tracy) on...

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has dismissed Tracy Rep. Richard Pombo's request for support on his bill that would open the coasts of some states to oil and gas drilling. Although Pombo and Schwarzenegger are both Republicans, Schwarzenegger - who is locked in a re-election campaign against Democratic state Treasurer Phil Angelides - has long opposed lifting the federal moratorium on offshore drilling. "Just last month, the House of Representatives voted once again to extend this moratorium, a process that has worked in the past and is working today to protect our coast. I see no reason to jettison this...

WASHINGTON Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, wants California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's support for legislation that would allow states to approve oil and gas drilling off their coasts something now blocked by federal bans. Pombo released a letter to Schwarzenegger on Tuesday asking him to back a bill that would replace existing federal moratoria on offshore drilling with a federal ban states could opt out of. The House Resources Committee, which Pombo chairs, is scheduled to vote on the legislation Wednesday. Pombo promotes the idea as a way to let states like California that oppose offshore drilling control their own coasts, while...

Early returns showed Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, easily outpacing Republican challenger Pete McCloskey Jr. in early vote counts Tuesday night, while on the Democratic ticket, Pleasanton engineer Jerry McNerney was ahead of his chief opponent, Danville airline pilot Steve Filson. With only absentee ballots counted in a handful of Contra Costa county precincts for Congressional District 11, the results could well change. Yet the question is not if Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, will win the primary but whether his victory will be decisive enough to ward off a more serious attack in November. Ex-congressman McCloskey ran an intense anti-Pombo campaign,...

LOS ANGELES - Republican Rep. Richard Pombo, the cowboy boot-wearing conservative who chairs the House committee that writes environmental laws, was defending his seat Tuesday against a moderate Republican backed by environmental groups, former Rep. Pete McCloskey. Pombo, 45, targeted over ethics questions and his environmental stances, was facing his toughest re-election since coming to Congress in 1992 from his Tracy cattle ranch. The incumbent also faced shifting demographics in his GOP-leaning 11th Congressional District, which was redrawn after the 2000 census to add San Francisco Bay area voters outside his San Joaquin Valley base.GOP maverick McCloskey, 78, who represented...

For political junkies, June 6 has been circled on the political calendar for months. Eight states hold primary elections today. There are important races for gubernatorial nominations in California, Iowa and Alabama, a contested Senate primary in Montana and a number of competitive House primary battles. All in all, it's almost too much of a good thing. There are so many good races out there and not enough time to give each of them their due. In an attempt to bring readers the essential, need-to-know information about today's races, The Fix is providing the primer below. Remember: This is not...

From the moment he wakes up in his small Capitol Hill apartment until his last roll call vote, Rep. Richard Pombo's daily life in Congress is a one-man battle against environmentalists. On a recent morning, it begins in his black Ford Explorer, shuttling between an interview at Fox News and his office at the Capitol. In the front passenger seat, Pombo, the chairman of the House Resources Committee, is prepping for a vote on his new bill to overhaul how the nation's fisheries are managed. From the backseat, his press aide delivers the day's first bad news: A Washington Post...

The Real Republican Values Express -- a boxy red, white and blue striped motor home -- pulls cautiously into the parking lot of Julia Morgan Elementary School. A Republican candidate for the 11th Congressional District has come to town to thank a sixth-grade teacher for helping him win the endorsement of the California Teachers Association, which rarely supports GOP candidates. The side door opens. Stepping firmly down to the curb is a fit 78-year-old ex-Marine with merry, blue eyes and brush-cut silver hair. Although he says he was scared each time, he led six bayonet charges in the Korean War....

STOCKTON - Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday campaigned for two veteran California GOP congressman who find themselves facing unexpected primary challenges as Republicans are seeking to hold onto their majorities in Congress. Cheney spoke at a private luncheon in Sacramento for Rep. John Doolittle of Roseville and during a fundraising dinner in Stockton for Rep. Richard Pombo of Tracy. Pombo, an eight-term congressman, faces the more serious challenge in the June 6 primary election. Pete McCloskey, a 78-year-old war hero and former congressman, has challenged Pombo on his environmental record and by tapping into voter unrest. A moderate, he...

The national spotlight on Tracy GOP Rep. Richard Pombo's re-election bid defies conventional political wisdom. With a 7 percentage point Republican registration advantage, Congressional District 11 does not appear on a single major nonpartisan political watch list, on which experts track races Democrats could win in their quest to retake control of the House of Representatives. "We have Pombo as more or less safe," said Stu Rothenberg, a political analyst at the nonpartisan Rothenberg Report. "We've thought all along that the Democrats' rhetoric on this race was far removed from reality." Despite these predictions, Pombo's high-profile rise to power as...

The long-simmering stew between national environmental groups and Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, has spilled onto the powerful House committee chairman's Web site. Environmentalists contend Pombo is improperly torching his political adversaries and spreading lies on the committee's taxpayer-funded Web pages. "Propaganda is legal," said Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, "but the taxpayers shouldn't be paying for it." Pombo argues that his sites -- one titled "Earth Day" and a second focused on reforms of the Endangered Species Act -- shine light on eco-myths and the fund-raising machine behind a movement that spends millions of dollars to block environmental policy...

A Washington watchdog group has called on Congress and the IRS to investigate Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, for a laundry list of what it calls the lawmaker's ethics violations.Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington -- CREW -- on Thursday released a 13-count ethics complaint and a letter it sent to the Internal Revenue Service.Pombo called the charges a politically-motivated assault timed to appear just weeks before the June 6 primary election, where he has two opponents."I have never engaged in any illegal or unethical conduct whatsoever in my nearly 14-year career in the House, nor has any evidence been...

My but it's getting crowded in Congressional District 11, what with all the progressive and environmental groups trying to boot incumbent GOP Rep. Richard Pombo out of office. Anti-Pombo forces are converging from all over the country with ad campaigns, robo-calls, RVs, offers of ground troops and even a Web site where Bay Area liberals can sign up for car pools to the Central Valley. None of this surprises Pombo. The idea, he says, is to tie him and his money at home rather than allow it to flow into the coffers of vulnerable Republican candidates elsewhere. Here's a look...

WASHINGTON - Key Republican lawmakers said Thursday that building a dam on the American River at Auburn is the only way to protect Sacramento against catastrophic flooding that might occur once every 500 years. But the head of the California Department of Water Resources cautioned against losing focus on flood-control projects now underway that are meant to give 200-year protection to the region. Sacramento is now protected only at the 100-year level--the lowest of any large urban area in the nation. "Our focus right now in the state is that we need to be sure we get these improvements and...

Prospects are fading for a rewrite of the nation's endangered species protection law this year as key senators hesitate to move anything that would have to be meshed with legislation written last fall by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy. Some senators have expressed concern that any bill they pass, even if it gains bipartisan consensus, would still have to be blended with Pombo's aggressive rewrite. And Pombo's bill goes way too far in easing environmental protection, according to many critics. For example, Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., the chairman of a key subcommittee, has said he fears any Senate bill might be...

Republicans for Environmental Protection has endorsed former Rep. Pete McCloskey (R-Calif.) for the GOP nomination in California’s 11th Congressional District instead of the Republican incumbent, Rep. Richard Pombo. In a statement, the organization endorsed McCloskey, co-author of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, because he “has a distinguished record of working to safeguard the environment and supporting traditional Republican values.” The organization did not support Pombo, who, according to the organization, has “worked to dismantle landmark environmental laws.” McCloskey served in Congress from December 1967 until January 1983 and unsuccessfully ran for the Republican nomination for president in 1972. He broke...