BLUE WAVE, RED WAVE, OR GREEN WAVE IN THE MIDTERMS?

August is winding down; Labor Day stands on the horizon.  We’re in a midterm election year, and as sure as fall follows summer, the political campaign season will follow the upcoming holiday.

Rumblings have already begun.

Most political pundits are predicting a “blue wave,” in which Democrats, taking advantage of both traditional anti-incumbent trends and growing suburban discontent, take control of the House of Representatives.  While some Democrats have spoken wistfully about taking over the Senate as well, the fact that they’re defending far more seats than the Republicans are, with may located in traditionally Republican states, makes such a shift in control very unlikely; Democrats could easily lose a few seats in the upper chamber.

Some well-respected outlets have even raised doubts about whether the Democrats will, in the end, take over the House, with Anthony Salvanto, the CBS News Director of Elections and Surveys, recently calling the fight for House control a “toss-up.” 

On the Republican side, there has even been talk of a possible “red wave,” in which Democrats not only fail to gain control of the House or Senate, but end up losing seats to a surging Republican party.  The current President has embraced the concept, and has predicted

“a giant Red Wave”

in November.

But in the end, it is people, not parties, that fill Congressional seats.  And red and blue aren’t the only waves breaking on the electoral shore.  

There is also green.

A few days ago, the New York Times published an opinion piece on

“The Coming Green Wave,”

that deserves every anglers’, and every sportsman’s, attention.

The piece focuses mostly on inland issues, and on the current Administration’s affronts to conservation concerns.  It declares that

“A Green Wave is coming this November, the pent-up force of the most overlooked constituency in America.  These independents, Teddy Roosevelt Republicans and Democrats on the sideline have been largely sidelined as the Trump administration has tried to destroy a century of bipartisan love of the land.

“But no more.  Politics, like Newton’s third law of physics, is about action and reaction.  While President Trump tries to prop up the dying and dirty coal industry with taxpayer subsidies, the outdoor recreation industry had been roaring along.  It is a $374-billion-a-year economy, by the government’s own calculation, and more than twice that size by private estimates.

“That’s more than mining, oil, gas and logging combined…

“This is not green goo-goo or fantasy projection.  You can see and feel the energy in places ignored by the national political press…

“’We hunt and we fish,’ said Land Tawney, a Montanan who leads the fast-growing Backcountry Hunters and Anglers.  ‘And we vote public lands and water.’”

It’s not my intent to comment, right now, on the current Administration’s policies.  The midterm elections are about Congressional seats, not about electing or re-electing a president.  But the principles presented in the New York Times piece apply to Congressional elections, too.

As sportsmen, we should all try, as Land Tawney said, to “vote public lands and water,” and as salt water anglers, we should be thinking of "voting public resources," too, because those resources are a part of every American’s heritage, and shouldn’t be sold off wholesale because, lost in some fever dream, a cabinet secretary decided that the path to reducing the nation’s trade deficit lies across the backs of the country’s fish stocks.

It’s a tough thing to say, given the current level of political partisanship, but if anglers and other sportsmen want to preserve natural resources for their use, and the use of their descendants, it’s time to stop voting for parties, and start voting for people—or, more precisely, to start voting for policies that conserve the land, water and living resources, by supporting the people who support such policies.

For if the wrong policies become enshrined in law, the land, the water, the resources, and us, who depend on all three, will be well and truly screwed.

Again, this is not about party. 

Too often, people try to turn conservation into a partisan issue, and fail to recognize that no party has a monopoly on virtue—or vice.  

President George W. Bush was a Republican, descended from a long line of Republican officeholders, but he recognized that

“The vibrant beauty of the oceans is a blessing to our country.  And it’s a blessing to the world.  The oceans contain countless natural treasures.  They carry much of our trade; the provide food and recreation for billions of people.  We have a responsibility, a solemn responsibility, to be good stewards of the oceans and the creatures who inhabit them.”

And that wasn’t just talk. 

President Bush was a strong supporter of the 2007 reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, including toughened provisions to end overfishing (including the annual catch limit requirement) and its expansion of catch share programs.  He pleased anglers by issuing an Executive Order prohibiting the commercial harvest of striped bass and red drum in federal waters.  And he pleased the conservation community by invoking the Antiquities Act to create four marine monuments that protected an aggregate 335,000 square miles of ocean, the greatest ocean area ever protected by any world leader.

His successor, President Barak Obama, a Democrat, also had a good record on ocean issues.  He quadrupled the size of the a marine monument off Hawaii created by President Bush, created the first marine monument in the Atlantic in order to protect deep-water coral habitat, established a national ocean policy that promoted conservation and habitat protection, and made it very clear that he would veto any bill that weakened the provisions of the reauthorized Magnuson-Stevens Act that President Bush signed into law during his second term.

So yes, it comes down to policy, not to party, and to the individual candidates willing to support the policies that benefit living marine resources and those, like us, who depend upon them.

Right now, Magnuson-Stevens is again at the fore.  H.R. 200, passed by the House, seeks to weaken many of its important conservation provisions, including those approved by President Bush a decade ago, and later defended by President Obama.  The vote was a relatively close 222-193, and largely along party lines, although 15 Republicans did vote against and 9 Democrats voted in favor.  Anglers should take a long look at how their representatives voted, and reward them—or not—in November.

But H.R. 200 isn’t the only thing going on.  There are the folks co-sponsoring the so-called “Modern Fish Act,” S. 1520, that would also weaken the federal management process.  There are Rep. Zeldin’s recurrent efforts to open federal waters to striped bass harvest.  There has been a parade of bad red snapper bills.

Actions should have consequences, and legislators should know that if they support the wrong policies, and vote the wrong way, then that “green wave,”—or whatever else you might want to call it—that has been lapping around their ankles for so long is going to turn into a 100-year storm, and there’s a good chance that they’re going to drown.

If anglers, sportsmen and other conservationists don’t vote their own interests—clean water, public land, abundant resources—this November, they may very well lose them.

Because elections have consequences, too.