SACRAMENTO — Actor Clint Eastwood rode back into politics Tuesday to take on the timber industry.
The former mayor of Carmel and longtime conservative Republican joined forces with environmentalists to cut a television commercial promoting Proposition 130, the “Forests Forever” initiative that would halt clear-cutting in California’s forests.
“Let’s save the ancient redwoods,” the actor says as he sits in a chair holding a copy of the ballot pamphlet.
With a week to go until Election Day, Eastwood became the latest to join a battle of the airwaves being waged by environmentalists and industry groups over four ballot initiatives affecting the environment.
Spending millions of dollars on television time, the environmentalist and industry campaigns are relying on celebrities, emotion-charged ads, pocketbook appeals and, at times, exaggeration in their last-ditch efforts to win on Tuesday.
For campaigns that have spent months raising money and discussing complex scientific and regulatory issues, the election now comes down to its final–and most important–stage: a series of 30-second television ads.
Eastwood is just one of a number of celebrities appearing in commercials to promote one of two initiatives sponsored by environmentalists–Propositions 128 and 130. Actors Ted Danson, Michael Landon, John Ritter and “Twin Peaks” stars Kyle MacLachlan and Michael Ontkean are lending their celebrity status to the environmentalist cause.
Environmentalists also are promoting their initiatives with heart-tugging ads that feature a 10-year-old leukemia victim whose friends died of cancer and a young boy who goes camping with his father only to find the redwoods gone.
The campaign against Proposition 128 has countered with a commercial featuring former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop opposing the initiative and other ads portraying average Californians worried about the cost of the sweeping environmental measure.
The timber industry is running an ad contending that its countermeasure, Proposition 138, will save the state’s ancient forests. Farmers are airing a spot maintaining that their initiative, Proposition 135, seeks an end to aerial malathion spraying.
In attempting to win passage of Proposition 128, environmentalists have taken the detailed, complex measure they call “Big Green”–which affects the state’s food, water, air and coast–and boiled it down to very simple terms.
This week, the campaign began airing a commercial featuring 10-year-old Jennifer Shepherd, a leukemia victim from the San Joaquin Valley town of Fowler, which has been hard hit by cases of childhood cancer.
“I’m really angry,” says Jennifer’s father, Dan. “Five of my neighbor’s children have died of cancer. My little girl still has to live with it.”
Showing the Fowler cemetery and raw sewage spilling out of a pipe, the commercial says, “Prop. 128 is not complicated. It’s about cancer and kids like Jennifer Shepherd and phasing out dangerous toxic chemicals.”
To counteract the appeal of the anti-pesticide initiative, opponents are airing the ad sowing Koop, retired and out of uniform, sitting behind a desk and criticizing the initiative.
“I’ve spent my life urging Americans to do things to protect and enhance their health,” Koops says. “But public policy should be based on science, not scare tactics. If I thought Proposition 128 would protect the health of mothers and children, as its backers claim, I’d be with them. I’m not.”
Advertisements on both sides of Proposition 128 have tended to overstate the measure’s effects, with environmentalists at times exaggerating its environmental benefits and opponents emphasizing high costs that may never come to pass.
For example, the campaign in favor of Proposition 128 has run ads depicting the measure as a smog fighter even though it does not target air pollution. Rather, the proposition would combat global warming, and cleaner air would result only because many of the changes needed to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, also would reduce smog.
Opponents of Proposition 128, who call it “The Hayden Initiative,” have responded with ads charging that the wide-ranging measure will cost too much. “Nearly every section is full of complicated restrictions that end up raising costs for electricity, gasoline, water, food . . . products we use every day,” says a woman in one ad, standing in the driveway after a shopping trip.
Hefty price hikes for gas, electricity, water and food are one possible scenario, but not the only one. Supporters counter that the measure could save the state billions of dollars, primarily because of lower energy consumption.
To negate the pesticide provisions of Proposition 128, the agricultural industry is promoting Proposition 135. Among other things, the farmers’ initiative would leave regulation of pesticides largely in the hands of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, often criticized by environmental groups for favoring agricultural interests.
The commercials for Proposition 135, like those on Proposition 128, tend to exaggerate its environmental effects. One ad says the measure “seeks an end to aerial Medfly spraying.”
In fact, backers of Proposition 135 have defended aerial spraying of malathion over the Los Angeles Basin while many of the proponents of Big Green have fought to halt the spraying. The commercial’s claim is based on provisions in the farmers’ measure that would increase production of sterile Medflies to reduce the need for future aerial sprayings.
Environmentalists have responded with ads featuring actor John Ritter and the “Twin Peaks” stars charging that chemical companies designed Proposition 135 to mislead the voters.
The assertion that chemical companies are behind Proposition 135 stems from a proposal last year by pesticide manufacturers to come up with an initiative to invalidate Big Green’s pesticide provisions. However, Proposition 135 has been financed by the agricultural industry, and donations from pesticide manufacturers have been returned.
The environmentalists’ campaign for Proposition 130, the “Forests Forever” measure, scored a major coup by recruiting Eastwood, whose tough-guy image in numerous films could help boost support for the environmental measure. Showing he is a conservationist as well as a conservative, Eastwood urges voters to “save the last 5%” of California’s redwoods.
The Eastwood spot and a similar ad featuring “Cheers” star Danson are designed to help voters distinguish between Proposition 130, the environmentalist measure, and Proposition 138, the industry-sponsored initiative.
In his ad, Eastwood notes that Proposition 130 has the backing of the Audubon Society and National Wildlife Federation, while both major candidates for governor, Republican Pete Wilson and Democrat Dianne Feinstein, oppose Proposition 138.
Although the fast-paced ending of the ad could leave the impression among some viewers that both gubernatorial candidates favor Proposition 130, Feinstein has taken no position on the environmentalist measure while Wilson opposes it.
Wilson campaign director George Gorton said Tuesday that the senator objects to any ad suggesting that he supports Proposition 130. He stopped short of calling on the campaign to pull the ad, joking, “Who wants to tangle with Clint Eastwood?”
In a confusing television battle between competing forest initiatives, the timber industry also is portraying itself as seeking to protect the environment.
In its commercials, the timber industry contends that Proposition 138 would protect the forests and wildlife. One ad shows a section of forest that has been clear-cut– and by industry’s loggers–and proclaims the measure would ban such harvesting practices.
Environmentalists, however, contend that the measure is riddled with loopholes that would allow timber industries to continue clear-cutting forests and harvesting trees faster than they grow.
Paddock reported from Sacramento and Dolan reported from Los Angeles.
