http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002707199_floyd28.html Seattle Times Wednesday, December 28, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 AM Floyd J. McKay / guest columnist 3 congressmen need to explain their hasty retreat on ANWR "Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has long been a priority of the Bush administration, the energy industry and the national Republican leadership." That phrase, or a similar one, is boilerplate language in updates of the congressional battle over oil drilling in the Arctic. "Boilerplate" is a newsroom term for language that frequently is attached to an updated story, to tell anyone who just arrived from Mars of the origins of the story. In this case, it is a reminder that the GOP, the Bush family and the energy industry are a seamless web. It is impossible to determine where one ends and another begins. Texas is the nexus of this power, and oil money has lubricated the campaigns that have allowed the Bushes and Republicans at the national level to run the United States for most of the past quarter-century. The last Democrat whom Big Oil supported was Texan Lyndon Johnson. Both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush were in the energy business in Texas, and the energy crowd bailed young George out of a failed energy business and set him up to make millions off a small investment in the Texas Rangers baseball team. They bankrolled his two campaigns for governor and two for president. The largest single contributor to Bush's four campaigns appears to be Enron. The failed energy giant contributed some $736,800 to those campaigns, while failing to pay its Oregon taxes. At his greatest time of need ‹ the Florida vote recount in 2000 ‹ George W. Bush called on the energy industry's cash and its smartest lawyer, James Baker. Bush raised the staggering sum of $13.8 million to run the recount, on top of the $191 million he raised for his campaign. A quarter of the recount money came from only 651 donors, whose combined gifts topped the entire contributions to Democrat Al Gore. In this group, 149 of the high rollers were Texans, most with energy links. Oil and energy campaign money is still around, and voting on the ANWR issue will determine where a lot of it will be spent. Look for a large Exxon tanker to pull up to the Seattle docks and pump out thousand-dollar bills for the Republican lucky enough to run against Sen. Maria Cantwell this year. Cantwell went up against ANWR big-time, angering the driller-in-chief, Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens. What goes around will come around for Cantwell and, by extension, for Mike McGavick if he is the GOP candidate. Whether Texas crude flows directly to McGavick or through Republican pipelines is a moot point. Cantwell could never have expected Big Oil contributions ‹ she's in the wrong party ‹ but one does not lightly poke the nose of sleeping bears. Any credible opponent will be well-funded. Less certain is the campaign impact on Washington members of Congress. Three who had stated opposition to ANWR drilling reversed themselves and voted to drill when the defense appropriations bill, with ANWR attached, came to a House vote. The trio are Democrats Rick Larsen and Norm Dicks and Republican Dave Reichert. All pleaded that if the defense spending bill had failed, Washington's defense industry and our soldiers in Iraq would be the losers. Absolute nonsense, and they know it. A defense spending bill, stripped of its ANWR language, could be passed quickly in the House, as it was in the Senate. ANWR is a totally unrelated provision, placed there only because Stevens couldn't get the votes if it stood alone. Dicks, Larsen and Reichert now must explain their vote to their environmental backers, who have a lot less campaign money than their Big Oil backers. Reichert had no worry about oil money being spent on an opponent ‹ he's a Republican ‹ so one presumes he was trading for favors with the House leadership. Dicks seldom has a major Republican opponent, and it would be ludicrous to accuse him of going soft on the military ‹ he is the heir of Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson in that regard. Larsen may have a tougher race, but after two terms he certainly should be able to make his case to his Fourth Corner voters. Other members of our delegation followed the pledges they had made earlier on ANWR, but Dicks, Larsen and Reichert have some explaining to do about their hasty retreat when the going got tough. It's certainly not over for ANWR, and we will see some repercussions in our 2006 races. Floyd J. McKay, a journalism professor emeritus at Western Washington University, is a regular contributor to Times editorial pages. E-mail him at [log in to unmask] Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To get off the IOWA-TOPICS list, send any message to: [log in to unmask]