Washington: Senator Patty Murray
"Mom in Tennis Shoes" Now a Stand-Up Senator
In a chamber often described as a rich man's club, Washington's Patty Murray
sticks out like a green thumb.
Since running for the U.S. Senate in 1992 as a "mom in tennis shoes,"
Murray-whose political career had till then been limited to the local school
board and a stint in the state senate-has proved her willingness to step on some
mighty powerful toes. A longtime advocate for families and health-related issues,
she's become a crucial ally of the environment in a state where conservation is
often at loggerheads with development.
Murray established her bona fides following the GOP takeover of Congress, a time
when the new House leadership and many Western senators were contriving to weaken
environmental protections. In early 1996 she introduced a bill to repeal the
salvage-logging rider enacted the previous summer, taking to the Senate floor to
display photos that showed how forests had been ravaged, not salvaged, under what
environmentalists dubbed the "logging without laws" rider. Although her measure
failed, she earned the gratitude of conservationists-and the enmity of the lumber
lobby, including her state's pro-timber senior senator, Republican Slade Gorton.
In 1995 and again in '97, Murray authored legislation to protect the last
free-flowing stretch of the Columbia in Washington-and the river's last natural
salmon run-under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. She has worked to end the
region's salmon crisis, striving to find what she calls "a cost-effective,
consensus-based approach" to restoring the salmon runs on the Elwha River. In
1997 she pressured the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to improve its management of
dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers so as to protect salmon.
Murray has also been instrumental in prying funds loose for important
land-acquisition projects in the Northwest, including a key stretch in the
Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. The League of Conservation Voters has
rated her at 80 percent or better in every year of her Senate term; earlier this
year the Washington-based League of Private Property Voters, a pro-development
group, gave her a goose egg.
It should come as no surprise that Murray has been targeted for defeat by the GOP
this November. Her likely opponent is Representative Linda Smith, a radical-right
Republican and fervent conservation foe (18 percent LCV average since 1995)
backed by Oliver North of Iran-Contra fame.
Murray's 1992 campaign was a keystone in what came to be called the Year of the
Woman. With some hard work and a bit of luck, 1998 could just turn out to be the
Year of the Environmentalist.
