by Ira Shapiro
However, the environmental movement had developed into a strong and sophisticated legislative force, starting with the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the fight over the Supersonic Transport in 1971. The fate of Alaska was by far the biggest environmental issue that had arisen during the Carter administration—in terms of conservation, it was the biggest issue that had ever arisen—and the environmentalists were ready for a major battle. They could count on some stalwart environmentalists in the Senate, including Ed Muskie and Gaylord Nelson, the longtime leaders, and some recently elected senators with a strong commitment to the environment—John Chafee, Paul Tsongas, and Gary Hart.
THE STAKES WERE ENORMOUS, which ensured a tough and protracted struggle. The extraordinary animosity between Alaska’s two senators injected an element of unusual, personal bitterness.
Ted Stevens was a pugnacious, combative World War II transport pilot who moved to the territory of Alaska at the age of twenty-nine, quickly becoming a visible and effective U.S. Attorney. Moving to Washington to serve as legal counsel to the Interior Department, Stevens had played a central role in drafting and securing passage of the legislation that granted Alaska’s statehood. He ran for the Senate in 1968 and lost in the Republican primary. But when the incumbent Alaska senator died, Stevens was appointed to fill his term, arriving in the Senate in December 1968.
In later years, Stevens liked to describe himself as a “mean, miserable SOB.” He often intimidated opponents through his power on the Appropriations Committee, his explosive temper, and his long memory for those who crossed him. But in 1980, he was the Republican whip, relatively moderate in his views, and respected for his willingness to make deals and stand by them. He had worked with Warren Magnuson on historic legislation to protect the nation’s fisheries, and as a former government lawyer, he often stood up for the interests of federal workers. He had real friends across the aisle. He and his wife, Ann, were part of the Nelson social circle. The night that Tom Eagleton was dropped from the Democratic ticket by McGovern in 1972, Stevens cheered up a somber gathering of Eagleton and his closest friends by arriving unexpectedly with Alaskan salmon.
Alaska’s junior senator, Mike Gravel, was elected to the Senate in 1968 and took his seat just ten days after Stevens. Gravel leaped to national prominence in June 1971 by holding a midnight meeting of his Public Works Subcommittee in order to read tearfully from the Pentagon Papers while the country waited for the Supreme Court decision on whether the Nixon administration could stop the New York Times from publishing the papers. The next year, Gravel again caught the national eye through an unorthodox campaign to become the Democratic vice presidential nominee, which included nominating himself at the Democratic convention. A University of Alaska professor later said: “Loose cannon is a good description of Gravel’s Senate career. He was an off-the-wall guy, and you weren’t really ever sure what he would do.”
Senators from the same state sometimes encountered difficulties working together, but Stevens and Gravel truly hated each other. A historic decision about Alaska’s future, which would have been momentous and difficult under any circumstances, would play out against the backdrop of their enmity.
The Senate had made an effort in 1978 to pass legislation on the Alaska lands, but had failed. Looking at the December 18 deadline for action set seven years before, Carter said on July 31, 1978, that if Congress was not willing to act to save Alaska lands, he might have to do so through administrative action. Carter’s authority to act by executive order gave him leverage in negotiations, but using the authority risked the possibility that the state of Alaska might sue, and the ensuing litigation would create uncertainty lasting for years.
In September 1978, even as the natural gas legislation dominated the time of the Senate Energy Committee, the committee staff worked on generating new options for Alaska. By September 17, the committee was looking at a bill that nominally set aside 121 million acres for conservation, though in fact, much of the land would actually be open to mining, drilling, and other development. A coalition of conservation and environmental organizations vehemently opposed this bill, instead supporting the House’s far more generous version of the same legislation. On September 20, the Energy Committee reached a tentative agreement to set aside 100 million acres for national parks and conservation areas. Jackson defended it as a strong compromise, but Stevens protested that it cancelled concessions that he had won earlier in the committee.
Jackson led the Energy Committee in one more effort to produce legislation beginning in July. On October 4, the committee agreed on a 95-million acre Alaska lands bill with fewer conservation restrictions than the House’s bill. However, Gravel used an obscure provision of the Senate rules to block the committee action, and they had to reconvene and again approve the legislation. Jackson had begun talking to his House counterparts about the general shape of a conference bill, if he could get the Senate bill to the floor. He was not able to surmount the objections of Gravel and Stevens, and on October 15, the Alaska Lands Act had died, to be taken up in the next Congress.
The post-mortems indicated how much was at stake and the level of acrimony between the key players. Stevens accused Gravel of sabotaging the bill in an ad hoc meeting with the House by pushing extreme amendments even after he had told Stevens he would not do so. The House members, agreeing with Stevens, also blamed Gravel for “torpedoing” the bill. Jimmy Carter, however, blamed both senators for the breakdown, since they had aligned themselves with the oil industry and other commercial interests. He decided to wait no longer.
On November 16, Interior Secretary Andrus announced that 110 million acres of Alaska land would be closed to development for three years. The next day, Carter rejected a request from Alaska’s Governor Jay Hammond that he refrain from issuing executive orders to protect Alaska lands from development. Hammond had offered not to challenge in court any federal actions on the land for one year if Carter would refrain from naming any part of the land a national monument, which would prohibit all drilling, mining, logging, and hunting. Carter refused, saying that he wouldn’t agree to take anything off the table.
Two weeks later, on December 1, Carter used the authority granted to the president under the Antiquities Act to designate 56 million acres of Alaska lands as national monuments by executive order. “Because of the risks of immediate damage to those magnificent areas,” Carter said, “I felt it was imperative to protect all of these lands. These areas contain resources of unequaled scientific, historic and cultural value, and include some of the most spectacular scenery and wildlife in the world.” He called passage of Alaska lands legislation in the next Congress his highest environmental priority.
Carter’s decision triggered a fierce reaction in independent, frontier Alaska, which always had an intensely ambivalent relationship with the federal government and the lower forty-eight. (Alaskans cherished their freedom and wanted Washington to stay the hell away, other than providing the massive amounts of federal funds on which its citizens and corporations relied.) Carter was burned in effigy in Fairbanks. Residents in the Cantwell area organized a major act of civil disobedience, known as the Great Danili Trespass, in which they entered the park and violated laws by lighting campfires and firing guns. The towns of Eagle and Glennallen, located in the shadow of newly designated monuments, issued official proclamations that they would not respect National Park Service regulations, would not enforce them, and would shelter those who violated them. Even months later, Carter would express concern about landing in Anchorage on the way to Japan, because of “the uproar.” When he landed, Governor Jay Hammond gave the president a mule driver’s whip, just in case he needed it.
Senator Stevens, accompanied by his wife, flew home to help restore calm by reassuring angry Alaskans that he would protect their interests. That was how it came to pass that, on December 4, 1978, they were on a Learjet that crashed at the Anchorage International Airport, killing five people. Senator Stevens survived, but his wife did not. Alaska’s hu
ge size made reliance on private airplanes commonplace, and Alaska’s harsh weather and mountainous terrain made air travel much more hazardous. Hale Boggs, the popular House Majority Leader, had perished in a small plane in Alaska just seven years before. But none of that made Ann Stevens’s death any less stunning to the Senate, where she had so many friends.
Like John McClellan and Joe Biden before him, Ted Stevens would deal with his devastating loss by throwing himself even more completely into his Senate work. But Stevens would always blame Gravel for his wife’s death: if not for Gravel’s filibuster, Carter would not have resorted to issuing the Executive Order, and Ted and Ann Stevens would not have had to be on that plane.
THE YEAR 1980 HAD become the time for decisive action, and presidential politics would inevitably color the debate. On February 12, acting on Carter’s orders, Secretary Andrus ordered strict environmental protection for one-tenth of Alaska for the next twenty years. Andrus said he “deeply regret[ted]” the action but believed it was necessary if Congress was not going to move legislation.
On May 3, Stevens, Jackson, and Tsongas met and exchanged proposed amendments for a floor debate that was scheduled to begin on July 21. They agreed on what amendments would be allowed: a substitute from Tsongas, and three amendments each from Stevens, Gravel, and Jackson. This represented an extraordinary effort by the Senate to reach a unanimous consent agreement that would ensure floor consideration and prevent a filibuster, nearly three months before the scheduled debate.
On July 21, the Senate began the long-anticipated debate on the Alaska Lands bill. President Carter called it “the environmental vote of the century” and promised conservationists that he would veto a bill that did not protect enough of Alaska’s lands. The Senate Energy Committee version protected 102 million acres, about the size of California and Maine put together. The Carter-backed version protected 125 million acres, an area the size of California, Maine, and Indiana and was generally more restrictive of development of oil, gas, and timber. Dan Tate, the respected White House liaison with the Senate, advised Carter that the prospects for the legislation were “quite poor.”
Stevens made his position clear in advance of the debate. Saying that Alaskans should have “the right to continue our lifestyle and traditional means of access,” Stevens contended: “This measure doesn’t go as far as extremists want, but it will double the area of the national parks, and do the same with the wildlife refuges, triple the existing wilderness. . . . Eight out of the 10 largest parks in the country will be in Alaska.”
The Alaska Coalition of environmentalists had mounted their strongest lobbying effort in memory in support of the House version. It announced its backing of five Tsongas-sponsored amendments to restore restrictive “wilderness” and “wildlife refuge” designations to many areas the committee bill left more open. If the amendments failed to pass, Tsongas and Bill Roth would offer a substitute in an effort to accomplish the same thing. Stevens warned that he would oppose the legislation if any of the Tsongas amendments passed. He blamed Gravel for not getting votes for the committee bill or making his intentions clear.
Jimmy Carter, deeply committed on the merits, and with the presidential election less than four months away, hosted a rally of environmentalists in the East Wing of the White House. “On behalf of Americans who care about progress, beauty and the wilderness,” Carter said, “preserving Alaska’s priceless natural resources is my number one environmental priority . . . Alaska’s beauty, diversity and resources are absolutely irreplaceable. We cannot afford to be short-sighted. We owe our children and our country so much more.”
The next day, the environmentalists won a series of test votes on an amendment by Hart and Chafee to add 14 million acres of wildlife refuge to the 43 million included in the Senate Energy bill. Votes to table the amendment and to weaken it were all defeated by roughly 2 to 1 margins. Chafee, a passionate environmentalist, implored the Senate: “Never before and never again will we be able to set aside vast tracts of wildlife-rich lands for the enjoyment of future generations.” The debate quickly become acrimonious, with Stevens warning that passage of the amendments could produce a “revolt” in the western states, although Secretary Andrus and Senator Hart were also westerners. Stevens also charged that the oil reserve maps being used by the Interior Department were falsified.
That explosion was just a prelude to the shouting match that took place on the third day of debate. Stevens was particularly upset with a Hart amendment that would designate 2.5 million additional acres as wildlife refuge that Stevens thought had been set aside for state control. He threatened a prolonged delaying action if compromise was not found. Both sides agreed to take the bill off the floor for several days in an effort to find common ground. Staff discussions went all evening on July 23, with the senators continuing to talk the next day in Robert Byrd’s office.
Jackson, Stevens, and Mark Hatfield defended the Senate Energy Committee bill against conservationists Hart, Chafee, Tsongas, and Cranston. The environmental side had more votes, but faced the threat of a filibuster by Stevens if agreement could not be reached. Gravel moved in and out of the talks, opposing everything and suggesting opponents might prefer to wait for a Republican administration. Alaska governor Hammond reportedly favored asking Stevens to join a filibuster rather than accepting any Tsongas amendments or even a much-weakened version of the House bill. Environmentalists were leaning against making concessions to Stevens, because they essentially had everything they wanted protected through the executive order. But Stevens, Jackson, and Byrd said that they were still making progress and believed a compromise would be possible.
Five days later, on July 29, that crucial moment had arrived where failure looked all too possible, even likely. Governor Hammond, Stevens, and Gravel seemed to have given up on compromising with the environmentalists and urged defeat of the compromise bill that seemed to be emerging. Stevens acknowledged that the other side “came more than halfway” in meeting his demand for additional timbering rights in southeast Alaska, “but anything short of 450 million board feet is not enough.” He said Tsongas and Cranston had also offered some additional mining land, but not enough to win his support. Probably near exhaustion, he contradicted himself, saying, “I have argued and argued and argued and won no concessions.” Tsongas observed that because of the filibuster threats by Stevens and Gravel, the Senate should pass legislation close enough to the House bill that a conference could be avoided.
But too much was riding on the outcome to give up; a historic accomplishment remained within reach. And Stevens was not only a consummate dealmaker, but he had been so deeply involved in the founding of the state that he had a unique stature and credibility to speak for, and balance, all of Alaska’s competing interests. He was very attentive to the energy, mining, and forestry industries, which were vital to Alaska’s economy, but he also cared deeply about protecting Alaska’s extraordinary natural beauty. If he were making the decision alone, he would undoubtedly strike the balance somewhat differently than Carter and the environmentalists would, but he believed that Alaska’s future required a legislative solution, which meant reconciling diverse views through principled compromise. He also recognized and respected the fact that the whole country had a stake in Alaska’s future, and that the Senate had emphatically backed the environmentalists’ position.
On August 4, the negotiators announced that they had reached a compromise, which involved wrapping Tsongas’ amendment into one substitute. Stevens said that he could not support the substitute but considering the strength that Tsongas had shown on test votes, he appreciated that Tsongas had been patient in listening to his objections. In contrast to Stevens and Tsongas’ mutual respect in a tense situation, Jackson and Gravel were at each other’s throats all day. Gravel accused Jackson of trying to railroad the bill through; Jackson accused Gravel of dilatory tactics. At one point, Tsongas yielded Gravel some time to speak. Gravel made a “scathing response,” prompting Tsongas to obs
erve that “every time I try to be reasonable, I end up pulling a stiletto out of my back.” Gravel effectively filibustered with repeated quorum calls and motions related to the bill’s strict time requirements, which had been agreed to specifically for the purpose of frustrating a filibuster. The Senate left town without finishing the bill.
Two weeks later, the Senate gave “all but final approval” to the Alaska Lands bill by approving a new substitute by a 72–16 vote. Tsongas, the principal author of the substitute, characterized the substitute compromise “as pretty much down the middle” between the House version and the Senate Energy version. Stevens said that the bill was “the best job we can accomplish under the circumstances” and said that Alaska had won 5.5 of its 7 major points and 81 percent of the concessions it had sought. He said that he still voted against the compromise and would try to improve it in the next Congress—not a likely prospect. On August 19, the Senate gave final approval to the bill by a 78–14 vote. Jackson urged the House to accept the Senate bill; “any substantive changes in this bill, in my judgment, will kill it.” Stevens said that any concessions from the Senate bill would force him to filibuster; “that’s not a threat; that’s a promise.” Mo Udall and the other House leaders seemed reluctant to go along.
On August 27, Gravel became the first sitting senator defeated in a primary challenge in 1980. Clark Gruening, the son of the legendary Alaska senator Ernest Gruening, whom Gravel had defeated twelve years before, had avenged his father’s defeat. Gravel’s defeat was welcomed by nearly everyone: Republicans, Democrats, environmentalists. His feckless and untrustworthy behavior during the negotiation process had rendered him one of the least-respected members of the Senate.
The Senate would adjourn early for the fall elections, leaving no time to finish the landmark measure. Its fate would depend on the outcome of the presidential election, now fiercely contested between Carter, Reagan, and a strong and respectable independent candidate, former Illinois Congressman John Anderson. Twenty-two Democratic senators, including some of the most famous names in the party, left Washington to go back to their home states, fighting for their political survival.