In the Hall

This year’s light-rail expansion measure, Proposition 1, shares
little more than a name with last year’s roads and transit ballot
proposal. Unlike last year, when the Sierra Club opposed Prop. 1
because it included 182 new miles of roads, Seattle’s entire mainstream
environmental community is united behind this year’s transit-only
proposal.

That puts opponents of the measure—who relied on the Club’s
environmental cred to help sink Prop. 1 in 2007—in a bind.
Lacking the Sierra Club’s green gravitas, the anti-Prop. 1 campaign has
seized on a little-known, 32-year-old political consultant named
Ezra Eickmeyer—a self-proclaimed environmentalist whose list
of industrial and business lobbying clients outweighs his thin
environmental résumé.

Eickmeyer’s clients include a mining company that’s seeking to ship
sand and gravel on barges from the Hood Canal, two septic-system
manufacturers, and a Seattle real-estate developer. Although Eickmeyer
puts an environmental spin on his choice of clients—for example,
he argues that barges produce fewer greenhouse-gas emissions than
trucks—numerous lobbyists and environmentalists say they either
haven’t heard of Eickmeyer or don’t regard him as an ally.

Here’s what folks in the environmental community had to say when I
asked them what they thought of Eickmeyer. Bill LaBorde, state policy
director for Transportation Choices Coalition (TCC), says Eickmeyer’s
clients “are not the most noble companies and organizations around.”
Craig Engelking, state lobbyist for the Sierra Club, says if
Eickmeyer “didn’t have a ponytail, people would have no reason to think
he’s an environmentalist.” Rob Johnson, TCC’s longtime regional
policy director, describes him as “somebody who talks a lot about his
environmental credentials but doesn’t have very deep roots in the
environmental community.” Cliff Traisman, a lobbyist for Washington
Conservation Voters, calls Eickmeyer a “free agent,” adding, “He seems
to have clients that often are at direct odds with the environmental
agenda.”

Eickmeyer does have an “environmental” pitch against Sound
Transit—albeit one that most enviros consider bogus. Essentially,
he claims that the process of construction, including the production of
concrete, burns more fossil fuels than simply putting more buses on
existing highways—a pitch he made recently to the Master Builders
Association.

Whether a virtual unknown like Eickmeyer will lend environmental
credibility to a campaign funded primarily by right-wing developers
like Kemper Freeman remains unclear. Given that even folks like the
Master Builders’ Scott Hildebrand are skeptical—he notes, “I
don’t know exactly who Ezra is associated with“—the odds are
good that the “no” campaign’s claim to “green” credibility will be
exposed as the Astroturf it actually is.

barnett@thestranger.com