Bob Bernt, a bear of a man, a rancher and a lifelong Republican, had about 25 people over recently for a pork-and-beans cookout.
The ranchers and farmers who drove their pickups to Bernt’s place were almost all Republicans, of one stripe or another. One sported a Ron Paul button. Another said he had lived — until recently — as “no opinion Tom.” Some admired the tea party; others derided it.
After an afternoon of floating down a nearby river, sampling Bernt’s organic cheese and ice cream, and listening to a cowboy poet, they sat under a large white tent to talk about what really brought them together: standing up to the big pipeline company TransCanada.
When TransCanada said its $7 billion Keystone XL oil pipeline from Alberta to Texas would pass about two miles from this tiny town in central Nebraska — crossing 92 miles of the state’s ecologically sensitive Sand Hills and parts of the vast Ogallala Aquifer — it stirred opposition throughout the state. Political boundaries crumbled as the pipeline proposal united Nebraskans across party lines and divided them within. Ultimately, it became a political litmus test in the presidential race.
Its route riled Nebraskans who fear water contamination and resent the ability of a corporation — especially a foreign one — to wield the right of eminent domain.
People such as “no opinion Tom” Genung, whose mother-in-law meekly accepted TransCanada’s initial offer, took his protest to Washington, where he was arrested outside the White House. Jim Knopic, who learned about activism fighting big hog-raising companies, got into the fight. And Bernt, who sells beef, dairy products and vegetables, grew upset that he might lose his organic certification if the pipeline crossed under the Cedar River where his cattle drink.
So when President Obama rejected TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline proposal, saying his administration needed more time to weigh the environmental impact of the route through Nebraska, he was practicing his own version of “triangulation” politics, playing to environmental groups and making common cause with people in a solidly red state.
“I was really impressed with that,” Bernt said of Obama’s decision in January. “He showed more backbone that I thought he had.”
Months after Obama had hoped to put the issue to rest, the pipeline remains a confounding political issue with traps for both presidential candidates. GOP hopeful Mitt Romney has played up the issue, but here some conservatives are put off by his unequivocal support for the project with scant mention of its environmental impact.
“Nebraska, even though we’re one of the reddest of red states, we have this prairie populism streak,” said Philip M. Young, a political consultant and former executive director of the state Republican Party.
At the same time, Obama must tread carefully in an election year in which Democrats as well as Republicans are seduced by the promise of jobs — even if it may be an illusion. He has backed the 485-mile southern leg of the pipeline from Cushing, Okla., to the Texas Gulf Coast, and last month TransCanada received the last of three permits it needed from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin construction.
Here in Nebraska, the politics of the Keystone XL pipeline are especially murky. TransCanada has changed the route so that only 10 miles will lie in areas with shallow water sources. The mostly Republican unicameral legislature, which stunned TransCanada by taking a unanimous position against the original path in December, voted in favor of a revised route if it won approval from the governor and the state Department of Environmental Quality. In April, TransCanada submitted its alternative route.
“This coalition forced some odd partnerships,” Ken Haar, a state senator who led the fight to alter the route, said at Bernt’s cookout. “People in this area want government out of their lives, yet they are working with [the activist group] Bold Nebraska and the Sierra Club.” For his part, Haar won gratitude from farmers and ranchers, but he strained his relationships with construction unions, which support the pipeline.
Of TransCanada’s new route, Haar said, “It’s not a perfect solution, and different people will be unhappy.” But he added that most Nebraskans probably think it’s a victory.
Pipeline politics
That victory could spell defeat for Haar, however. He is worried that wealthy pro-pipeline and conservative forces are set to pour money into an effort to defeat him this November. He can already imagine the negative ads.
The politics of the pipeline could also echo far beyond the Nebraska statehouse.
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