Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

I was driving into the Yosemite Valley this morning at dawn.  It’s about 40 mile SE of where I live, as the crow flies.  It’s a national treasure, and should never change its current protected status.  But the Valley is a very small part of the 750,000 acre Yosemite National Park.

The Park Service is not a good steward of this land.  It’s mismanaged because  of environmental politics.  Perhaps the State of California wouldn’t do any better, but it couldn’t do worse.

As I was driving out, with El Capitan gleaming in the morning sun, I thought leave the valley alone.  But some day the people of California should have control of the land surrounding it.  They can be trusted with this land.  They live and play here.  Let them manage it.

Or does Washington always know best?

I’ll be on the air with Mike Porcaro in half an hour.  I’ll be referring the audience to this web site, in order to access these links:

http://twitchy.com/2016/02/23/donald-trump-on-federal-control-of-public-land-its-not-a-subject-i-know-anything-about/

http://twitchy.com/2016/01/22/donald-trump-at-the-shotshow-dont-give-federal-lands-to-the-states-to-manage/

 

There’s a reason Cruz won Elko.  This was Sen. Nathan Glaser’s district, and he and other Nevada state legislators led the Sagebrush Rebellion in the 70’s.  There are today any number of Nevada state legislators who are passionate about getting the BLM out of Nevada.  They feel strongly enough that they would have publicly endorsed Cruz’s position on federal lands transfers.  This would have given Cruz the credibility on this issue that he needed.  He was trying to sing the song, but doesn’t hear the music.

If Cruz does have a phone conference with the legislative leaders of WY and AK he’ll get the credibility that escaped him in NV.  If he doesn’t I don’t know what’s going on.  Maybe I should just go and plant my garden.

There’s a vast difference. WY and AK, unlike NV, are heavily dependent on the oil and gas industry, and they’re suffering.  The AK Pipeline is running at 25%, and half of Alaska’s operating budget will be coming from cash reserves.  Wyoming will be making a major withdrawal from its cash reserves in order to fund the government.

These people are desperate for hope.  Expanded oil and gas development on lands now held by the feds is the only way out of the box they find themselves in.

In Nevada the economic impact of federal land ownership is tiny by comparison.  Cruz may have succeeded in getting the message out, but it just may not be very important to most Nevadans.

It’s different in AK and WY.

Cruz won Elko and Lincoln counties with 44 and 45% of the vote.  He got crushed everywhere else. Why the disparity?  I don’t know Nevada that well, but the results in Elko resemble what I was hoping for in the rest of rural Nevada.  Why did it work in Elko and virtually nowhere else?   He personally appeared in Elko.  His message on public lands got through there, and it worked.

People in Nevada, like everywhere else in this country, don’t believe anything any politician says.  But in Elko, Cruz was believed on the public lands issue and he won 44 to Trump’s 24 and Rubio’s 21.  He got as many as Trump and Rubio combined.  When Cruz talked directly to the people of Elko on this issue, he was believed.  Just to the west of Elko is Lander County.  Battle Mountain is the only town of any size.  It bills itself as “Basecamp to Nevada’s Outback”.  They promote a peculiar kind of tourism, one that’s not for the faint of heart.  This should be prime country for the public lands message.  It went Trump 40, Cruz 36 and Rubio 17.  The message almost got through there.  There’s no other explanation, at least that I’m aware of, for the disparity between Elko, Lander, and the rest of rural Nevada.

In the rest of the state, his message either didn’t get through or was not believed.  I hope to God the Cruz campaign does in Alaska, Colorado, and Wyoming what it should have done in Nevada:  have a serious, substantive discussion with the legislative leadership and the Governor on the federal lands transfer.  I’ve had such discussions in both states. They need to have a meeting and it has to be publicized.  People in Alaska and Wyoming, at least, know enough about their elected officials to know that, when it comes to public lands issues, they are speaking for the state as a whole.

The message that Cruz took to Elko works.  For some reason, people there believed him.  His campaign in the Far West needs to figure out how to communicate the public lands message.  Repetition, repetition, repetition.  You have to drive it home.  Cruz needs to double down on this message, because, initially at least, he’s not trusted.   He’s a fancy pants Harvard lawyer.  What does he really know about Wyoming, or Alaska, or rural Nevada?

The message will get through in Alaska.  Senate Majority Leader John Coghill is ready, willing and able to put a meeting together for Cruz with the legislative leadership.  Wyoming Speaker Brown, Senate President Nicholas, and Governor Mead are expecting Ted Cruz to talk personally to them.  All Cruz’s campaign has to do is call Mead’s office, and he’ll set up the meeting.

At this meeting he will not be expected to talk.  He just needs to listen.   These people know a way lot more than Cruz when it comes to this issue.  He’s going to learn a lot, and it’s knowledge that can be put to good use.

Cruz will need to get the message out himself.  The media won’t help him.  At a Vegas rally Monday night, Trump honestly admitted that, on the public lands issue, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  This was not widely reported.  Few people are even aware of it.  On the issue that Cruz made the centerpiece of his Nevada campaign, Trump had been made a fool of, as he basically acknowledged.  But this is not news, because Trump also threatened to punch someone in the face.  That’s the story out of that rally.  This is deliberate.  The entire world of bigfoot journalism dislikes and fears Cruz, and is rooting for Rubio.  Some of them hate Cruz so much they’ll promote Donald Trump, of all people.  It’s a fact he has to deal with.

Getting crushed as he did almost everywhere in Nevada means his campaign, in general, is malfunctioning.  He got rid of his communications director, Rick Tyler, at long last.  There’s a perception, which began in Iowa with Carson, that Cruz is a dirty campaigner.  The Carson thing was a result of a screw up by Rep. Steve King, who was too important to dump on.  But these guys need to get their heads screwed on right.  Sneaky campaign tricks aren’t going to cut it.

Whatever value there was in going easy on Trump no longer applies.  Republicans across the country are sick of Cruz and Rubio attacking each other, and giving Trump a pass.   Cruz needs to forget about Rubio, and go full bore on the Donald.  There’s a wealth of material to work with.

It’s either game on, or game over.