When Kathleen McGinty, the top environmental adviser for Al Gore, came to campus for a town hall meeting Thursday, she probably expected to have an easy time talking policy. After all, Oregon voted Democratic in the last three presidential elections.
But this is Eugene and the University of Oregon, which also makes it a major Ralph Nader stronghold. A handful of the Green Party candidate’s supporters came wearing T-shirts and buttons supporting the Green Party candidate, who holds a liberal platform of environmental conservation.
They challenged McGinty with tough questions about Gore’s environmental record.
She also had an unexpected confrontation with a large, dead fish.
About 200 students and community members packed themselves in the Ben Linder Room in the EMU for a chance to voice their concerns to McGinty, who has been Gore’s environmental policy adviser since the vice president was a Tennessee senator.
The questions tackled specific environmental issues, including removing dams on Oregon waterways, using hemp as an alternative resource and oil drilling in Alaska and throughout the country. But many Nader supporters laughed and made loud quacking and chirping sounds to show their opposition to some of the answers McGinty gave about Gore’s platform.
When one man fired a barrage of questions and criticism, McGinty fought back, defending the vice president and saying Gore can’t suddenly change every policy the Clinton administration has tackled.
“Gore can’t do it alone, Ralph Nader can’t do it alone and you can’t do it alone,” she said, pointing at the man. “We’ve got a Republican Congress, and you can fight and you can fight and you don’t always win.”
While McGinty always explained Gore’s personal stance on issues, she often pointed out the time it takes for major policy to be enacted and the opposition that can hold back legislation.
But the real excitement came as McGinty and her staff left the EMU. A man walked up to McGinty and offered her a dead salmon, which visibly startled the Gore adviser. She simply quipped that she likes her fish with lemon and butter before making a quick exit from the EMU.
“We didn’t talk about philosophy. It was a purely culinary discussion,” McGinty said before boarding a plane to Seattle late Thursday afternoon.
For the most part, the town hall meeting remained civil, and some differences were even solved after the meeting.
The most heated point came when senior Jonathan Sands said that claims that a Republican administration would make abortion illegal were simply a scare tactic by Democrats to keep people from voting for Nader.
Law Professor Garret Epps stood up and yelled at Sands, saying he “has no clue” and called his claims “political happy talk.”
But right after the meeting, the two met and calmly discussed the issue in an exchange of ideas.
“For the most part, people were respectful of each other’s differences,” said Holly Harris, co-director of Land, Air, Water Environmental Law Society, the campus organization that sponsored McGinty’s visit. “People had the opportunity to ask some pretty sticky questions and she was able to provide them with answers.”
LAW, a national organization, is the oldest law society in the country.
Harris added that invitations are being sent to the environmental advisers for Nader and Republican candidate George W. Bush to come and speak on campus as well.
Bush and Gore are in a virtual tie in Oregon and, for that reason, McGinty told the crowd that this will be the most important vote they ever cast — even though, for some students, it will be the first vote they have ever cast.
“It won’t be as useful ever again in your entire life,” she said. “This is the most important vote of your life.”