No Limits On Support Nethercutt Enjoys Friendly Reception During Swing Through Rural Southeastern Washington

Rep. George Nethercutt likened the term-limits supporters who want him to retire to groups that want to breach dams on the lower Snake River.

Both are extremists, he told about 100 people gathered for a town hall meeting at the Garfield County Fairgrounds Tuesday night.

Nethercutt was in territory that would be considered hostile to removal of the dams and extremely friendly to him if he decides to seek another term.

People arriving for the meeting were given cards on which to write questions. Many of them used the cards to instead urge him to run, or serve up questions that he could hit out of the park.

“Are you going to be a career politician?” asked one.

“No,” replied Nethercutt. “I don’t have any designs on this being my last job. I’m happy doing this job for a time, but it isn’t a career.”

Juyne Weimer of Pomeroy suggested Nethercutt forget his 1994 pledge to serve no more than three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. “We’re the ones who are going to vote you in,” she said.

After the meeting, Weimer said she was angry about the television commercials sponsored by U.S. Term Limits of Washington, D.C., which compare Nethercutt’s 1994 pledge to infamous statements by presidents Nixon and Clinton. People in Eastern Washington should decide whether he serves another term, not an outside group, she said.

The meeting capped a day Nethercutt spent in a “Palouse swing” through the strongly Republican part of the district, going from Walla Walla to Prescott to Dayton to Pomeroy.

Nethercutt told the crowd he made a mistake in 1994 when he pledged to serve only six years. That might not be enough time to accomplish all the things he wants to do.

“I know what I said and I wished I hadn’t said it,” he said. “I have lived and learned.”

He repeated a promise to decide later this spring whether he’ll run for re-election in 2000.

Absent from the crowd were any members of the Eastern Washington Term Limits Coalition, who have asked for a chance to meet with Nethercutt to express local residents’ views on the importance of him keeping his pledge.

Co-chairman Michael Fagan said Monday he was frustrated because the group does not have a meeting scheduled and was not informed of the town hall meeting until that day.

Nethercutt said U.S. Term Limits, may have a right to run critical ads against him now. “But they don’t care about dams or agriculture. They just want me out,” he said.

Any mention of altering or breaching the dams - one member of the audience suggested the word should be “destroying” - started heads shaking in the crowd of mostly farm families.

Many of those same heads nodded yes when Nethercutt said the changes are being pushed by environmental extremists.

“There are some groups that would be delighted if there was no one in the West. … if there were fences around all the forests,” he said.

Breaching of the four lower Snake River dams is one proposal being studied by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to help restore the endangered salmon runs. It has the support of some scientists who believe it offers the best chance of keeping the wild salmon from becoming extinct. It is opposed by many people who rely on the Columbia and Snake river systems for irrigation, barging, power generation and recreation.

In one effort to help the salmon, the government is moving a large population of a species of bird, the Caspian tern, from an island in the mouth of the Columbia, Nethercutt said. Those birds were eating many of the young salmon before they could reach the ocean.

“I do support tern limits,” he joked.

Throughout the day, Nethercutt fielded questions on other topics besides term limits. When he dropped by the Prescott Post Office, he ran into Tom Archer, a agricultural pilot and farmer who was putting stamps on a stack of bills. Archer wanted to know about higher farm prices and Kosovo.

“I don’t think we should be there,” Archer said of the Balkan province. “We got enough problems ourselves. I don’t think we’ve got a national interest there.”

Nethercutt, who voted against a resolution to support U.S. involvement, agreed: “I fear we’ve gone in awfully quickly. We’re going to have more Kosovos, rather than fewer Kosovos.”