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Most agree with Racicot on fires By KATHLEEN McLAUGHLIN Gazette State Bureau HELENA – A majority of Montana voters agree with Gov. Marc Racicot that Clinton administration forest management policies are partly to blame for the severity of this wildfire season, a poll for Lee Newspapers shows.
The survey found that 57 percent of the registered voters asked either “strongly agreed” or “somewhat agreed” with Racicot’s assertion. Another 38 percent disagreed with the Republican governor’s statement. Five percent were not sure. In this poll, Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc., of Washington, D.C., queried 625 registered Montana voters Sept. 21 to 23. The poll results carry a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. Early in August, as fires swept across the state, Racicot made several statements faulting President Clinton’s management of national forest lands. He said the administration had spent too much time and energy on the issue of protecting roadless lands at the expense of forest thinning and other measures that might have minimized the severity of the fire season. This year’s is widely considered Montana’s worst fire season in 90 years. “They have not taken up this cause,” Racicot said in August. “That comes directly from the White House.” Racicot is actively campaigning for Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s run for the White House. Bush’s opponent is Vice President Al Gore. While Racicot came under heavy criticism from environmentalists for his stand, it appears that most voters agree with him. And the governor, now in his last months of his eighth year as state chief executive, remains wildly popular. In this most recent poll, Racicot received positive job performance reviews from 77 percent of voters surveyed. Twenty-two percent rated his job performance as fair or poor and 1 percent were undecided. That’s on par with his approval rating for most of his term, which consistently have been 69 percent or above since September of 1994. Racicot got equal positive ranking from both men and women – 77 percent of each gender group gave him good marks in doing his job. The governor is prohibited by term limits from seeking the office again and has not made his future plans known.
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