Tainted influence: Taking pro-nuke money hasn’t hurt careers

Saturday, Sept. 28, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

By Jeff German

and Larry Henry

LAS VEGAS SUN

If they could enclose their resumes in cement casks and bury them in a desert mountain, Kent Oram and George Knapp might never ignite controversy.

Yet Oram, a political consultant, and Knapp, a television reporter, have not been able to discard their radioactive pasts.

The two are among a group who in 1991 began abandoning influential careers to work for the nuclear industry but have maneuvered their way back into the state's political and media mainstream.

"At the time, I thought I was doing something that, if it worked out, Nevada could get a bunch of benefits," Oram, 55, says today.

Oram, Knapp and the others still spark a punitive fire in those fighting the industry's efforts to build a high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"They've been allowed a free ride back, after shamelessly selling out the state," says former County Commissioner Don Schlesinger, who served on the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects, which is working to defeat the repository here.

To many, it's not surprising that the career histories of Oram, Knapp and the others who encouraged a nuclear waste site have bubbled to the surface during this election season.

The issue of nuclear waste storage has long been an emotional one for Nevadans. It usually becomes front-page news and reminds critics of the public relations and advertising campaign, called the Nevada Initiative, that had Nevadans promoting a repository in Nevada.

An example occurred this month when Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole visited Las Vegas during a Western campaign swing. His Nevada publicists, Bryan Gresh and Greg Ferraro, are former nuclear industry employees.

Dole generated controversy during his stopover by declining to say whether he would veto a temporary waste facility at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Clinton has said he would veto the facility.

Gresh and Ferraro are not involved in Dole's policy decisions, and it's doubtful Dole even knew of their former employment. His campaign office would not respond.

But critics like Bob Fulkerson, director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada and a nuke dump foe, say voters believe even loose associations are toxic.

"The whole idea of these power brokers selling out to a noxious industry is one of the reasons people are sick of politics," Fulkerson says.

Critics say Oram and the others are just as powerful -- and better off financially -- than when the campaign to encourage nuclear waste in Nevada began to heat up in September 1991.

The down side, according to Fulkerson, is that these operatives, whose previous alliances may still guide their beliefs, are again offering advice to Nevada's top politicians, such as Gov. Bob Miller, a dump opponent, or reporting on political campaigns.

The fear is that their pro-nuke sentiments can leak into policy decisions and have a corrosive effect on Nevada's fight in Congress to reject temporary and permanent storage.

"If you forget about the past, you're doomed to repeat it," Fulkerson says.

Knapp, a 43-year-old KLAS Channel 8 reporter who once wrote a newsletter bashing anti-dump politicians, returned to the station on the condition that he refrain from reporting on nuclear waste issues.

He says he and the others have put their pasts behind them.

"I get almost zero feedback," he says. "As far as our views are concerned, it's not a blip on the radar screen."

Not so, says Schlesinger. The mere mention of those who worked on the Nevada Initiative can cause his blood to boil.

Oram and Knapp contributed to Schlesinger's defeat in 1994. Oram was a consultant for Schlesinger's opponent, Erin Kenny, while Knapp, who was allowed to work at the station while on the nuclear industry's payroll, aired inflammatory stories about Schlesinger.

"They haven't been held accountable for their past ties," Schlesinger says.

The crossover careers of those who worked for the nuclear industry demonstrate that Nevada politics can be a combustible container of competing loyalties.

Oram is a case in point.

After running Miller's lieutenant governor and governor campaigns in the late '80s, he went to work for the American Nuclear Energy Council, overseeing an advertising and public relations campaign that was supposed to have spanned three years.

Oram's move created a rumble because he helped shape Miller's hardline stance against nuclear waste. Oram even suggested that Miller lie down in the road if a truck carrying waste tried to enter Nevada.

Once they signed on with the nuclear industry, Oram and the others had their work cut out.

They created a multi-media campaign -- the Nevada Initiative -- that they hoped would convince Nevadans that 77,000 metric tons of nuclear waste could safely be transported across country and buried at Yucca Mountain. None of the waste is produced in Nevada.

But the campaign, budgeted for $8.7 million, blew up in their faces.

A series of television spots featuring a less-than-credible spokesman -- a former sportscaster named Ron Vitto -- was heavily ridiculed in newspaper stories and radio spoofs. Bumper stickers appeared urging the Department of Energy to dump the waste in Vitto's back yard.

By the time the ad campaign fizzled out, more Nevadans were opposed to the dump than before, according to authors John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton in a book titled "Toxic Sludge is Good For You!"

The book cites analysis by a polling firm, Decision Research, which says, "The ANEC campaign, faced with disbelief and ridicule ... was discontinued. A survey conducted in June 1992 by researchers from Arizona State University and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, showed that after seeing the ads, only 3.3 percent of respondents reported an increased level of trust in the repository program while almost 41 percent were less trusting."

Oram, who refused to say how much he was paid, says the nuclear industry never came close to funding the $8.7 million budget. Don Williams, a public relations executive who acknowledges receiving more than $500,000 of the industry's money, lays the blame on a shift in strategy after the Republicans ascended to power on Capitol Hill.

"They thought their money and efforts would pay off better working in Congress than trying to work with the people of Nevada," says the 54-year-old Williams. "It was taking too long here."

No matter the strategy, Nevadans remain opposed to the dump.

Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, which, despite its misleading name, works against the repository, says recent polls indicate 79 percent of Nevadans are against locating a nuclear waste dump in the state.

Now that time has passed, Oram is back in the power loop, running the re-election campaigns of County Commissioners Paul Christensen, a Democrat, and Bruce Woodbury, a Republican.

Though Miller downplays his associations with Oram, Oram says he was heavily involved in the governor's re-election campaign two years ago.

"Everybody I was close to before, I'm still close to now," Oram says. "I still have a lot of business."

This campaign season, his relationship with Miller was strong enough for Oram to ask the governor to film a campaign ad for Christensen. The ad was used to help defeat Christensen's chief Democratic opponent, Brooks Compton, in the Sept. 3 primary election.

Knapp, meanwhile, ran a scathing indictment of Compton's campaign and professional problems, giving the impression that he and Oram are still politically connected.

Though Oram and Knapp insist it's business as usual for them, those still fighting the dump disagree.

"The people who got involved in the pro-side of the nuclear waste issue and took money will never lose their taint," says San Francisco advertising man Sam Singer, who has a contract with the state to battle the dump.

"People will always remember that they basically betrayed their state and betrayed the public's trust."