Editorial: Dean’s hot now, but it isn’t over

Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2003 | 8:53 a.m.

Right now former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is creating the most buzz among the Democratic presidential aspirants. What makes Dean's surge intriguing is that this is happening despite national surveys among Democratic voters that show Dean doesn't lead the pack. The latest USA Today-CNN-Gallup poll of Democrats who are registered to vote shows Sen. Joseph Lieberman leading all Democratic presidential candidates with 23 percent nationally. Much of Lieberman's showing is due to name recognition, since he was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000, but that doesn't diminish the fact that Dean is in third place with just 12 percent. Nevertheless the media attention has centered on Dean because in recent months he has been leading in fund-raising and is now ahead in the polls in the two states that start the presidential nominating process -- Iowa and N ew Hampshire.

Dean's in-your-face campaigning, replete with attacks against President Bush, is resonating with many activists, as can be seen by the large crowds he is drawing at rallies. Still, Dean has been fuzzy and incoherent on some issues -- as was the case several months ago in his widely panned interview on "Meet the Press." And on an issue important to Nevadans -- the federal government's plan to store high-level nuclear waste in our state -- his past views are troubling. Dean, as governor of Vermont, a state that has a nuclear power plant, urged the federal government to move quickly on selecting Nevada's Yucca Mountain as the sole burial ground for 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.

In a recent interview with Grist, an online magazine that advocates environmental protection, Dean said as governor he thought it was a "grand idea" to get rid of his state's nuclear waste, but now that's he running for president he would reassess his position on Yucca Mountain and "see what the science looks like." (In contrast, among the major Democrats vying for the nomination, Lieberman of Connecticut, Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts voted against sending nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina and Bob Graham of Florida voted in favor of moving forward with plans for Yucca Mountain.)

President Bush, who sought Congress' permission to begin the process to send nuclear waste here, will come under scrutiny from Nevada's voters because during the 2000 campaign he said he would base his decision on science -- a pledge he promptly broke once elected. Nonetheless, if the Democratic nominee for president favors the shipment of nuclear waste here, any political advantage Democrats in Nevada might have on that issue could be lost.

Dean's controversial record on disposing of radioactive waste won't end at Yucca Mountain. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that other Democratic presidential candidates plan on attacking Dean's environmental record, possibly on Thursday in Albuquerque, N.M., during the first official Democratic debate. The Wall Street Journal mentioned that under review was Dean's support of a proposal that would have sent low-level radioactive waste to Sierra Blanca, an impoverished Texas town on the Mexican border. Ultimately the plan Vermont worked out with then-Texas Gov. George Bush never panned out, but Dean can expect to be interrogated by fellow Democrats about that proposal.

It might seem frustrating for many voters that there is so much attention being paid to the presidential contest -- an election that is well more than a year away. But the nominating process this year has even more states moving up their primaries, a situation that means the nomination could be decided even earlier than it was in 2000. That year the nominations of Bush and Al Gore were effectively decided in primaries held by March. That makes it even more important that the candidates' positions on issues get thoroughly examined early in the nominating process. Nevadans will want to know where President Bush and the eventual Democratic nominee stand on job creation, health care, education, national security and, yes, Yucca Mountain.