Richard W Pombo

When the Safeway supermarket chain wanted to set up a distribution warehouse outside the Central Valley town of Tracy a few years back, its plans were confounded by the presence of the kit fox, an endangered species. The company had started construction after getting approval from county and state officials. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stepped in and ordered a habitat mitigation plan, nearly sinking the entire project and its 1,000 jobs.

The sun was hardly up when Jerry McNerney shut his front door behind him, a bowl of Great Grains Maple Pecan Crunch in his stomach, a brown suit and his good black shoes in a garment bag for later. In the 16 hours before he returned home, the freshman congressman who was never supposed to win would put on 40 pounds of gear at a firehouse and spend nearly two hours at a grocery store, talking to voters by the beer nuts.

Duane Gibson, a Washington lobbyist under federal scrutiny in the Jack Abramoff scandal, helped raise money for a California congressman who championed legislation that would benefit Western mining interests that Gibson represented. Last fall, Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy), chairman of the House Resources Committee, attached an amendment to a budget bill -- without hearings or floor debate -- that would have opened national forest and other public land to mining.

Growing up on the family ranch here, Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy) says, he learned that "you have to work till you're done. There's nobody else to pick up the slack." It's a lesson he carried from the fields of the northern San Joaquin Valley to the committee rooms of Congress, where for more than a decade he has doggedly labored to undo one of America's signature environmental laws, the Endangered Species Act.

Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy), already under fire for his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, is being accused by Democrats of billing the government for a family vacation and violating House rules by letting his committee staff director live in California and charge taxpayers for the commute to Washington. Pombo spokesman Brian Kennedy said the congressman considered the accusations by Democrats "nothing more than a baseless, partisan, election-year potshot."

When reports came out that U.S. Rep. Richard W. Pombo had rented a luxury camper at government expense and taken his family on a "working vacation" to several national parks, the common reaction in this San Joaquin Valley town was: So what? "Most people thought, 'Well, at least he didn't take a Lear jet,' " said Ripon City Atty. Tom Terpstra, one of Pombo's many avid supporters in this almond- and walnut-growing center just north of Modesto. "The RV trip?

The congressional fundraiser was at a pub in the heart of this liberal political stronghold. A local band, The Flux, entertained with a tune titled "Impeach the President." The focus of attention: two candidates vying for seats in bedrock conservative districts to the east, currently occupied by Republicans John T. Doolittle of Granite Bay and Richard W. Pombo of Tracy.

Wayne Johnson knew Richard W. Pombo was in trouble late last week when people he canvassed in San Joaquin Valley farm towns began using the politically deadly "time for a change" phrase. "When you hear that," said Johnson, a veteran Sacramento political consultant, "you know it is over. They'll say, 'I agree with Richard on this' and 'I agree with Richard on that,' but just as you are going out the door they say, 'I just think it is time for a change.'

In playing a critical role in the defeat of seven-term GOP incumbent Richard W. Pombo of Tracy, environmental groups demonstrated political muscle that has eluded them for years. Led by Defenders of Wildlife, a group better known for its wolf preservation efforts than its campaign clout, environmentalists poured money and volunteers into a race that was at best considered a long shot.

Aides to California Rep. Richard W. Pombo pressed officials of the U.S. Department of the Interior last year to suspend environmental guidelines opposed by the wind-power industry without disclosing that Pombo's family had a substantial financial stake in wind energy. The guidelines, issued in 2003, seek to reduce the number of birds killed by the spinning blades of wind turbines, such as those that flank the Altamont Pass east of Oakland.