By Chris Dorsey | Commentary, The Outdoor Wire
Modern politics has a gift for parodying itself, but even by Colorado standards, this one is hard to improve upon: the campaign warning voters against a constitutional right to hunt and fish has found itself with a hunter delivering the message. Enter Eric Washburn, president of the newly formed Colorado Hunters and Anglers for Sensible Wildlife Conservation, who has come forward to explain why hunters should be alarmed by the prospect of protecting hunting.
Washburn says he hunts big game, holds multiple Colorado licenses, and has hunted waterfowl. Fine. Nobody needs to inspect his freezer. The interesting question isn’t whether Eric Washburn hunts; it’s how a professional public-affairs consultant with a long record of advocating wildlife policies frequently at odds with traditional sporting constituencies became the man being presented as the voice of Colorado hunters. Calling him representative of the wider sporting community is a little like sending the tofu burger to address the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association: technically everyone is discussing dinner, but somebody may have wandered into the wrong banquet hall.
And therein lies the comedy. Washburn’s pitch is that constitutional protection for hunting could endanger hunting. In other words: fellow sportsmen, we must act now to protect hunting from the grave threat of being protected. Political satire usually has to exaggerate. This time it can simply take notes.
Washburn’s organization argues that the amendment could trigger litigation over existing hunting regulations, weaken public support for the sport and interfere with flexible wildlife management. There is certainly an argument to be made there, and people are free to make it. But the political theater is impossible to miss. Nothing says authentic representative of the sporting community quite like showing up to oppose constitutional protection for the activity that supposedly qualifies you to represent the sporting community in the first place.
The story gets more interesting when one looks beyond the camouflage. Washburn is a senior adviser to Pioneer Public Affairs, which describes him as a consultant who for the past 16 years has worked for private, nonprofit and philanthropic clients on energy and natural-resource issues. Before consulting, he worked in senior policy positions for Democratic Senate leaders Tom Daschle and Harry Reid. He also helped found the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, giving him genuine conservation credentials as well as a long résumé in professional public policy and advocacy.
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