November 3rd will be a crucial day for the future of Maryland's environment. The choice you make on Election Day for Governor will greatly impact our state's quality of life, the survival of the remainder of our state's natural resources, the clean food, clean air and clean water we need for our life.

And the choice for environmentalists has never been more clear. The Republican candidate for Governor, Ellen Sauerbrey, is an extreme far-right ideologue who has voted throughout her public career to block new environmental protections and gut existing laws and regulations.

Indeed, the mission statement of the Frontiers of Freedom, the far-right organization that she helped found and of which she is a board member openly states, "the Frontiers of Freedom is the anti-thesis of the Sierra Club and Vice President Al Gore's Earth in Balance."

It would be difficult to invent a candidate who poses a greater danger to Maryland's environment than Ellen Sauerbrey. Her "real" environmental record, as opposed to her current campaign's "repackaged and reinvented" record, reveals a systematic and ideological opposition to sensible environmental protection. As a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, Ellen Sauerbrey voted...

...against banning the use of phosphates, ...against notifying residents of pesticide use, ...against stricter automobile emission standards, ...against the state Clean Air Act, ...against requiring newspaper printers to use recycled newsprint, ...against the vehicle emissions inspection program, ...against beverage container deposits that would encourage recycling, ...against a check-off on state income tax returns to make it easy for people to donate to the Chesapeake Bay Fund, ...against requiring businesses to submit an ambient air quality analysis prior to being granted an air discharge permit, ...against creating a buffer around the Chesapeake Bay in which land use and development is closely managed.

Ellen Sauerbrey has voted to delay wetlands protections, relax clean air standards, stop the banning of dangerous pesticides and opposed fishing moratoriums to preserve Rockfish. The list of her anti-environmental actions goes on and on, And it gets worse.

Wallop said, "a policy of ecological privatization -- the extension private property rights to the broadest possible array of natural resources -- is the proper agenda for real environmentalism." As an example, Wallop stated, "One of the most cost-effective ways to protect ocean water quality and biodiversity would be to lift restrictions on offshore oil production."

According to Wallop, this privatization should extend to private ownership of species of plants and animals, water supplies and even air. The commonwealth would cease to exist, to be replaced by corporate ownership of virtually everything necessary for life. Instead of producing more freedom as promised by Wallop/Sauerbrey, the privatization of the planet would reduce Maryland residents to corporate serfs. This is Ellen Sauerbrey's vision for the future.

Governor Parris Glendening has a dramatically different vision of Marylandís environmental failure. In the last four years, he has made Maryland a leader in new environmental initiatives including his Smart Growth Program, the landmark runoff legislation in response to the Pfiesteria crisis, and VEEP. He has saved most of Chapman Forest. We need Glendening as Governor, in order to make sure he saves the rest.

On November 3rd, the leadership of the Maryland Chapter of the Sierra Club urges you not only to vote to re-elect Governor Parris Glendening, but to get your friends and neighbors to the polls to do the same. Governor Glendening stopped Sauerbrey by only a few thousand votes in 1994. This year, the Sauerbrey campaign is counting on low voter turnout and $4 million in out-of-state Republican money to win.

We can stop her if we get as many
people as possible to vote for the Glendening/Townsend ticket as possible. It is up to us to protect our environment.