Back on Trail, Kerry Assails Bush Team

Two weeks after surgery to remove his cancerous prostate, Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry returned to active campaigning Thursday with a broadside at President Bush on the environment and a pledge to block oil drilling off the California coast.

The Massachusetts senator, looking tanned after completing his medical recovery in Baja California, made the promise at a campaign stop in Anaheim. He recalled that the Bush administration last year agreed to buy out leases for oil drilling off the coast of Florida; he said Bush should do the same in California.

Kerry suggested that the Republican president had agreed to block offshore drilling in Florida to help the reelection campaign of his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush.

“You shouldn’t have to have a brother who is governor of a state in a difficult election in order to do what’s right and buy out the oil leases,” Kerry said in a luncheon speech to the Democratic Foundation of Orange County. “And when I am president I am going to buy out the gas and oil leases off the coast of California, and we will protect that precious national resource.”

After the speech, Kerry said he was unsure how much it might cost to buy back leases of the 36 federal oil tracts off the coast of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

“It’s affordable,” Kerry said. “I mean in the context of the long-term interests of the country, if you can afford it for Florida, you can afford it for here.”

By focusing on coastal protection, Kerry relaunched his campaign with an issue popular not just with California voters but also with the state’s large community of donors. His Anaheim speech was part of a three-day trip to California.

Disputing the senator’s remarks, Mark Pfeifle, a spokesman for the U.S. Interior Department, said the Bush administration supports measures to protect California’s coastline from new drilling but has had difficulty working with Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat.

“We’ve extended our hand to work cooperatively with the state of California, and each and every time it’s been slapped,” Pfeifle said.

The problem in California, he added, is more difficult to resolve. Unlike Florida, California has collected $62 million from the federal oil leases over the last several decades, raising the question of whether the state should have to reimburse any of that money, Pfeifle said.

The federal oil tracts have been the subject of a court fight between California and the federal government. In December, a federal appeals court effectively blocked drilling from the tracts in the near future by upholding a ruling that the state must first scrutinize drilling plans for environmental hazards. The court rejected Bush administration arguments that the state lacks the power to review oil leases in tracts under federal control.

On Thursday, Davis and 23 leaders of environmental groups sent a letter to President Bush saying that they were “deeply disappointed” that his administration had asked the court for 30 more days to decide whether to appeal the court’s ruling.

They urged the administration to drop the case, saying that extending the oil leases without state review “could lead to disastrous consequences.”

“These leases are located within and adjacent to some of the most precious and environmentally sensitive areas of our state,” they wrote. “If drilling were to occur in these locations, it could greatly affect air and water quality, commercial and sport fisheries, scenic and marine resources and the travel and tourism industry.”

Pfeifle said the administration had not decided whether to appeal.

Bush’s environmental record has become a prime target for the Democratic presidential hopefuls. A few days before his prostate surgery, Kerry attacked Bush on a gamut of environmental issues, from global warming to the cleanup of contaminated industrial sites.

Bush supporters say the president has struck an appropriate balance between economic and environmental interests. In Anaheim, however, Kerry said that fighting pollution should not amount to a “false choice” between the environment or jobs.

“It’s not the environment or jobs,” Kerry said. “Protecting the environment is jobs.”

Kerry also took issue with a remark last year by Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton; she told Davis in a letter that “a major difference between Florida and California is that Florida opposes coastal drilling and California does not.”

“Contrary to what Gale Norton says, the people of California do not want drilling off their coastline to repeat what happened in the 1960s,” Kerry said. He was referring to a 1969 oil platform spill off Santa Barbara that killed seabirds and blackened 30 miles of beaches.

Pfeifle said Norton had simply meant that California, unlike Florida, has allowed offshore drilling for decades.