Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 17, 1994 TAG: 9401170084
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE COCCARO LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
They're swallowing hard and hoping for the best, careful not to prematurely taint what promises to be a delicate relationship with her and Gov. George Allen over the next four years.
But coax these advocates of nature a bit - get them to privately shed the genteel etiquette of Virginia politics - and the true depths of their angst over Dunlop's appointment bubbles up.
Everybody expected Allen, a conservative, to name like-minded people to his Cabinet. But few environmental leaders anticipated someone like Dunlop being tapped as Virginia's chief environmental steward.
First off, they say, she's a Richmond outsider with no experience in state government.
"Where did Allen find her?" the leader of a statewide environmental group wants to know.
"Who is this woman?" asks another.
More unnerving are the pro-business, anti-regulation circles from which she emerged.
"Quite frankly, I'm disappointed and concerned," says a third environmentalist.
An arch-conservative and Ronald Reagan devotee, Dunlop has emerged as a star of the GOP right. She helped shape two national organizations that promote economic growth over environmental regulation and has held key roles in the American Conservative Union, the nation's leading conservative grass-roots group.
Dunlop's list of associates reads like the green movement's most-hated list. Chief among them is her Arlington next-door neighbor and mentor, U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C.
"I feel like Becky is our daughter," Helms says.
Other Dunlop mentors and colleagues include Reagan's U.S. attorney general, Ed Meese, and his interior secretary, James Watt. Dunlop serves on the Reagan Alumni Association board of directors.
"This young lady has the intelligence, dedication and integrity to do great things," Helms says. "She's going to be fair with those who disagree with her, but she won't retreat on her principles."
Dunlop's skeptics admit that it is too soon to know how her conservatism and convictions will translate once she steps into her $100,000-a-year post in the Allen administration. They also acknowledge that it is unfair to judge her solely on political associations.
Even so, expect to see Democrats grill Dunlop on her agenda and on her qualifications to be natural resources secretary at confirmation hearings this month. But don't expect her not to get the job. That has never happened with a Virginia governor's Cabinet nominee.
But Del. Kenneth Plum, a Reston Democrat and environmentalist who is chairman of the House Nomination and Confirmation Committee, says, "The legislature has an obligation to ensure for the people in Virginia that their government is in capable hands. We could hardly be expected to rubber-stamp someone just because the governor says it's OK."
Just how George Allen came to tap Dunlop remains unclear. The two met during his campaign for governor.
Dunlop says the only time she spoke with Allen before being asked to consider the natural resources post was last year at a Republican function in Northern Virginia. She later was introduced to Allen's wife, Susan, at a gathering in Washington.
"She came highly recommended to us from many people from many regions of the state," says Allen spokesman Ken Stroupe.
What the governor-elect and Dunlop clearly share is an abiding faith in Reagan and his policies. And it was that connection, Stroupe says, that brought them together.
Dunlop, 42, is a product of the young Republican movement stemming from former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential defeat.
During Goldwater's campaign, Becky Norton - then the tomboyish, eighth-grade daughter of a Baptist minister in Columbus, Ohio - was the ad hoc debater for Goldwater in her civics class.
"I liked his belief in individualism and personal responsibility," Dunlop says. "People are our most important resource."
Outside the classroom, Dunlop liked to compete. She played softball, volleyball and, at 5 feet 5 1/2 inches, played guard on the school basketball team.
"I'm a team player," she says. "It doesn't matter who gets the credit."
Dunlop also likes the outdoors, largely because of her father, who took the family on camping trips. Those experiences gave her an appreciation for nature, she says.
At Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, Dunlop studied political science. She was active in student government and was a member of the Young Republicans, who helped re-elect Richard Nixon president.
After graduating, Dunlop moved to the nation's political epicenter. "I came for a long weekend and stayed," she says.
She beat the streets of Washington for a job, and in 1973 signed on as a clerk with the fledgling but growing American Conservative Union. "I was basically a go-fer," she says.
Dunlop prospered with the Washington-based group, which is best known for its annual ranking of congressional members on their conservativeness and its lobbying efforts for conservative issues. By the time she left in 1980, she was the organization's political director.
While with the group, Dunlop met some of the most influential Republicans in the country. She also came to know George S. Dunlop, a bright-eyed North Carolinian working for Helms.
George Dunlop was among the original three campaign workers to get Helms elected to his first senate term, in 1972. He and the senator have been like family ever since.
When the Dunlops were married, Helms gave Becky Norton away. Helms also helped persuade the Dunlops to buy the house next to his in Arlington.
"Dot [Helms' wife] and I consider George and Becky our children," Helms says.
The Dunlops owe a lot to Helms. The senator used his conservative ties to get Becky Dunlop hired by Reagan.
"Reagan had never heard of her," Helms recalls. "So I talked to Ed Meese. He asked me what she could do. I said, `Everything.' "
Dunlop lived up to her billing in the Reagan White House, emerging as the president's chief personnel adviser for Cabinet jobs and other high-level positions. She was the liaison between the Cabinet and Meese's staff during Reagan's second term.
Dunlop's career path shifted onto an environmental track when Reagan elevated her to assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks, and then deputy undersecretary in the Department of Interior. These jobs allowed her more influence over policy-making than personnel matters.
During the Reagan years, the Interior Department and environmental groups battled bitterly. In 1983, Watt resigned as interior secretary under a hailstorm of criticism. His successor, Donald Hodel, was widely viewed as a green-movement adversary as well.
If Reagan was the Teflon president, his Interior Department was Velcro. Allegations of heavy handedness, firings and even censorship of employees dogged agencies within the department.
That's what ended Dunlop's White House career.
Shortly after George Bush took over the White House in 1989, Dunlop infuriated Republicans and Democrats for removing some senior bureaucrats in the National Park Service and and the National Fish and Wildlife Service. She also came under fire for ordering employees of the fish and wildlife service to report all of their and their aides' contacts with members of Congress.
Then-Rep. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., now a senator, criticized the order as an attempt to intimidate employees into not going public with agency problems.
Dunlop resigned under pressure. But she now says she had planned to quit anyway. She only stayed on to help with personnel matters during the transition, she says.
"The people I put in were qualified," she says. "I like can-do people."
Interior officials and other top Reagan aides viewed environmental regulation largely as an obstacle to business and infringement on private property rights. It is OK to protect the environment, conservatives held, but not at the expense of jobs.
Environmentalists argue that businesses are profit-driven and generally will do only what is required of them to preserve the environment.
Joseph Maroon, director of the Virginia chapter of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, puts it this way:
"If all people were educated and willing to take the necessary steps to protect the environment, regulations wouldn't be needed."
Allen and Dunlop do not advocate abolishing land-use and pollution restrictions. But they do seem to embrace the Reagan philosophy of putting economic growth first.
When Allen nominated Dunlop as natural resources secretary last month, he said that "concern for the environment should not come at the expense of people, their property and jobs." Dunlop has echoed those sentiments.
"People in Virginia can take more time enjoying the outdoors and the environment if they're secure in their jobs," she says.
Dunlop has perpetuated that philosophy through two organizations she has helped establish, the National Wilderness Institute and a natural resources subgroup of Citizens for a Sound Economy. Both advocate using economic incentives to advance environmental conservation and protection.
"If you have lots of forests and no one to use them, what good does it do?" asks Christopher W. Ullman, spokesman for the 250,000-member economy group.
"It's a terrible thing to pit private property owners against environmental issues," says Robert E. Gordon Jr., executive director of the institute. Both Dunlop and her husband are founding directors of Gordon's group.
Dunlop, a devout Christian, counts family and social issues among her political causes. She heads the Enough Is Enough Campaign, a Fairfax-based anti-pornography and anti-child abuse group.
She also is against abortion.
"My basic philosophy is people," she says.
Despite her strong convictions, Dunlop asks that she not be judged based solely on them. Her actions as Virginia's natural resources secretary will hinge largely on Allen's agenda, she says.
"When we have a goal, my job is to achieve that goal," she says.
In truth, the natural resources secretary shapes environmental policies in the commonwealth and hires administrators to execute them. More than 2,000 employees and $160 million falls into the secretary's domain.
"You bridge relationships with the agencies' staffs," says John W. Daniel II, who was natural resources secretary for former Gov. Gerald Baliles. "You're the governor's ears, eyes, liaison with the Assembly and point person for initiatives" for environmental matters.
Agencies reporting to the natural resources secretary include the Department of Environmental Quality, which enforces water-, air- and waste-disposal laws, and the departments of game and inland fisheries and marine resources.
Understanding how these agencies work and having a personal rapport with those running them is crucial, Richmond insiders say. Daniel, the state's first natural resources secretary, came to the job with experience as an assistant state attorney general handling environmental matters and as a top administrator in the then-combined departments of commerce and resources.
Outgoing Natural Resources Secretary Elizabeth Haskell spent years on the Virginia board that oversees air-quality programs. She also had been a private environmental consultant and had written a book on state environmental pro-grams.
By contrast, Dunlop is an unknown. But she has pledged to meet with environmental leaders from around the state, and her friends say she is a master at building consensus among people of different perspectives.
Based on some initial reactions to her appointment, winning over Virginia environmentalists may prove challenging.
"Sounds like we're getting two commerce secretaries, and nobody for natural resources," says David Bailey, a Richmond resident and senior attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund.
Robert Dean, a Hampton Roads environmental leader and Virginia Beach councilman, says he reacted to her appointment with "total shock and disbelief."
Dunlop's response to such comments is simple: "Let's not engage in personal attacks, and let's find solutions."
But environmentalists, faced with an untested and conservative secretary, are wondering what her solutions will be.
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