Gale force: judged by drillers and preservationists, Interior Secretary Gale Norton strikes a delicate balance.

• Author: Best, Allen
• Position: Biography

Gale Norton likes to tell the story of meeting pop singer Jessica Simpson at a White House reception. Introducing herself to Simpson, the tall, angular Colorado native explained that she was Secretary of Interior. Simpson responded by complimenting Norton on the job she had done--on the White House. "No, not that kind of interior," Simpson's aides whispered to her later.

If the U.S. Interior Secretary does neither wall coverings nor furniture, Simpson can be excused her misperception. Norton and her Interior Department have almost no profile east of the Mississippi--despite her Cabinet-level position down the table from both Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Interior, however, casts a vastly larger shadow in the West, where the role of the department is almost as big as all of the outdoors. Even so, most people are inclined to think that Norton administers the U.S. Forest Service. Wrong door again--that's down the hall, in the Department of Agriculture.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Still, relative anonymity can be a plus. The last Colorado resident to serve as Secretary of Interior, James Watt, got recognition for all the wrong reasons. In 1983, he blocked the Beach Boys from performing a Fourth of July concert on the Washington Mall, saying the group attracted the wrong type of people. It took that arbiter of California culture, Nancy Reagan, to get the group onto the Mall. That was just the most egregious example of what was widely perceived as a jerky, Sagebrush Rebellion-ride of Watt, a native of Wyoming who has now returned there. When President George W. Bush in late 2000 nominated Norton as Interior Secretary, making her the first Colorado native (as well as the first woman) ever in the position, many wondered if she would hew to a similar course of yanking federal controls from public lands in the West. After all, soon after graduating from the University of Denver College of Law some 23 years before, she had worked for Watt as senior counsel of the Lakewood-based Mountain States Legal Foundation. But Norton immediately downplayed her association with Watt.

"I have only spoken with him once in the last 10 years," she said at her confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate in January 2001. Norton went on to explain that she'd had many experiences since working for Watt--serving as a lawyer in the Washington offices of both Interior and Agriculture through the 1980s, then as Colorado attorney general for two terms, and finally as a private-sector, natural resources-law lawyer. "I mean him no disrespect," she added, "but I am my own person."

Clearly, Norton has been no James Watt. She has been more quiet, less confrontational, and ultimately far more effective. Tellingly, she has survived into Bush's second term, one of the few Cabinet holdovers. She has favored the carrot over the regulatory stick.

Tirelessly repeating her mantra of "collaborative conservation," she has reached out to grassroots groups such as ranchers and miners that she and other Republicans believe were neglected under the Clinton administration. She has engineered collaborative approaches to species protection, thereby sidestepping the rigid requirements of the Endangered Species Act. And not least, she has been the Bush administration's front person on stepped-up extraction of energy from public lands and from publicly held mineral rights on private lands.

This extraction binge was sure to generate electricity, and it has. Trolling the regions of the West needled by gas wells, The New York Times earlier this summer found evidence of shrinking support even among Republicans. Questions are growing whether environmental protections can be ensured when there is so much rush. Potentially more damaging to Norton, however, have been accumulating stories that suggest questionable access to Interior by moneyed interests. But through all this, Norton has remained untouched by lighting bolts. Instead, she has even won over some otherwise unabashed critics of the Bush administration.

"This administration has had a lot of rhetoric, but hasn't always acted on that rhetoric. But I think Gail Norton has. She has reached out. She has tried to incorporate local concerns," says San Miguel County Commissioner Art Goodtimes, a Green Party member who skillfully weaves support from both Telluride's environmentalists and Norwood's ranchers. "I think Gale Norton has done a good job in Interior given the limited funding she has received from Congress."

Norton may well be the most powerful politician Colorado has produced. Interior's presence can be detected at nearly every turn. The department was created from the foundations of the General Land Office in 1849 as the U.S. government began preparing for settlement of the West. Essentially, Interior was given the task of giving away land to home-steaders in what was considered the "interior" of the country. In time, it assumed authority...