For the Keystone Battle, a Rancher Emerges as Folk Hero

Randy Thompson, a laconic cattle buyer, may seem an unlikely symbol of activism. Yet his likeness is now on hundreds of T-shirts across Nebraska. As I reported with Dan Frosch in Tuesday’s paper, Mr. Thompson is among dozens of landowners resisting efforts by the energy giant Transcanada to lease their property for the Keystone XL pipeline. TransCanada’s spokesman Shawn Howard says the company suspects a great deal of the opposition is being fanned by national environmental groups. Mr. Thompson’s story shows how this is true and yet not true. He was deeded 400 acres of farmland in Martell, Neb., by his mother, who died last summer. Transcanada wants 80 of those acres to run its pipeline through, but Mr. Thompson is not interested — not at any cost.

After he received a letter from Transcanada threatening to invoke eminent domain unless he signed a lease, Mr. Thompson began speaking out at public meetings in Nebraska. Only then, after he was committed to the fight, did he come to the attention of Jane Kleeb, the executive director of Bold Nebraska, a local nonprofit. She says she recognized in Mr. Thompson the kind of plain-spokenness that could persuade other Nebraskans that they had to get involved if the pipeline was to be stopped. She invited him for coffee and asked if he would agree to be the center of a campaign. She came up with a slogan: “I stand with Randy.”Signs with the slogan were printed up along with the T-shirts bearing Mr. Thompson’s picture. According to Bold Nebraska, he has since been transformed into something of a folk hero. The group also paid to have Mr. Thompson flown to Washington to testify at a State Department hearing...more