Podesta and Heinrich were the key players on NM national monument

In an excellent new article on the High Country News website titled John Podesta: Legacy maker, Elizabeth Shogren, formerly of the Los Angeles Times, deftly lays out the behind-the-scenes environmental influence of Mr. Podesta:

As the 66-year-old Podesta embarks on yet another adventure — this time 
as Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager for the 2016 election — he can list some remarkable achievements: He directly had a hand in six of 16 national monuments Obama
 has created or expanded so far by executive order, including New Mexico’s Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Colorado’s Browns Canyon, Southern California’s San Gabriel Mountains, and the country’s largest marine reserve, the Pacific Remote Islands National Monument; and steered a landmark climate deal with China to control greenhouse gas, as well as the first proposal to regulate climate emissions from U.S. coal-fired power plants. Add in his record under Bill Clinton — the sweeping 2001 “Roadless Rule” protecting 58 million acres administered by the U.S. Forest Service, and the 19 national monuments and conservation areas, many in the West, that Clinton declared in his second term in office — and Podesta can claim a green legacy that even Teddy Roosevelt would be proud of.  “Nobody in the 21st century in U.S. government has had the influence that he has had on public lands and climate change,” says Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University professor of history.  Podesta rarely gets public credit, but those who do — from the presidents he has served to Cabinet members and agency heads — are quick to acknowledge his contributions. Says Bruce Babbitt, Clinton’s Interior secretary, “The hidden hand of John Podesta is involved in every environmental advancement accomplished in the Clinton and Obama administrations.”

The article should be of interest to anyone interested in how environmental policy is actually made, but will be especially interesting to those involved in the wilderness/monument proposals for southern NM:

...In early 2014, when a group of Western senators, frustrated by the lack of progress in preserving public lands, invited Podesta to Capitol Hill, he first asked if they had public support for their proposal. New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich cited a broad coalition of local residents, who had spent decades trying to get Congress to protect a rough-and-tumble chunk of mountains, canyons and grasslands outside Las Cruces as a wilderness area. Would the president consider creating a national monument there now?  Some Cabinet members hesitated, unwilling to promote new monuments that were guaranteed to anger the powerful Republicans who controlled the federal budget. “The secretaries knew they were in for it with their congressional overseers,” says Podesta, “and I think they weren’t certain about whether the president would back them up. I tried to reassure them that indeed he would.” Within a few months, President Obama had designated the half-million-acre Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument. Sen. Heinrich gives Podesta credit for getting “the wheels turning within the White House” to make it happen. “He personally gets these issues and he understands the West and he understands the importance of lands issues,” Heinrich says. Podesta also understands how public lands can be leveraged to benefit his boss and political party.

No mention of outside environmental groups, no mention of Senator Udall.  Just as I predicted, Heinrich, who sits on the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources and Podesta, from his White House perch, got the deal done.  Recall too that it was Heinrich who negotiated the Columbine-Hondo Wilderness in northern NM and the transfer of Valles Caldera to the Park Service as part of the NDAA bill last year.

Udall may have the name, but Heinrich is the player on these issues.

Looking towards the future, Heinrich is going nowhere except up in seniority and influence and Podesta will be Hillary's campaign manager.  And that portends...