When my mom found out that I was going to work for a Republican, she thought that I had gone over to the dark side.

This essay was adapted from the Alta Weekly Newsletter, delivered every Thursday. To keep reading, become an Alta Journal member for as little as $3 a month.
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It was 1967, and I was in my senior year at San Francisco State, finishing degrees in political science and international relations. There was a special election in San Mateo to fill an empty congressional seat. The candidate most likely to win was child superstar turned politician Shirley Temple, but there was also a candidate running who spoke out against the war. He happened to be a Republican.

That’s how I came to know Paul Norton “Pete” McCloskey Jr., who died in early May at age 96. Pete was brave enough to oppose what was then still a popular war. No one, not even his fellow Republicans, called him chicken: Despite his anti-war stance, Pete was a Marine, a decorated veteran of the Korean War. Pete was also for the decriminalization of marijuana, another unpopular stance at the time. Much to everyone’s surprise, he won his seat and was on his way to Washington. It was also the beginning of our lifelong friendship.

It’s hard to imagine now, but this was a different time, one when bipartisanship was possible. In 1969, Congressman Gaylord Nelson, a Democrat from Wisconsin, sought to create a national event to celebrate the environment. With Pete as Republican cochair, the first Earth Day took place the following year.

I didn’t see much of Pete until 1976, when I, too, moved to Washington, D.C., to work for Jimmy Carter. I was looking for a home for my family and asked Pete if I could spend some nights at his place in Georgetown. “Sure,” I remember him telling me. “The lock on the front door’s broken, so you can come in anytime.” I thought being a war hero took bravery, but a congressman living in Washington without a lock was above and beyond.

By l998, Pete was retired and I was the president of the Surfrider Foundation, a group of environmentally active surfers founded in 1984. Our group had gotten into a fight with two giant paper pulp mills up in Humboldt County. They were dumping so much nasty chemical soup into the ocean that the surfers were riding black waves. Mark Massara, my 27-year-old, blond, ponytailed surfer-lawyer, brought the case forward, ultimately busting them for 40,000 violations of the Clean Water Act. As we neared the trial date, Mark wanted to talk with someone who’d had more time in court than he’d had at the time, which wasn’t very much. I suggested Pete. Pete instantly got into it, becoming our “senior legal guru,” dubbing the case “Gidget v. Goliath.”

The first time Pete appeared in court with Mark and me, he approached the mills’ lawyers and introduced himself with his graveled Marine voice. You could see those lawyers muttering to each other, “What’s he doing here?”

When we won the case, Bloomberg Businessweek calculated that it was the second-largest clean-water victory in U.S. history.

In 2009, I produced a documentary about Pete called Pete McCloskey: Leading from the Front that aired on 200 PBS stations.

I was almost finished with the film when, at 80, Pete decided to come out of retirement and run in the Republican primary against Richard Pombo.

Pombo, among other campaign promises, wanted to abolish the Endangered Species Act. This spurred Pete, who was proud of his leadership role in authoring the act in 1973. Pete knew he probably couldn’t beat Pombo but thought running could make it possible for a Democrat to win. I knew I was going to have to change the ending of my film.

Pete said to forget the film and come be his press secretary during the campaign, which I did. Pete got 30 percent of the vote, enough to throw the victory to Democrat Jerry McNerney. The Endangered Species Act remains.

Pete and I stayed friends until the end of his life. I frequently visited him and his wonderful wife, Helen, at their little farm filled with olive and orange trees, horses, chickens, and dogs in Rumsey, California, and eventually wrote a book called A Surfer in the White House, which included many Pete stories. I would always take them Krispy Kreme doughnuts, which they loved.

Pete continued to be active in congressional politics and was honored to be appointed by Democratic congresswoman Jackie Speier to be one of California’s official (and, despite Donald Trump’s claims, non-fake) electors in the 2020 election. At 95, he and Quentin Kopp coauthored an amicus brief to the Colorado Supreme Court prohibiting Trump from being placed on the ballot thanks to the 14th Amendment. (The Supreme Court reversed Colorado’s decision in March 2024.)

I visited him just before he died. Helen warned me that he’d been having good days and not-so-good days, but I was fortunate to spend about half an hour with him on a good day. He ate his doughnut and admired the full-page Earth Day tribute to him that Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy LLP always publishes on April 22. Looking at my friend, I remembered the time Pete told me that the greatest compliment he ever received was from a fellow Marine in his rifle platoon, who said, “I’d follow you up any hill in Korea!”

That’s what I whispered to Pete when I left.•