Not quite. But that's the way The Times Herald-Record [1] in the Hudson Valley is portraying the debate over the appointment of Pete Grannis for DEC commissioner. The paper pits the environmental community (who it says sees Grannis as their "darling") against hunting groups (who fear that he'll bring an anti-hunting, anti-trapping agenda to the DEC post).

There's some truth in the article. The enviro community did give an across-the-board thumbs up when Grannis was nominated by Spitzer. (Here's what we said [1].) And a large group of hunters, trappers, and other sportsmen have posted an online petition [2] calling on legislators to reject the nomination.

But come on, where are the politics in this analysis? Grannis was nominated a month ago, and almost suddenly, there's strong opposition. The senate GOP is clearly not happy with Spitzer for his attempts to diminish its power in the state senate. Yesterday, the state Conservative party called on the senate GOP to reject the nomination [3] (piggybacking on the calls from the New York sportsmen). Senator Marcellino has promised tough questions, and Senator Bruno has said that this nomination process is going to be tough. It looks like The New York Post may have been right [4] a few days ago when it predicted that the senate republicans were plotting an all-out effort to defeat the Grannis nomination.

From where we sit, this doesn't sound like a debate over what's best for the environment. It sounds like politics as usual in Albany...