CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Last week, presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain offered a rare moment of consensus: They agreed that mountaintop removal coal mining should be stopped.

Then, a funny thing happened. No one really attacked them for saying so.

Gov. Joe Manchin didn't want to debate whether Obama and McCain are right or wrong. The governor simply said that the state's regulation of strip mining has been "and will continue to be responsible, and will also always follow the law."

Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers, said that union members don't decide how or where to mine coal. "We just mine it," Smith said.

The National Mining Association provided the toughest reaction. Spokeswoman Carol Raulston pointed out that McCain and Obama both profess to support coal's continued role in the nation's energy supply, and increased government funding for "clean coal" research.

"Both candidates will need to reconcile those facts with their more recently expressed - but less definitive - views on mountaintop mining," Raulston said.

Later this week, lawyers for the coal industry and environmental groups will make what's become a ritual journey to Richmond, Va.

On Tuesday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the latest lawsuit over mountaintop removal. Lawyers for government regulators, coal companies and citizen groups will argue over the legal minutia of the Clean Water Act: Impact assessments, stream functions and mitigation strategies.

Outside of the courtroom, political experts don't expect mountaintop removal to really have much of an impact on whether McCain or Obama gets West Virginia's five electoral votes.

And there are plenty of questions. Would either McCain or Obama really move to ban mountaintop removal? Even if they wanted to, could they legally do so? Some critics wondered if either candidate really gave enough of a definitive statement on the issue.

But political observers said that the candidates' agreement on mountaintop removal was an interesting moment, one that offers a glimpse of where the issue has been and where it might be headed.

"Political opinion has just caught up with public opinion," said Celinda Lake, a Washington, D.C., pollster who generally works for Democratic candidates.

Four years ago, Lake conducted a scientific survey on mountaintop removal for the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment. It remains the most definitive opinion poll on the issue to be made public

Fifty-six percent of West Virginians oppose mountaintop removal, Lake found. West Virginians who "strongly oppose" the practice outnumber those who "strongly favor" it by a 3-to-1 margin, she found.

Lake urged then-Democratic presidential candidate to John Kerry to announce his opposition to mountaintop removal, and run on the issue. President Bush was vulnerable, she said, because his administration had weakened several environmental rules that govern strip mining.

Instead, Kerry repeatedly dodged questions for specifics of his position on mountaintop removal.

Later, Bush allies tried to paint Kerry as anti-coal. They ran television ads that noted he voted against an effort to overturn a previous court ruling that would have limited mountaintop removal.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Last week, presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain offered a rare moment of consensus: They agreed that mountaintop removal coal mining should be stopped.

Then, a funny thing happened. No one really attacked them for saying so.

Gov. Joe Manchin didn't want to debate whether Obama and McCain are right or wrong. The governor simply said that the state's regulation of strip mining has been "and will continue to be responsible, and will also always follow the law."

Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers, said that union members don't decide how or where to mine coal. "We just mine it," Smith said.

The National Mining Association provided the toughest reaction. Spokeswoman Carol Raulston pointed out that McCain and Obama both profess to support coal's continued role in the nation's energy supply, and increased government funding for "clean coal" research.

"Both candidates will need to reconcile those facts with their more recently expressed - but less definitive - views on mountaintop mining," Raulston said.

Later this week, lawyers for the coal industry and environmental groups will make what's become a ritual journey to Richmond, Va.

On Tuesday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the latest lawsuit over mountaintop removal. Lawyers for government regulators, coal companies and citizen groups will argue over the legal minutia of the Clean Water Act: Impact assessments, stream functions and mitigation strategies.

Outside of the courtroom, political experts don't expect mountaintop removal to really have much of an impact on whether McCain or Obama gets West Virginia's five electoral votes.

And there are plenty of questions. Would either McCain or Obama really move to ban mountaintop removal? Even if they wanted to, could they legally do so? Some critics wondered if either candidate really gave enough of a definitive statement on the issue.

But political observers said that the candidates' agreement on mountaintop removal was an interesting moment, one that offers a glimpse of where the issue has been and where it might be headed.

"Political opinion has just caught up with public opinion," said Celinda Lake, a Washington, D.C., pollster who generally works for Democratic candidates.

Four years ago, Lake conducted a scientific survey on mountaintop removal for the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment. It remains the most definitive opinion poll on the issue to be made public

Fifty-six percent of West Virginians oppose mountaintop removal, Lake found. West Virginians who "strongly oppose" the practice outnumber those who "strongly favor" it by a 3-to-1 margin, she found.

Lake urged then-Democratic presidential candidate to John Kerry to announce his opposition to mountaintop removal, and run on the issue. President Bush was vulnerable, she said, because his administration had weakened several environmental rules that govern strip mining.

Instead, Kerry repeatedly dodged questions for specifics of his position on mountaintop removal.

Later, Bush allies tried to paint Kerry as anti-coal. They ran television ads that noted he voted against an effort to overturn a previous court ruling that would have limited mountaintop removal.

During the 2000 campaign, then-Democratic candidate Al Gore was widely depicted as anti-coal, in large part because of his long advocacy of action to deal with global warming. Many political pundits credited the coal industry with helping George W. Bush win West Virginia, a victory that - Florida's contested election aside - put Bush in the White House.

Larry Sabato, a presidential campaign expert at the University of Virginia, said that both Obama and McCain have reasons for handling the mountaintop removal issue differently.

"Why did McCain take the stance he did? He's positioning himself as a new kind of Teddy Roosevelt, the original conservationist," Sabato said last week. "His position on global warming is also much more moderate than most Republicans."

As for Obama, Sabato said, "The environmental community is part of the base of the Democratic Party.

"Obama had a tough primary contest," he said. "Gore and Kerry wrapped up the party nod early. That's the difference."

In the latest 4th Circuit case, Bush administration lawyers, Massey Energy and various coal industry groups are appealing two rulings by U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers to toughen regulation of mountaintop removal.

In one decision, Chambers concluded that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had not fully evaluated the potential environmental damage before approving four Massey permits. In the second order, Chambers ruled that the Clean Water Act does not allow coal operators to build in-stream sediment ponds at the bottom of valley fills.

This is the fourth major mountaintop removal ruling by a federal judge in West Virginia to go before the 4th Circuit. Appeals court panels in the three other cases overturned rulings that would have more strictly policed the practice.

Lake said that the very words "mountaintop removal" - the industry and regulators prefer "mountaintop mining" - turns off most voters. And increased national media coverage and advocacy by big environmental groups has gotten more of the public's attention, she said.

"The more you see the repercussions of mountaintop removal, the more the argument against it is made," Lake said.

Lake said that the candidates might be taking a different stance is the issue were "mountaintop oil drilling." Today, the public is focused on $4-a-gallon gasoline, not other energy issues such as coal's role in providing more than half of the nation's electricity.

Manchin says that is precisely the point. The governor believes that coal should be turned into a liquid fuel that would replace foreign oil in our transportation system.

"The security of the nation is the most important thing right now," Manchin said in an interview last week. "We are so very vulnerable because we're so reliant on foreign oil, and we can't eliminate any of our options."

Robert Rupp, a political historian at West Virginia Wesleyan College, said that the Obama-McCain agreement on mountaintop removal isn't just about two candidates in one election.

"They're reflecting a national trend," Rupp said. "The bigger picture is that this is really generational.

"We're seeing the trend toward more and more greening of America and more and more people are becoming environmentally conscious," Rupp said.

"The story isn't West Virginia," he added. "It's really to what degree is West Virginia out of sync or behind on the national trend."

Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kw...@wvgazette.com or 348-1702.