By PATRICIA R. KELVIN

VINDICATOR EDITORIAL WRITER
If the responses to the The Vindicator's March 4 poll on drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are any indication, the gender gap should be a warning to George W. Bush that women may not forget their misgivings about the Republican president.
By a margin of seven to one, women respondents were emphatic in their opposition to opening the refuge to the oil industry.
Men, on the other hand, were evenly split -- half supporting the drilling, and half opposed.
Bush has vowed to open the arctic refuge to oil dril ling.
The Arctic Refuge was first protected by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960. In designating 8.9 million acres of coastal plain and mountains of northeast Alaska as the Arctic National Wildlife Range to protect its & quot;unique wildlife, wilderness and recreation values, Eisenhower's Interior Secretary Fred A. Seaton called it & quot;one of the world's great wildlife areas. The great diversity of vegetation and topography in this compact area, together with its relatively undisturbed condition, led to its selection as ... one of our remaining wildlife and wilderness frontiers. & quot;
In 1980, Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act which doubled the size of the range, renamed it the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and designated most of the original range as wilderness where the production of oil and gas was prohibited
But since then, pressure has been mounting to change the designation. After the Exxon Valdez oil spill on March 24, 1989, Congress did not open the Arctic Refuge to development. In 1995, Congress passed budget legislation that included a provision to allow drilling in the refuge, but President Clinton vetoed the bill to protect biological and wilderness values.
Industry influence: With Republicans controlling both Congress and the White House, the oil industry has increased its influence over energy policy. Oil and gas producers pumped $2.5 million into Republican campaigns, including $589,000 from ExxonMobil Corporation Political Action Committee. The PAC of Halliburton Energy Associates, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, gave $184,752 to GOP candidates, but only $6,000 to Democrats.
And as Angie Arcari, a Poland resident opposed to the drilling, sees it, drilling in the refuge is "payback time" for those oil industry donations. She said, "Once they get their boot in, they'll spoil the whole darn thing." Her concern is that industry will "ruin every pristine place on the planet," leaving nothing for future generations.
Chuck Shoenberger also opposes the drilling, but unlike most other survey respondents, he has actually been to Alaska and seen its beauty firsthand.
After retiring from GM, Shoenberger and his wife spent three months as campground hosts at a primitive state park some 300 miles from Fairbanks.
Retaining wilderness is important to him. "The rain forest is disappearing," he said. "We need some wilderness. The animals need a place to live."
On the other hand, Margaret Anderson, 69, of Bessemer, Pa., believes that environmentalists go too far. "People are more important than animals," she said. "We can't have all the land up there when people are in need down here." She also sees the drilling as a sensible approach to avoid American reliance on foreign oil.
Harold N. Offut, 84, of New Castle has similar feelings about environmentalists. "They've got it all wrong," he said. "God put these resources on earth for man to use." Offut, who has also visited Alaska, asked,"With the price of energy going out of sight, why not use what we've got up there?"
Corporate greed: Ed Phelan, an environmental sciences student at Youngstown State University, disagrees. The 22-year-old Boardman man, the survey's youngest respondent, said, "We don't need the gas that much," he said. "If the car companies built more fuel-efficient engines, we'd save more oil than we could get from the Arctic Refuge. He attributes the push for drilling to corporate greed.
Bill Koch, 36, of Youngstown, sees Bush's intention to open the wildlife refuge to drilling as another example of the president's short-sighted thinking. It's like the tax cut, he said. "We'll feel good now, at the expense of future generations."
What land is left for future generations also concerns Columbiana resident Sue Scharf, 54. Having grown up on a farm, she said she is "appalled and tired of all the land being developed. We're not the only people who are going to live on our planet," she said. "There are babies being born every day. What is so terrible about just leaving some land alone?"
The need to protect the land for future generations was a particular concern of women respondents, which may explain part of the gender gap. Men on both sides of the issue looked more at practical considerations, such as energy costs. Those in favor of drilling also seemed motivated in some degree by a disdain for environmentalists.