For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Environment and Climate Resource Center page, All About Organics page and our California News page.

A black 1957 convertible Jaguar cruises up the California coast on Highway 1, hugging the sea. Ocean lathers the rocks. The car heads north between Big Sur and Carmel with the top down and the radio on. The handsome driver, wind in his hair, is Clint Eastwood.

Ed Mitchell still remembers this opening scene from the 1971 film
Play it Again Misty. He first saw it when he was a 14-year-old kid living in a foster home in rural Washington. He wanted to be there, on that coast, in beautiful Monterey County. Mitchell is nothing if not determined.

I met Mitchell, now 67, this summer as he was in the midst of a campaign for a seat on Monterey County’s Board of Supervisors. In a June primary election for his district, he garnered just over 39 percent of the vote – not enough to beat John Phillips (who got 49 percent), but enough to force a runoff in November.

Mitchell’s a firm handshake, big smile kind of guy with slicked back graying hair, a neatly trimmed dark mustache, cowboy hat, and button-down shirt. He’s a little bit country and a little bit business.

I had seen his photo numerous times on his campaign website and other publications. When he invited me to his home, and to meet his horses, I expected a pickup truck in the driveway – something to match the hat and the ranch. Instead, there was a Mini Cooper, with his mug plastered to the side. Mitchell, I realized, is also full of surprises.

His latest crusade is something of a surprise, even to himself. Not the running for office part, but the one where he became outspoken about the risks of fracking – the oil and gas industry’s controversial practice of blasting water, sand, and chemicals underground at high pressure to release oil and gas. He got “suckered into the dark world of giving a crap,” he tells me, tongue-in-cheek. At first Mitchell, a career military guy and aerospace engineer, might seem an unlikely person to become an anti-fracking activist – but that’s only if you have a limited view of fracking’s impacts, and Mitchell doesn’t.