The increasingly heated fight over President Biden’s nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning to lead the Bureau of Land Management lurched forward on Thursday with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee deadlocking 10-10 on whether to advance her to the Senate floor.

Noting the “equally divided vote,” committee Chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said his next step under Senate rules is “to transmit a notice of the tie vote to the secretary of the Senate, after which the majority leader may make a motion to discharge the nomination [and] if the motion is agreed, to place the nomination on the executive calendar.”

In other words, the decision on giving Stone-Manning a full Senate vote is now up to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

The committee also voted and moved to the Senate floor four other nominations: Robert Anderson, to be solicitor of the Department of the Interior; Shalanda Baker, to be director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Minority Economic Impact; Samuel Walsh, to be DOE’s general counsel; and Andrew Light, to be assistant secretary of energy for international affairs.

But Stone-Manning’s nomination has become a flashpoint, based on her involvement in a 1989 tree-spiking incident in Clearwater National Forest in Idaho. Republicans are charging that Stone-Manning lied about her role in the incident during the subsequent investigation, both at the time and at her confirmation hearing June 8. Democrats maintain that the legal record shows that she was never charged with any crime and that her testimony helped convict two men who had taken part in the incident.

Tree spiking involves hammering a metal rod into a tree trunk to prevent it from being cut down. If a saw hits the rod, it will shatter, as will the rod, which can cause serious and life-threatening injuries to loggers or employees working at a sawmill. It was mostly associated with the environmental group Earth First! in the 1980s; however, the group later publicly spoke out against it, and Congress made it a federal crime in 1988.

At the time of the 1989 incident, Stone-Manning was a graduate student at the University of Montana. She has admitted to typing a letter warning about the spiking — the original of which may have been given to her by one of men convicted of the spiking — which she then sent to the U.S. Forest Service. In 1993, she was drawn into a grand jury investigation of the crime but later made a deal for limited immunity and testified against the spikers.

The incident was not brought up at the June 8 hearing, where she introduced herself as an outdoors woman, hunter and consensus builder who has successfully worked across the aisle on tough environmental issues. GOP senators focused more on her views on oil and gas leasing on public lands and her role in an environmental group’s campaign ads opposing the election of Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), a member of the committee. (See Biden’s Pick for BLM Head Sidesteps Oil, Gas Leasing Questions.)

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), whom she worked for as a senior aide from 2007 to 2012, supported her nomination at the hearing. Stone-Manning “listens; she works; she does the right thing,” Tester said. “There are places we can mine; there are places we can drill; there are places that are appropriate for resource extraction; there are other places that are not. Tracy Stone-Manning brings that understanding to the table.”

Stone-Manning has also maintained the support of both Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and the White House. As reported in The Colorado Sun on Thursday, Haaland said, “Tracy Stone-Manning has a wealth of experience and knowledge about all issues to do with our public lands. We have full faith that she will put her nose to the grindstone as soon as she’s confirmed with the Senate and work cooperatively with everyone across the federal government.”

The White House said in a statement, “Tracy Stone-Manning is a dedicated public servant who has years of experience and a proven track record of finding solutions and common ground when it comes to our public lands and waters. She is exceptionally qualified to be the next Director of the Bureau of Land Management.”

What the Republicans Said

For GOP members of the committee, the issue was clearly what Stone-Manning knew about the tree spiking and when she knew it. Armed with blown-up images of the 1989 letter Stone-Manning typed and other damaging quotes, and brandishing a metal rod he said was a tree spike, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) was relentless.

“Tracy Stone-Manning collaborated with eco-terrorists. She lied to this committee, and she continues to harbor extreme views most Americans find reprehensible,” Barrasso said. “She is thoroughly disqualified from holding the important position of director of the Bureau of Land Management.

“In written questions for the record, I specifically asked her, ‘Did you have personal knowledge or participate in, or in any way directly or indirectly, support activities associated with the spiking of trees in any forest during your lifetime?’ Her response was ‘no.’ Tracy Stone-Manning is lying,” Barrasso said.

Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), also with tree spike in hand, likened the impact of the rods when shattered by a saw to hand grenades and shrapnel. “It will either kill or injure anyone that is within range,” he said. “That’s what tree spiking is. You put this in a tree to kill somebody.

“Somewhere in the deep recesses of her heart and her soul is something so malignant and so bad that she would try to take another life,” Risch said. “If you want to confirm her, you absolutely can, but believe me, this stain on this administration will last for the next three and a half years.”

Arriving late at the hearing, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she was disturbed about the allegations but would be opposing her nomination based on significant concerns about “her broader view of [and] understanding of multiple use.”

“When it comes to the multiple-use mandate of the Bureau of Land Management and all that it administers, she doesn’t have the balanced approach that I am looking for in a nominee,” Murkowski said. “It is very clear the bureau is there to manage, but also balance, the use of both renewable and non-renewable resources on our public lands. It does not appear to me that she holds that value of a true balance, and that, in my view, disqualifies her from this office.”

What the Democrats Said

The Democrats countered the Republicans’ blown-up quotes and spikes with an examination of the 1,800-page record of the 1993 grand jury and trial of the men convicted in the tree spiking.

“I have been unable to find any credible evidence in the exhaustive court trial record at the tree-spiking case that shows that Ms. Stone-Manning was an eco-terrorist, that she spiked any trees, that she conspired with eco-terrorists to spike trees or that she lied to the committee,” Manchin said in his opening statement. “What I find instead is compelling evidence that she built a solid reputation over the past three decades as a dedicated public servant and as a problem solver who brought people together … and that is the evidence on which I will base my vote in support of her nomination.”

Responding to Barrasso and Risch, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said the labeling of Stone-Manning as an “eco-terrorist” was “the worst case of character assassination I’ve ever seen on this committee.”

“We know a lot more about domestic terrorism than any of us would like because we had a front row seat to it on Jan. 6 of this year,” Heinirich said, referring to the attack on the Capitol. “And more than a few members of this committee refused to hold the instigator of that responsible, and yet they’re hell-bent on dragging Ms. Stone-Manning’s name through the mud.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) went even further, attacking Republican senators charging Stone-Manning with dishonesty for themselves supporting former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a “stolen election.”

“Why do we have people in this room who are undermining democracy?” Sanders said.

“This vitriol against her is not about Ms. Stone-Manning. What’s really on trial here is the future of America’s public lands,” Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said. “Basically, the issues that are at stake here [are] oil, gas and mineral extraction — and where we’re going in the future.”

With public lands, especially in the West, now under threat from climate change, Cantwell said, “there’s too much at stake we have to get right.” Stone-Manning “is going to work with all of us to move forward on these important issues that are now at a big crisis point.”