TAMPA, Fla. -- By day, she's a physical therapist in Rhode Island who likes to spend her free time outdoors, kayaking and biking.

But by moonlighting in politics, Barbara Ann Fenton last week singlehandedly forced the national Republican Party to grapple with some of the most hot-button environmental and social issues.

Having become active in politics just within the last year or so, the 31-year-old gathered enough signatures to get on the Rhode Island primary ballot and be elected in April as a convention delegate.

Barbara Ann Fenton, Rhode Island delegate. Photo courtesy of Eric Wertheimer Photography.

Representing her state on the convention's platform committee, Fenton decided to offer amendments on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, coal mine worker safety and government recognition of civil unions.

She proposed them simply "because it hadn't been said yet, in the platform," she said during an interview at the Republican Convention here. On her key issues, "there was some language that was missing."

Fenton had to move fast. Delegates didn't get a copy of the platform until the Sunday night before last -- and the committee convened the next morning to consider it.

"It's drafted up in national, and all the platform delegates actually don't get to see it until Sunday night," she said. "Then all of a sudden you start running through things real quick. All of us in different states have different emphasis and things that are important to us. Obviously, in Rhode Island the environment is key. ... It's one of those things that stuck out."

While two environmental measures eventually were accepted, her civil unions proposal was not, and Fenton felt out of step with the conservatives shaping the platform. "I felt like I was campaigning for Obama in there when I proposed this," she said.

That was quite a contrast from her home state, where she's considered "so right-wing for not even allowing the word marriage" instead of civil unions. "It really is all geography," she said.

But unlike those who work in politics full time, she felt free to offer the measures.

"It seems to be a solution that was met with much more praise outside of that room," she said. "But unfortunately, a lot of people who are in politics and that's their career have to worry about ... back home. I'm a physical therapist, I'm here not a career politician, so I didn't have that kind of doom and gloom hanging over my head."

While Fenton said she'll keep her day job for the foreseeable future, she's open to delving deeper into a political career.

"I think right now when I go back home from this entire experience, I'll do local politics, whether it's city council, getting into that slowly would be great," she said. "Wherever it takes me from there is great."

'We just can't stay that extreme'

Growing up as a gymnast, Fenton had many injuries, which prompted her career choice.

"I broke myself a lot," she said. "I lived in a physical therapy office."

She left her native Newport to attend Northeastern University in Boston, and spent time in Scotland and Australia during graduate school.

"You never really know what you have until you leave," she said. "Then you're like, 'Oh wait, my hometown rocks!'"

She comes from a "split family, where my mom is a Republican and my dad has gone Democrat in the past few years." Her interest in politics was piqued after she saw a military veteran asking for donations to buy a wheelchair at a time "when we see other people milking the Medicaid and other welfare system so much."

"It's hard back home, too, because to say you're a Republican in Rhode Island is difficult," she said. "We're a very blue liberal state. But for all of us who are trying to be a little more fiscally conservative, really reform some stuff, it just kind of felt like something that was right to do at this point."

Darrell West, the vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution and former political science professor at Brown University in Providence, said many Rhode Island politicians have voted "in a more progressive manner" than the GOP as a whole.

"People in the state worry that the platform has gone too far right," he said. "These proposals are very consistent with what people in New England think."

He said others in the Northeast, West Coast and some urban areas in the Midwest also have concerns about the party's direction.

"So the party shouldn't just view this as a cranky person from Rhode Island, because that person represents a view that the party has become too extreme," he said.

Fenton believes the future of the GOP rests with people like her.

"I think that more social moderates are coming up in the future. Like Jeb Bush said yesterday, this religious extremism that kind of grapples with some of the party can't hold on forever," she said. "For the future of the party, we just can't stay that extreme."

Search for 'middle ground'

New Englanders sometimes make proposals "a little bolder" than can be approved on the national stage, she said. Her ANWR amendment mostly focused on a pipeline proposed to run through the refuge, she said. While understanding that the country needs to tap its domestic reserves to become more energy independent, she and other delegates also were hearing from environmental groups about the potential impacts on wolves and other wildlife.

"But a lot of people out in the hall were very happy we brought it up because it was something a lot of people in the Republican Party are grappling with," she said.

Fenton said she has been active with the World Wildlife Federation, Surfrider Foundation, Sailors for the Sea, and the Rozalia Project for a Clean Ocean.

She sought to find "middle ground" between pro-drilling Republicans and those who worry about the environmental consequences of development. "Because a lot of us do have a problem with the pipeline going through some of those wildlife reserves," she said.

Her goal was to "make sure that every company who's responsible for doing this does it right the first time" and that companies "think about the environment just a little bit more than perhaps they have in the past."

"They need to invest a little bit more money to do it right, take every precaution possible. And really it benefits them in the long run, because we see especially with the BP disaster, shortcuts were taken, and it cost not only the wildlife, but the companies themselves billions of dollars."

Although Fenton's amendment failed to gain traction, former Sen. Jim Talent (R-Mo.), now an adviser to presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's campaign and co-chairman at Mercury Public Affairs, suggested a similar proposal. He said his measure simply noted that development should occur "in accordance with applicable law, which does protect environmental safety and other concerns."

Talent is "on the same page as far as making sure that what we're going to do is as environmentally sound as humanly possible," Fenton said.

But a handful of delegates raised objections to the amendment, with one arguing that it makes a "false assumption" that the drilling project would not be held to existing standards (Greenwire, Aug. 21).

The platform committee ultimately adopted a third version of the amendment on a 53-45 vote. It stated, "We support this development in accordance with applicable environmental, health and safety laws, and regulations."

"We got the language through that kind of puts the companies on notice," Fenton said. "So I was fine with the final product."

Mine safety

Fenton decided to offer the mine safety measure after reading the GOP platform provision saying, "We're developing new state-of-the-art coal-fired plants that will be low cost, environmentally responsible." She cited mining accidents over the past decades that were caused by a lack of safety precautions.

"When you put low cost in there, you also have to turn around and be able to make sure it's safe," she said. "Several different people from many different states had come up to me afterwards and said, 'Thank you for promoting that.'"

In perhaps her most controversial move, Fenton said she tried to find middle ground on civil unions "because the two sides holding their ground hasn't gotten anybody too far."

"What we're trying to do is try to get the government to stop interfering in private lives and instead work on getting everybody a job," she said. "I understand the sense that the sacrament of marriage is incredibly important. I'm a Catholic as well. I understand the push-back. So why can't we all just have civil unions recognized by the government and the sacrament of marriage recognized by your church?"

Feeling she made a difference in her first foray into the national debate, Fenton plans to hone her political skills and may be back in four years for another round.