Todd, CCA is not going against the initiative they are just not backing it financially anymore. The reason being the money they were promised from big backers went away. The reason given was that the governors proposal gave them 85% of what they wanted. CCA no longer has the money for TV commercials.
I went to the bi-state meeting on the 18th. There were a lot of CCA members there. I was able to look through the sign in sheets out front and it seemed as though half the people there were CCA. They had to bring in extra chairs which was good. If you want to get anything you have to show up. We need butts in the seats.
When I got up in my motel room there was the governor of Oregon in an ad trying to get people to vote against two other initiatives. He hates all initiatives they take away his power.
I talked to some rank and file members and they said everyone on the river is still voting for the initiative. It is as I have said before the commercials will bring in the big money and run a lot of TV ads against it. On the 18th the Oregonian ran an article titled " Gill-net fishing is in throes of change". It was a very interesting article. It stated that this governor tried this 4 years ago and his commision voted it down 4 to 3. There is only 1 member left on the commision from that time. The governor appoints the commision they will do what he says. Do I think CCA got sttrong- armed? Maybe who knows. Maybe some would not call it that. Maybe this is just strategy. They say that governor is a extremely good politician and gets what he wants. I think he could sell refigeraters to eskimos. Maybe to get what we want CCA had to back his proposal. We could actually back both and hope at least one succeeds. CCA had seats up front at the big table and a lot of members filled the hall. Hopefully this will get us what we want.
The commercials were there and said the same thing as always. Their gill-nets were absolutely wonderful and they would go bankrupt with this proposal. I could see some of these proposals disturbing them. Like the one givig 80% of the mainstem non-indian quota to the sports. This governor is actually talking about making a sports priority on the Columbia. CCA chapters are putting out an alert to attend the meetings on this proposal and I hope enough people show up. This is most of what I know. If anybody dosent agree with me I dont care.