Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

and is registered with the Federal Elections Commission. CORPAC, the California Outdoor Recreation Political Action Committee, deals with state ,level political campaigns and is regis· tered with the California Fair Political Practices Commission. Political Action Committees, or 'PACs, formed to deal with panisan politics, "'dOJlate money and help worthy candidates.. The people behind CaMPAC are Art Vasconcellos, the chairman; Jun Wells, the treasurer; and Chuck Williamson, the deputy treasurer. Assem· blyman Bob Hayes is the chairman of . CORPAC, and Bob Ham is its treasurer. Recently, the people behind CaMPAC met at the Cycle News build· ing to discuss the status of, and future of, developing political clout. Among those at the meeting were Chuck Williamson, Jim Wells, Bob Ham and George Smith. What follows are a few excerpts from the conversation. Chuck Williamlon: "Our interests are to get people elected to office who are going to perpetuate the sport of motorcycling in its various forms. We are not going to try and elect motorcyclists per se, but those people who are interested and willing to work in our behalf. We have a number of people in state government who are interested in work· 'ing with our organization, largely be· cause we wield a lfOO(l deal of political clout. That political clout comes largely from a vehicle called computer mailing, which has been refined to a very high degree. "The state of things right now is that we have two organizations (CaM PAC and CORPAC), each of which has registered with the appropriate author· ities. We have thus far shared a computer mailing, and we share similar interests. But when you stop to look at this a little more, there are about 200 political offices that we're talking about. You've got 125 people on the state level, and another 47 on the federal level. And we've found in some cases that we're interested down as far as the county board of supervisors. If you take something like five supervisors by 58 counties in all ... "The problem I'm trying to ilIus· trate is that there are just too many folks to be concerned with; to say we're going to take on the world. Art and I sat down and talked about this for a long time and we said, 'Where are our problems?' We said they're at the federal level and this group says our problems are largely at the federal level and we can handle 45 or 47 people pretty well. We're going to concentrate on that a rea. "But we do need people at the state level as well as at the federal level, and that's why 1 addressed a communication to Bob Hayes, informing him that we were going to sit down this mom· ing and try and take a look at what our opportunities and problems are." .are IAbove! Chuck Williamson, Bob Ham lcenter! and Jim Wells discuss the future of CaMPAC.IBelow! Williamson makes a point. • Callto••,a Jim By Dale Brown Political clout - call it influence or anything you like -' is the only thing that's going to stem the tide of excessive government intervention into motorcycling. Developing that clout, 12 and getting ~p~e who understand moto~ prob~ and needs elected mto pubbc office . is the aim of two organizations: CaMPAC and CORPAC. CaM PAC, the California Motorcy. clilts Political Action Committee concentrates on federal-I~I e1ectio~ WeIb: "A little background on why we feel that the federal level is our most important thing right now. Most of the land motorcyclists use off-road in the state of California is owned or managed by the federal government, either the Forest Service or the BLM. Unfonunately the environmentalist futh column has gotten to such a place in 10 yean that they even have their own Gestapo in such organizations as the Council on Environmental Quality. And we're to the point that if we propose something, we can't sue to put on a race or an event, but there are 40 different ways the environ· mentalists can sue to stop an event. "The only way to tum this around is to get some of this legislation turned around. We need congressmen and senators from the state of California who see the multiple. use and recreationists'viewpoint. "Our immediate need is to get at least half of the congressmen in 1980 elected who believe in a multiple use concept for public lands. Otherwise, we're going to be the most put-upon group of people in the state of California. " Bob Ham: "I wholeheartedly agree. We've got to interact in the federal campaigns, we've got to go after state offices, and in some cases, right down to the city council depending on who they are, where they are. "In the course of the year Bob Hayes has been up in Sacramento, we've found that a state legislator can be immensely influential on federal doingS. "There's just different ways in inter· acting, but we need CaMPAC, we need CORPAC, we probably also need some way to tum key county supervisorial elections, particularly San Bernardino and Riverside counties, places like that in the desert. " WilliallllOn: "I wanted to share with you something that Bob Ham had said and I will illustrate it. We tallr.ed about the supervisor. Now most of what I'm talking about did not origi· nate with me. There has been a group of motorcyclists active politically in San Mateo county for 10 years. The motorcyclists worked for Bill Royer as a supervisor because they had local land problems. This year Bill Royer ran for congress. "We have had a 10-year association with that person. We distributed 10 thousand pieces of literature in support of Bill Royer's successful candidacy. Now here's a fellow with whom we had established a long·term working reo lationship. "The way in which the political process works is that people get appointed to boards and commissions, like planning commissions, parks & rec commissions, what have you. Then they get enough visibility, name reo cognition and sut>port and they run from the commission to elected office. That elected office can be the city council, the board of supervisors or some other elective office. From there you find them shooting off into state or federal level offices because the name recognition' in our era of voter apathy is the key ingredient. "We've got to educate our constituency - our constituency is the one and a half or two million motorcy· clists in California - as to what the political process is. Secondly. I think we're going to have to educate them on the problem of getting registered. I suspect that the motorcyclist is no better or no worse than the population as a whole: that most of them aren't registered, and of those who are, a lot of them don't vote. We have to be efficient in getting our organization out there and make it visible." Ham: "There should be postcards at ~ry meeting. There should be postcard registration blanks passed around. That law is in - you can go to the registrar and get the postcards." Williamson: "My proposal is to WOI'1r.ing with the California Motorcycle DeaJen Association; through that organization to get voter registration cards from every county into every motorcycle shop, in every nook and cranny, in every hamlet in this state. I have tallr.ed a couple of times with Hy Weitzman on this, and he said, 'Get your proposal togetber and get it to the board of directors. '" Wells: "What we need to do is ~Iop an income, with cODtinuing donations. I think that should be 'our number one priority. Because once we have the money, we can do what we have to do." Ham: "If you develop a list of people and you can't afford the 15 cents to mail it to them and tell them who your candidates are, the list of names isn't worth diddly. "

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