Water Archives · Gordon Nelson interview

Title

eng Gordon Nelson interview

Description

eng Former chief of staff to Congressman Tony Coelho and point person on the 1982 Reclamation Reform Act ending the battle over the 160-acre limitation in Reclamation Law.

Creator

eng Nelson, Gordon

eng Gray, Glenn

Relation

eng Water Archive Oral Histories

Coverage

eng Gordon Nelson residence

Date

eng 7/13/2009

Format

eng Microsoft Word 2003 document, 15 pages

Identifier

eng SCMS_waoh_00035

extracted text

Gordon Nelson transcript, July 13, 2009
>> Glenn Gray: I'd like to thank you, Mr. Gordon Nelson, for talking to us
and I'm Glenn Gray with the Central Valley Political Archive and the Water
Archive of the Valley at the Madden Library at Fresno State. And today is
July -- I believe it is the 13th, today, 2009. So I'd like to start out by
asking; Mr. Nelson if you could tell us where and when you were born and if
you could also describe your upbringing and your family background for us.
>> Gordon Nelson: I was born in Scranton, North Dakota, February 19, 1925. My
parents ran a restaurant called the Green Lantern. And across the street from
the restaurant was a bank run by a Mr. Christopher. They had a son a little
bit younger than I am. His name was Warren. Warren Christopher went on to
become the Secretary of State in the first Clinton administration. And my
parents moved from Scranton to New England, North Dakota, in 1929, and they
ran a restaurant there called the Fountain Inn. And I graduated from high
school in 1942 as valedictorian of our huge graduating class of 22. It was a
very small school. And I went on from there to study journalism at the
University of Montana in Missoula.
>> Glenn Gray: If I may, I'd just like to follow up on that Warren
Christopher anecdote. Have you ever have occasion to catch up with him in
later years?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, I tried. He came to Washington after I did -- and I
tried a number of times to contact him, even when he was just an assistant
attorney general in the Justice Department, but he was a stuffed shirt. And
he wouldn't return my calls, never acknowledged my letters. Nothing. Bill
Clinton said one time that he was the kind of guy who would eat M&Ms with a
knife and fork.
[ Laughter ]
>> Glenn Gray: All right, so you went to the University of Montana to study
journalism. Any particular reason, what sparked your interest in that field?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, I started out working on the school paper in high
school. And after that I learned a little bit about the printing trade at a
weekly newspaper in our town in New England. And the guy that owned the
weekly newspaper sold it to another guy who hired me to run the newspaper
while I was still in high school. So I ran the newspaper, stayed up all night
on Thursday nights printing, and I became the youngest newspaper editor in
the state of North Dakota.
>> Glenn Gray: Wow. Okay -- and tell me then about, about what it was like,
then, going, going to school when you did. I mean, this is at an interesting
time in history. And just tell me about that experience and what happened to
you from that point.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, when I went to the University of Montana World War II
was on, and I wanted to get into the Air Force but I was too young. And so
all of the military services had, had recruiting campaigns going on on
college campuses because they found that they thought college kids would make
good candidates for officers. So I signed up for the Marine Corps reserve and
went to active duty at Western Michigan College of Education in Kalamazoo on
January -- July 1 of 1943. Went to school in Kalamazoo for 16 months, then
went to Marine Corps boot camp at Paris Island, South Carolina. Then went to

Camp Lajeune North Carolina, and then went to officer candidate school in
Quantico, went through OCS, and then went to artillery school. Later on,
after getting out of the Marine Corps I went back to George Washington
University many years later and got a master's degree in data processing
management.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. When you were –- in these early days when you were first
starting to practice journalism as a student did you have any particular beat
or what were the kind of topics that interested you to write about.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, when you're a weekly newspaper editor you take
everything that comes. Everything from the town drunk who gets thrown in the
jug to the kid who gets burned in a fire. You just, you take what comes.
>> Glenn Gray: And I actually should have asked you this earlier, your
parents, they ran this restaurant. Did you work at all in the restaurant ->> Gordon Nelson: Well, my parents were divorced. And this is
of 900. And my dad ran a restaurant on one side of the street
ran a restaurant on the other side of the street. And I lived
and whenever I got mad at her I would pack up some clothes in
go live with my dad for a few days.

a little town
and my mother
with my mother
a shoe box and

>> Glenn Gray: Ah ha. At this time living in North Dakota, Montana, did you
have a sense of the importance of water in the American west and how
important it is in agriculture, more so than in other parts of the country?
>> Gordon Nelson: No. In that part of the world you take the water as it
comes. It rains and it snows and that's about all, about all that it does.
You don't -- there was no irrigation, no nothing like that.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, what brought you to Central Valley, then?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, I was looking for a job, and I had applied to many
newspapers all over the country, and the only place I got a decent response
from was from the Fresno Bee. So I got accepted as a -- I got a job there and
we moved to Fresno. That's how I got to Fresno.
>> Glenn Gray: All right. And once you arrived here to work for the Bee
again, did you have a particular beat, if so what was it.
>> Gordon Nelson: No. I had no idea of the importance of water. When I got
there, there was a veteran reporter named Dizz Sheldon [Assumed spelling] who
covered the city hall and the water beat. We had an assistant city editor who
hit the bottle a little too hard. He got fired, and they brought Dizz in to
be the assistant city editor. And the guy that they assigned a different guy
to cover the city hall which Dizz had been doing. But Dizz had also been
covering water, and they gave me the water beat. So I had to go and learn all
about irrigation districts and dams and canals and head gates and all that
stuff. There were two aspects of the water problem when I got there. The one
of them was the fact that most of the water in California is in northern
California, and most of the irrigated land is in the Central Valley and
Fresno, the San Joaquin Valley. So the trick was to get the water from the
Sacramento Valley down to the San Joaquin Valley. But there was another
aspect to it, and that is that the streams where all the water came from were
all controlled by private utility companies like Central Gas and Electric,
Southern California Edison and such things as that. But the Bees were always

for public power. So we were always looking for things to beat the private
power companies over the head with. That was an aspect of water that I
learned about rather quickly after I got there.
>> Glenn Gray: And about what year was this, when you first came to work for
the Bee?
>> Gordon Nelson: That would be –- that would be in 1950.
>> Glenn Gray: 1950. Okay. And you kind of had to hit the ground running and
learn about the water situation. Can you talk a little bit about how the
importance of water is so great that it plays upon the role in the politics
of the region, particularly in that -- from the point that you were covering
it.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, there was a deeply partisan split among the people
and the land owners about whether the water project should be built by the
state government or by the federal government. If it was going to be built by
the federal government, should it be built by the Bureau of Reclamation or
the Army Corps of Engineers. As it turned out most of the projects from the
Kings River south were built by the Corps of Engineers and the projects from
Fresno north were built by the Bureau of Reclamation. And this was always a
source of controversy. The Republicans wanted the Army Corps of Engineers,
the Democrats wanted the Bureau of Reclamation.
>> Glenn Gray: And could you talk in a little greater detail about why there
was this division and how things unfolded the way they did.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, the Bureau of Reclamation had restrictions on the
number of acres of land that could be owned and farmed. The Corps of
Engineers had no such restrictions, and the river -- the areas south of
Fresno like down in Tulare Lake basin and places like that were already under
irrigation and extremely large holdings. And the folks down there didn't want
to have anything to do with the Bureau of Reclamation.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. So you followed, you covered the politics, not only the
water, but the politics pretty closely then in 1950s years and on into the
1960s. I understand you have some interesting anecdotes to share with some,
some of the major players from this time. For example, I know that you have
one story about Governor Earl Warren.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well yeah. I have jokingly told people that I once gave
legal advice to the chief justice of the United States. And the truth of the
matter of that is that Earl Warren was governor in the early 1950s and I was
covering the legislature for the Fresno and Modesto Bees. President
Eisenhower picked Governor Warren to go to represent the United States at the
coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1952. So he was gone for about three weeks.
And I was following a bill in the legislature to create a new state
Department of Water Resources. I felt, or the newspapers worked for felt it
was a bad bill. And Warren came back from England, had a press conference
almost immediately, and I went to the press conference, asked him a question
about this water bill not at all assured that they had been keeping up with
it because he had been gone for three weeks. He gave back an answer that was
great for me. I got a good story out of it that made page one on all three of
the Bees, and very shortly after I got back to the press room the phone rang
and the political editor of the Bee, Pete Phillips, said the old man wants to
talk to you. He said go down and talk to Newt Stearns. So I went down to the

governor's office and went down to talk to Newt Stearns who was Governor
Warren's chief of staff. He took me in to see the governor, and the governor
said can you tell me where in this bill it does what I said it would do?
Well, I knew the bill from cover to cover, and I showed him where in the bill
it did that. Then he thanked me, and that was the end of that. But then the
next day as I was coming back from lunch he was walking through the park on
his way to lunch someplace I guess, he motioned for me to come over. And he
said, “I fixed that bill.” He said, “I wrote a letter to the author of the
bill and told him if it was passed I wouldn't sign it.” And he sent the bill
back to committee, and that effectively killed the bill.
>> Glenn Gray: And he was just -- you just happened to encounter him walking
on his own, then?
>> Gordon Nelson: Yeah. Things were different then. You didn't have security
guards running every place, and you didn't ride every place in a great big
limousine. You got out and walked.
>> Glenn Gray: What else can you tell us about some of the figures -- you
eventually went to work for a major political figure from the region. I'm
just wondering if you have anything else, any other memories about the
politicians from this area and what, what the interplay was like between
people from different parties and so forth.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, I had the good luck to work for some great people.
Worked for Bernie Sisk, worked for Hugh Burns, worked for Ernie Mobley, I
knew Bert Delotto well. These were all good people. They were all -- Ernie
Mobley was a Republican, but the others were all Democrats. But there was a
kind of a respect then of people for other people. And they were not above
reproach in every respect, perhaps. But they were good people to work for,
and they gave loyal service to their constituents all the time.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, so you worked, you worked for Hugh Burns. Tell us how
that came about.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, Hugh Burns was an undertaker in Fresno, ran for the
state senate, became president pro tem of the state senate, and he wanted me
to work two or three days a week for him as his press secretary. So I would
drive to Sacramento every Tuesday morning. Spend Tuesday and Wednesday in
Sacramento; come back Thursday morning back to my little public relations
business in Fresno. And I kept this up pretty much until I went into the
Peace Corps in 1965.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And you were still working for the Bee at the same time?
>> Gordon Nelson: Oh no, I left the Bee in 1950.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Gordon Nelson: Left the Bee and went into the public relations business. I
became city editor of the Bee, and decided that that was not for me for a
couple of things that happened. And I decided to go out on my own and start
my own public relations business.
>> Glenn Gray: I see. Okay, and do you have any specific memories of Mr.
Burns or anything that you'd like to relate?

>> Gordon Nelson: Well, Hugh was his own person. He was a kind of a guy who
liked everybody, was a hail fellow, well met, and a very bright politician.
And he worked hard, he one time told me that his first objective as a Senator
was to take care of the people who elected him to the Senate. Second, to take
care of the state of California. And once in a while if it worked out okay he
would be happy to do something for the Democratic party. But that was not
high on his list.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, and then what would you have to say about working for
Ernie Mobley.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, Ernie was, had been county manager in Fresno County
and then went to Santa Barbara, some place in Southern California, where he
was city manager. And then he came back to Fresno and went to work for
Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner and Bean as the stockbroker. And that didn't work
out too well. So he decided to run for the assembly. And he ran for the
assembly as a Republican, and surprised everybody by getting elected in his
first term. And he worked good, I think, as an assembly man for two or three
terms, and then made the mistake of deciding to run for the state Senate and
got badly beaten. And that was the end of that.
>> Glenn Gray: And how would you characterize -- you worked for politicians
on both sides of the aisle. How would you characterize the relationships that
you had between different people, people from different parties that came
from this part of the state.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, I was kind of lucky. I was able to represent both
Republicans and Democrats in the same campaign. And I remember one instance
in which I had Democratic candidates, I went to meetings with the Fresno
County Democratic Central Committee, I had Republican candidates and I went
to meetings in the Fresno County Republican Central Committee. Everybody knew
I was working for both sides, but everybody trusted me enough to know that I
was not going to give away any family secrets that I might hear at one of
these meetings and pass it onto the other party. I just didn't play the game
that way.
>> Glenn Gray: Well you eventually went to work, as you mentioned, for
Congressman Bernie Sisk. Can you tell us how that came about and what he was
like.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, Bernie was a great, a great guy. The man that ran his
office in Washington and who represented him and his campaign for election
was a man by the name of Jackson Carl. Jackson came back to be Bernie's
administrative assistant. In time he wanted to retire. And he asked me to
come back and be the administrative assistant. And I told him no, I don't
want to come back to Washington. I like it in Fresno. So they asked me again,
and I said no again. But I suggested a guy from Merced by the name of Bob
Garrett who was, ran a savings and loan in Merced. And he was Bernie's go-to
guy in Merced County. So Bob went back to become Bernie's administrative
assistant. Well, that didn't last too long. We came back from Africa after
our instance in the Peace Corps and it turned out that Bob Garrett wasn't
going to work out too well. So Bernie asked me again to come back. That was
the third time. And I didn't see how I could say no. So, came back after the
third request, came back, became his administrative assistant in 1967 I think
it was.

>> Glenn Gray: Let's just back up a bit and have you tell us about what
prompted your decision to enter the Peace Corps and a little bit about that
experience.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well the Peace Corps was of course a big John F. Kennedy
program. And the way they staff their overseas offices was that people had to
nominate other people. You couldn't apply for a job. Somebody had to turn
your name in as a top quality person. And they would look at your resume, and
if they thought you were worthy they would invite you back to Washington for
interviews. Well Bert Delotto, who was an assemblyman from Fresno, he was
nominated by Jess Unruh, the speaker of the assembly, and he was hired to be
the country director in Somalia. And he turned my name in, asked me if I
would be interested. So I said, “well yeah, I would be.” So they turned my
name in, and I came back for interviews with the Peace Corps people, and
finally Sergeant Shriver, and I was hired to be a deputy Peace Corps director
in what was then called Nyasaland, but which is now called Malawi. And that's
how we went to the Peace Corps. We spent 1963 to 1965 in the Peace Corps in
Africa.
>> Glenn Gray: And so did Delotto, did he go overseas with the Corps as well,
then?
>> Gordon Nelson: Yes, he went overseas. He became director of the Peace
Corps in Somalia, and he wound up getting fired because he found too many
things wrong with the way the Agency for International Development of the
United States government was operating in that country. But he rattled a few
too many chains and got fired.
>> Glenn Gray: And overall, how would you characterize your experience then,
your years in Africa?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, it was good for me. It was I think good for my wife.
I'm not so sure it was all that great for the kids. I think the kids would
have been better off if they would have stayed in school and we had not gone.
But they've survived. One is now just turned 57, the other is 55, and they've
got grandkids and they're doing fine.
>> Glenn Gray: You had, you have two children, then, and they're both with
you there?
>> Gordon Nelson: Two children, both adopted. And our son has two kids, and
our daughter has one.
>> Glenn Gray: And I should ask as well, where and when did you meet your
wife?
>> Gordon Nelson: Oh, I met my wife on a blind date when I was editing a
daily newspaper in the state of Montana. I was the editor, the guy that ran
the composing room, lived in a boarding house with his wife and one of the
borders was a farm girl named Ruth Pospicill [Assumed spelling] and -[ No audio, video skips ]
>> Gordon Nelson: But before that there was no radio, no TV in house
committee rooms.

>> Glenn Gray: Why don't you talk a little bit about Tony Coelho who also
worked for Sisk and he went on to become a congressman, and in fact succeeded
Sisk in congress. Talk a little bit about, about what happened there.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, this is kind of a tricky one for me because it
reflects kind of adversely on Tony. But I found early after coming to work
for Mr. Sisk in Washington that Tony was handling all the agricultural
legislation. And instead of coming to me to talk about farm problems and farm
legislation he would go direct to Congressman Sisk. And I was kind of cut out
of the loop. And I found, I found that he was so close to the Sisk family
personally that if I tried to make a stink about it, it was going to create a
problem. We tried to work out a way to where Tony and I could, could work
better together. But it just didn't seem to work out. And I finally went to
Bernie and I said I think probably I should, I should seek other employment.
So that's what I did. I looked for another job and fortunately I was able to
find one.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay, and tell us about that job.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, the man that Bernie ran against for congress was
Congressman Oakley Hunter. And even though Bernie beat him, Oakley and Bernie
were -- became good friends. And whenever Oakley Hunter came to Washington on
business he would always use our office as a place to leave messages. And I
can remember many times I would come in from lunch and here would be Oakley
Hunter sitting behind my desk returning phone calls to people who had left
messages for him in Bernie's office. And when I decided to leave Bernie's
office Oakley by that time had been appointed president of Fannie Mae. And I
asked Oakley if there was any place in Fannie Mae for me to get a job. And it
turned out that there was. And I had eight great years at Fannie Mae under
Oakley Hunter. Then when Tony decided to run for congress when Bernie retired
I went back up to work for Bernie his last year in office, the year Tony was
campaigning.
>> Glenn Gray: Why don't you tell us a little bit about Oakley Hunter, then,
and you know, here's a former member of congress also from the Central
Valley, and you're working for him in Washington in a somewhat different
capacity. You worked for both of these congressmen from back here. What was
he like and what do you think of his legacy?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, Oakley was not the best politician in the world in
terms of campaigning. He was extremely bright. His strong field after he left
congress was housing. And that's how he came to become president of Fannie
Mae. And he ran Fannie Mae as, as it should have been run and never was
willing to let it take unknown risks and he ran it according to the law that
had been passed to set it up. This is a kind of a nonsense answer. But he was
a completely different guy than Bernie. Bernie was a tire salesman; don't
think he ever finished college although he did go to college in Texas. Oakley
Hunter on the other hand was a college graduate, a lawyer; he worked in the
OSS in World War II, and a very bright guy.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, you said you worked then at Fannie Mae for eight years.
To what extent were you keeping up with what was going on with Sisk and
things back in the district and in Fresno or had you become by this point,
you know, someone who is just working in Washington and just not keeping up
with things back in the Valley?

>> Gordon Nelson: Well, I was pretty much out of it. I had very little
interest in Fresno. My business with Fannie Mae took me all over the country
speaking before analyst societies, Wall Street investment groups and stuff
like this. So I was kind of out of touch with what was going on in Fresno.
But what was going on, I discovered later, was that there was a whole raft of
water problems developing, and the National Land for People was, was forcing
new regulations to be written governing all the water projects, federal water
projects operated in the state of California.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay and when you went back to work for Sisk, after an absence
of some years, what was that experience like then, coming back?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well actually it was -- most of the people were there, were
the ones that were there when I left. And the first day I went back to work
it was almost as though I had, had never left. We all knew each other, we
kind of knew how to work with each other and things went fine. Water was a
big issue at that point and the western farmers were just absolutely beside
themselves trying to deal with new regulations that the Carter administration
had proposed for all the irrigation projects.
>> Glenn Gray: And so as you were in effect there when Sisk was closing down
his last term. What was that like, what was Sisk -- how would you
characterize his -- I don't know if I need to say state of mind, but just,
what was his feeling about coming to the end of this long and successful
career in congress?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, he had been there 24 years, and it was time for him
to step aside. I remember at his farewell dinner in Fresno in his last year
he spoke of course and he said the reason he decided to retire is he didn't
want to reach the point he had seen so many of his colleagues reach where
they would find themselves walking around the floors of the House of
Representatives and didn't really know where they were. He wanted to leave
while he was still in full command of all of his faculties and while he could
be proud of the things that he had done. And that's why he stepped aside.
>> Glenn Gray: All right, so you -- at this point you're being brought back
up to speed on what's happening here with the water politics of the Central
Valley. So after you finished -- after Sisk left Washington, then what did
you do?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, I wanted to get back into the investor relations
business which is what I did for Fannie Mae. I handled their investor
relations program. But my wife didn't want to move to Chicago where I thought
I might have an opening, so I started looking around for other opportunities.
And at that time the western farmers were beside themselves with these
irrigation regulations. And they formed the Farm/Water Alliance and I was
hired to coordinate the activities of the Farm/Water Alliance in the 17
western states, and do the best we could to get the kind of legislation that
everybody could live with. What had happened was that the people who pushed
for the regulations thought they could write a set of regulations that
applied only to the Westlands. But what they found out was that it affected
farmers all over the whole 17 western states. So the regulations came out and
every congressman and every Senator in the western states starting writing
legislation to solve their own individual problems. Well it soon turned out
that they began to realize that nobody is going to be able to pass a bill to
deal only with his own problems. He's going to have, to make this thing work
-- everybody's going to have to work together and stick together, and

everybody help each other out. And that's finally the way we were able to get
it done.
>> Glenn Gray: So who actually formed the Farm/Water Alliance?
>> Gordon Nelson: The Farm/Water Alliance was formed at a meeting in Phoenix
that was called I think initially by the National Water Resources
Association. They had people there, big farmers from all over the west, and
they decided they had to form some kind of an organization to band together
to get this thing done. They had people from Washington State, the Imperial
Irrigation District in southern California, big farmers from Arizona, Oregon,
Idaho, all over.
>> Glenn Gray: And who was it that, that extended this offer of employment to
you from them?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well I, they decided they had to have a full time guy to
deal with this. Since I was leaving Mr. Sisk's office I thought I would apply
for it. So I applied for the job. I was interviewed in San Antonio in late
1978 I think it was, and I got hired and went to work early January, 1979.
>> Glenn Gray: Now eventually you went on to write a book about the
individual who was behind the first Reclamation Act of 1902. Can you give us
some background on how that original act came to be, and then we'll talk
about the reform of the act in 1982.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, when we were trying to marshal our forces for the
reclamation reform legislation we were trying to find ways to disprove the
argument that the legislation in 1902 was passed to breakup large land
holdings. And wherever I went, and researching I kept finding the name of a
guy by the name of George H. Maxwell. And I finally started wondering, who is
this guy and what does he have to do with all of this? And I did some
research, I finally had a summer intern and she nosed around as much as she
could. And somebody told her go down to the United States archives. So we
went down to the archives and there we found bales and bales of information
about George H. Maxwell and all he had done. There were other files -- these
led to other files about Maxwell at the Univ -- Louisiana Historical Center
in New Orleans, the Arizona State Archives in Phoenix, the Yale University
Library in New Haven. And I went to all of those places and dug through files
going back forever and ever. I wrote a book, but I couldn't get anybody to
publish it. So I finally self-published it and sold all the copies.
>> Glenn Gray: And what can you tell us about, about Maxwell and about this
act in particular?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, he felt that there was a real need for development in
the west. And he thought that if we could get California to develop its
agriculture that would create new markets for manufacturers in the east and
the cities in the east would be markets for the agricultural products that
were raised in the west. And he persuaded the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce
to put up most of the money for financing a national effort to get
legislation passed to accomplish this. And this actually came about in the
Reclamation Act of 1902.
>> Glenn Gray: Can you describe, then, the impact that, that this act had
over the development of the, of the west in the 20th century?

>> Gordon Nelson: Well, what it did was it made it possible to build dams and
canals all over the west throughout the 17 western states. And generated -- I
don't know, I couldn't even begin to count the billions of dollars worth of
farm produce that has been raised on these lands. Products where the western
farmers bought the tractors manufactured in the east, and their farm products
were sold throughout the east, and it just all worked out, I think, to the
best of everybody. In California particular, a lot of cotton was raised on
land that was irrigated by reclamation land -- reclamation water.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, why don't you talk to us a little bit, then, about the
National Land for People and then your work with the Farm/Water Alliance
leading up to the Reclamation Reform Act in 19 -- 1982.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well National Land for People intended originally to impact
Westlands. But it went far beyond that and actually effected farmers
throughout the whole 17 western states. They didn't expect this. The thing
that hit most people was the residency requirement, that you had have, had to
live on the land. But it turned out that residency affected people all over
the west. It hit people in Idaho, it hit people in Wyoming, and it turned out
that of course the people in Idaho, their Senators were powerful and
important figures on the Senate water committees. So they were able to
marshal the support of their Senators in our joint effort to get this
reclamation reform law passed.
>> Glenn Gray: Is your feeling that the National Land for People overplayed
their hand?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, yeah, I think they overplayed their hand. They -- I
don't think they correctly estimated that the impact was going to be on what
they were doing.
>> Glenn Gray: It just seems to me if that's a group with more regional
interests, yet they're calling themselves “National” Land for People and
they're going to a federal court, that that's only inviting trouble. And I'm
just curious as to, as to why that particular approach was adopted.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, I don't know. George Ballis who lives up in Oakhurst
I think, probably knows more about why they chose that route than anybody
else. I don't know whether they had, whether they had raised a fund to file
suit or how that came about. But I think they misplayed their hand.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, how would you describe, then, the work of the Farm/Water
Alliance and what really occurred to -- for the Reclamation Reform Act to
come about?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, we had, we had some subgroups that managed to keep
this thing going in the right direction. We had a board of directors that was
representative of about six states. But beyond that we had a drafting
committee consisting of lawyers and engineers from all 17 states, and we met
several times a year to write and rewrite and argue about different
provisions of the law. And they would then, they would then redraft and
rewrite things. Ken Manock of Fresno was the chief scribe of that group. Jim
Sorenson of Visalia was chairman of the committee, and they worked very
diligently to write legislation that would help everybody and hurt nobody.
Then in Washington we had what we called a coordinating committee. We had a
committee here that consisted of representatives of all of the varied
agricultural interests and others: American Cotton Council, National

Cattlemen's Association, the wine industry. We had must have been 25 or 30
different people. And we would meet in Washington and talk about who is going
to see which congressman, which Senator, what's his hang up, and we tried to
keep a pretty close count on where all the votes were. But it was a big
effort and it took a lot of work.
>> Glenn Gray: And who would you say were the real go to people in congress,
as far as this act was concerned?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, I think without question Tony Coelho. He was the
biggest gun of all. Tony held the whip hand. He was able to pretty much
convince anybody if they tried to pass a bill that didn't solve the problem
of the California folks the bill wasn't going to go anyplace. Moe Udall was
another. Chip Pashayan was very helpful when he came to congress. On the
Senate side I think it would have to be Senator Jim Mclure of Idaho, and just
an awful lot of work by an awful lot of people.
>> Glenn Gray: And did you have any direct dealings with congressman Coelho
and Pashayan over this issue, then?
>> Gordon Nelson: Oh yes, very much.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay.
>> Gordon Nelson: Tony, Tony was –- Tony was a key figure in the whole thing.
>> Glenn Gray: How would you assess the impact of the Reclamation Reform Act?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, as it passed -- in the closing days there were some
provisions put in the Reclamation Reform Act that I think were very
unhelpful. And this is language that was put in, in the conference, which I
think was wrong. But we couldn't stop it. And the one lawyer who could have
stopped it, he wasn't in Washington because nobody would pay his fees or pay
his freight. The people who had the money, their problems had already been
solved and the chairman of the board of the other committee that really
needed him back here, their chairman of the board was travelling abroad
someplace, and nobody would authorize him to make the trip. It should never
have happened that way, but it did.
>> Glenn Gray: And what would you say is the result of that, of those things
occurring.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well I, of course I've been gone from Fresno many years,
but I have the impression that that bad legislation has led to a number of
other bad pieces of legislation. And now you see nobody in Westlands is
getting water because they're saving water for the smelt. And it's just been
one of a whole series of things that have hurt western agriculture, I think.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, are there any other particular individuals who were part
of this effort that do stand out and should be mentioned in terms of your
working with them and your perception of their influence?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, two of them especially, from Fresno. Ken Manock, a
lawyer in Fresno was on our draft committee. And Ken was the one guy who was
always there at every meeting, took copious notes. He knows more about every
section of that bill than anybody else could possibly do. And he was always
the one the guys went to, to double-check and make sure what legislation,

what section was going to do what. And he wrote all the drafts, circulated
them to all the lawyers and engineers. The other guy who was a key figure was
Bill McFarland of Clovis. Bill was chairman of the Farm/Water Alliance. He
was always willing to make another trip, make another phone call, call
another meeting, do whatever you want. And there were, there were some
others. Jim Sorenson from Visalia was chairman of our drafting committee, and
brought in the good will of the other 17 western states. They were mostly
suspicious of California. But Jim Sorenson had been one of them for so many
years through of the National Water Resources Association that they trusted
him. Then of course there were people down, farther down in the valley, Stan
Barnes, for instance, was another key guy who worked on this thing. There
were a handful or two. Some from Arizona that I can name. A guy by the name
of Tom Cholls [Assumed spelling] and a guy from Idaho, John Roshaw [Assumed
spelling] very, very active in the whole thing.
>> Glenn Gray: So once this legislation passed what were you doing then and
what was next for you?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well what was next for me was that I wrote a privately
circulated news letter called the Farm/Water Newsletter. Wrote it for a
couple of years and kept people informed about what regulations were being
written and how they were going to impact everybody. I did a little bit of
lobbying on some of this legislation and tried to keep everybody informed.
>> Glenn Gray: And anything else then that you worked on in the '80s?
>> Gordon Nelson: Yeah, I quit -- finished this about the early -- 1983 I
think it was.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. Why don't you go back and talk just about some of these
other important um, people here in the Valley who, who were involved with
these water issues. You mentioned Jack O'Neill. I was also wondering if you
could tell us a little bit about Russell Giffen.
>> Gordon Nelson: Yeah, Russell Giffen -- Russell Giffen and Jack O'Neill.
They pretty much ran the Westside. There were Lord, Harnish and Wilson also,
of course. But Giffen and O'Neill were the big wheels on Westlands, and they
were both on the board of directors of the Producers Oil Company. And Russell
Giffen told me one time he just left the whole water thing up to Jack
O'Neill. Mr. Giffen was not much into politics, but Jack O'Neill was.
>> Glenn Gray: And how about Ralph Brody.
>> Gordon Nelson: Ralph Brody was Pat O'Brien's number one water expert. And
when things really got going for Westlands and the San Luis project, Brody
went to work as manager of the Westlands Water District. And he was back
there all the time in Washington lobbying for that legislation. A very hard
working guy, and very competent.
>> Glenn Gray: Any other, any other individuals from out here that ->> Gordon Nelson: Well you could ->> Glenn Gray: You observed or worked with that you'd like to mention.
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, water leaders go back a long time. I would go back to
Charlie Kaupke who was the water master of the Kings River Water Association;

A guy by the name of Philip A. Gordon from Kerman who was chairman of the
board of the Kings River Water Association. A guy by the name of Alvin Quist
who was the first chairman of the Kings River Conservation District. There's
an awful lot of them. They all worked together. Even though they fought a
lot, they also worked together a lot.
>> Glenn Gray: What are your thoughts about lobbying? You're someone who
started out in journalism, then you went to work for politicians on their
staffs, and then you got into lobbying. Why don't you tell us a little bit
about what that experience was like?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, I think lobbying is an honorable profession. I've
lobbied, I've been lobbied. There are always some bad apples in every batch,
I guess. But the lobbyist is a guy who knows the impact of almost any kind of
imagined legislation that you can propose on any kind of an industry. They
can tell you before the Library of Congress can tell you. They know all the
Court cases that have affected their clients, and they know more about the
subject matter than all the congressional draftsmen put together. As a matter
of fact, when I was working for Bernie we would now and then call on a
lobbyist to draft a bill for us even though we knew his employer was going to
be against the bill. But he knew how to get from point A to point B. And if
he said it was going to hurt his client, we understood that. Okay, you go
ahead and try to oppose it. But if this is what we want to do, this is the
best way to do it. And he'd say yes. So they serve a very useful purpose.
There's a scandal playing now, but that's just the way it is.
>> Glenn Gray: What are your observations then on politics today and the
impact or the influence of lobbying? Do you have any thoughts about that and
how things have changed?
>> Camera operator: Want to take a break real quick?
>> Gordon Nelson: It’s okay.
>> Glenn Gray: Do you think that they are the same, but with just some
differences?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, politics has changed, because I think because the
news media have changed. And today everything is vicious. I can't imagine, I
can’t remember a time in my life when things were as bad as they are now in
terms of character assassination and such things as that. Not to say that bad
things weren't said. But there was a gentleness about politics in years past
that I don't think you find today.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, to what extent have you kept up with the politics of
this region in recent years, both in terms of just the water issues but also
just in terms of the more day-to-day politics back here in the Valley?
>> Gordon Nelson: I haven't kept up as much as I should have. I read the Bee
online almost every day. One of the ironies is that right now in 2009 you
have large groups of farm workers and other Hispanics mobilizing to try to
get water for land for agriculture. 30 years ago they were -- the Hispanic
groups and the farm labor groups were opposed to water projects on the basis
that water projects benefitted farmers, farmers were against farm laborers.
So they would oppose the water projects. Now they're beginning to realize
that without water there aren't any jobs. So now they're trying to help the
farmers get some water, and I think that's good.

>> Glenn Gray: Well, what would you say in terms of, then, assessing where we
are now, here in the Valley, and going forward? What's your take, what's your
outlook on what the future holds for us here?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, at some point is seems to me the people of the world
are going to have to decide whether people are more important than the
environmental issues. If the world is going to stop because of environmental
issues we're going to have to starve half the people to death. Because
without water there's not going to be any food, without water, industry is
going to suffer. It's just that simple.
>> Glenn Gray: And just curious, when was the last time you visited back here
and you were out to Fresno?
>> Gordon Nelson: Oh, I don't think I've been to Fresno for 30 years.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh, uh huh. Well, can you tell us, as you look back now
over the years with respect to, with respect to the Valley and its water
issues, are there anything -- what would you say are the most important
things for people to know for future generations who might be looking in on
this interview? What are the, what are the key points for them to know about
this period that you were involved in and just sort of like the one thing you
want them to come away with?
>> Gordon Nelson: Well, I think to start with people have to be patient.
Problems are not solved overnight. Uh, second thing I think is that when you
have problems the more people you can get together who are of a willing frame
of mind to try to solve them the better solution you're going to find.
Synergism is terribly important. In the case of the reclamation legislation,
the fact that we were able to get 35 or 40 guys together around a table and
discuss issues even though that seems to be an unwieldy amount, get people
together around a table, you're going to find better solutions. The idea of a
bunch of guys retiring to a room and inventing a magic bullet to do something
without consulting other people is just not going to get it done. And if
we're not willing to do those kinds of things it ain't going to happen. You
just have to be patient and you have to be willing to pay the price.
>> Glenn Gray: Is there anything that we haven't touched on today that you
think is important with respect to your life and career and sort of
happenings in the Valley as you saw it, that you'd like us to include here
today?
>> Gordon Nelson: No, not really. I've, I’ve had a good life. I've had many
careers. I was a newspaper man, I was a lobbyist, I worked for Fannie Mae.
I've been exposed to lots of different things. I've had a good run. I had a
good wife. I had 60 happy years of marriage, can't beat that very well.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, I'd like to thank you so much for your time and for your
willingness to talk about these things. It's important to help us sort of
flesh out this chapter of the Valley's history and the role that you played
both in, in preserving and participating in the politics and especially in
the water politics of the region. So it's, it’s a very important, very
important role and observations that you've been able to make here today, and
it really helps us in our documenting this story for our project here. So I'd
like to thank you and to thank your grandson for, for his efforts in making
this possible.

==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====

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