Jones Reels in Votes for Commercial Fishermen
by Jeff Klinkenberg

The day begins early. Already, before 8 a.m., commercial fishing lobbyist Bob Jones is busy, at work in Tallahassee’s Florida Capitol building, knocking on doors, walking the halls, stopping to chat with senators or representatives or even their aides.

The Florida Legislature is now in session, and these are important people Jones in talking to -- people who can help him defeat the wishes of thousands of Florida citizens wanting to limit or regulate his favorite business, commercial fishing.

"Commercial fishermen are the original conservationists," Jones might typically tell a legislator who wonders if commercial fishermen damage the resource by catching too many fish. "We who have to make our living year after year, generation after generation, would do nothing to destroy that. We want to be here tomorrow."

IT IS A PERSUASIVE argument used often. Jones obviously is good at his work. He is executive director and lobbyist for Southeastern Fisheries Association, a strong commercial fishing organization whose 350 members do profitable business all over the world. Jones represents his people in the Florida Legislature, where laws are made that could cripple the $215-million commercial fishing industry -- or boost the estimated $1.6 billion sport fishing industry.

Jones, 47, has no vote in the Legislature, but it is his job to see that commercial fishermen get the best of things. He is often successful. When a bill that would limit commercial fishing is killed, when a bill that would favor sport fishing is weakened, chances are good that Jones, working quietly in the background, giving commercial fishing information to legislators who know little about fishery issues, is partially responsible. That is what he is paid to do.

"The whole legislative system is set up to kill bills," says Jones, a commercial fishing lobbyist since 1964. "Thank God."

His ability to present commercial fishing in a favorable light, his knowledge of government, his many long-time friends in the Legislature, his organizational skills, his low-key demeanor, and his position on a powerful federal fish management council, make Jones an extremely effective lobbyist.

"What I do is not complicated," says Jones, who also represents commercial fishing interests in his other job as chairman of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, a US Department of Commerce panel that develops gulf fishery plans. "I don’t have a black satchel full of money to give away like some people seem to think. I knock on a few doors, articulate my position and hope I get the vote."

JONES OFTEN GETS the vote, or non-vote, that he requires. For several years, for example, sport fishermen worried about declining fish numbers have tried to get laws to regulate or eliminate the gill nets used to catch millions of pounds of king mackerel, Spanish mackerel, spotted seatrout and redfish. Jones worked to kill those bills, and he will work to kill similar bills during the current legislative session.

This spring sort fishermen and conservationists want a bill that would outlaw the efficient fish traps used in South Florida waters. They fear the traps will devastate declining reef fisheries already under heavy fishing pressure from other methods. They proposed the same law last year. Jones helped to kill the bill.

"We helped kill that bill for philosophical reasons," says Jones, who favored a bill that, instead, would have regulated fish traps. "If fish traps were eliminated simply because people didn’t like them -- not because of hard, scientific data -- what unpopular fishing gear would be eliminated next?"

Always polite, he speaks with a soft, Southern accent and calls people Sir or Mister, Miss or Missus. He is a large man, as deeply tanned as the commercial fishermen he represents. Bob Jones tried commercial fishing as a boy, catching bait for a fish camp at St. Augustine. He enjoyed being outdoors, and he enjoyed the work.

BUT THEN HE graduated from high school and joined the Marines, and that was that. After his discharge, he worked in St. Augustine as a bricklayer and as a tax assessor. Then he left Florida for Oklahoma and a job on the United States staff of the Jaycees.

He was homesick for Florida by 1964, the year Southeastern Fisheries wanted to hire a new director and lobbyist. Jones, whose father-in-law Charles Usina was a long-time Florida House of Representatives member, had never been to Tallahassee before. But he got the job. He had no political experience, but he learned.

"I said to my father-in-law, ‘Poppa, how do I lobby?’ I’ll never forget what he told me. ‘All you gotta do is tell the truth. Lie once, and you’re gone.’"

Jones’s job today is not easy, not like in the old days, when sport and commercial fishermen got along better, when both groups caught the fish they wanted. Those were days when sport fishermen seldom ventured to Tallahassee, seldom wrote angry letters to their legislators about greedy commercial fishermen.

Now things have changed. Fishing has declined -- from pollution, coastal development and overfishing -- and sport fishermen, more of them now than ever before, have organized. They have formed the Florida League of Anglers, a politically active organization that recently hired its own lobbyist, and they are generally backed by the tourist industry, which fears fewer visitors and dollars if Florida’s famous fishing further deteriorates.

THE SPORT FISHERMEN blame commercial fishing for contributing heavily to fishing’s decline. They say commercial fishermen using airplanes and 600-yard nets and fish traps put too much pressure on a resource already reeling from pollution and development. Commercial fishermen are accused of taking too many fish, wasting too many fish, selling too many fish.

These things have brought the commercial fishing industry into deadly conflict with the sport fishing industry and made Bob Jones’ job harder than it has ever been.

"Commercial fishermen are losing ground," says Jones, whose organization last week helped conduct a Tallahassee fish fry for 1,200 diners, including legislators.

"It blows my mind when somebody calls us powerful. I love it when they do, but I’m a one-man shop. The physical requirements of my job are difficult. There are 120 representatives and 40 senators, and I have about 15 minutes a day to try to talk to them all. And there are at least 3,000 other lobbyists who are trying to talk to them."

One of the other lobbyists is Jack Skelding Jr. A Tallahassee attorney, Skelding has been hired by the sport-fishing organization, the Florida League of Anglers. Jones expects him to be a formidable opponent.

"I KNOW HIM," Jones said. "He knows a lot of people. He’ll have access to them. That’s important. But it will also be good for me. It’ll give me a target, not just a puff of smoke, to work against."

Jones hopes his commercial fishermen can work with Skelding’s sport fishermen. "There hasn’t been much mutual trust lately. But I think we could work on some things. Maybe we could phase out the netting of king mackerel...if they’d let us completely develop the Spanish mackerel fisher."

Jones is willing to compromise.

"Compromise is what the legislative process is all about," he says. "If the opposition does everything they want to do there’ll by no job for Bob Jones. But I don’t think they’ll get everything they want."