The Michigan Daily -- Monday, October 12, 1998 5A
$100-a-plate Fieger fundraiser fails to draw crowd
By Mike Spahn
Daily Staff Reporter
YPSILANTI - Geoffrey Fieger alienates,
insults and chides members of his own
Democratic party - not to mention his opposition
in the governor's race.
,Wnd a visibly tired, but nevertheless energetic
leger continued his path to election day Friday
morning when he addressed a scantily attended,
$100-per-plate fundraiser at the Washtenaw
Country Club.
Fieger, fresh off a two-day bus tour of the state,
arrived late to the event. His Mercury Villager car-
avan pulled in at 8:45 a.m. for the breakfast that
officially began at 7:30 a.m. When he took the
microphone, Fieger returned to his familiar
rhetoric.
He attacked Gov. John Engler's claim that
Michigan's water is safe and clean as a "shameless
and absolute lie."
"We can put a man on the moon, but we can't
figure out how to get fecal content out of Lake St.
Clair," Fieger told the crowd.
Fielding questions on the environment and
health care reform, the attorney who previously
defended "Dr. Death" Jack Kevorkian attacked
Engler's policies as bigoted, racist and completely
inept.
"There's enough evidence of corruption to
make your head spin," Fieger said.
And he didn't ease off on Engler as the speech
continued, claiming that the governor has never
held a "real job" in his life.
"And if he applied to my law office, he would-
n't get a job," Fieger said. "I don't consider him to
be a highly talented individual."
After his 40-minute address concluded, Fieger
addressed the higher education funding concerns
raised by University Regent candidate David
Brandon from Plymouth and current Regent
Daniel Horning (R-Grand Haven).
The two Republicans held a press conference
Thursday, claiming Fieger's proposed repeal of the
single business tax could cripple the Legislature's
ability to give adequate funding to the state's col-
leges and universities.
"Don't worry about it, because I'm the biggest
supporter of higher education you can find,"
Fieger said.
He said the economic growv th resulting from the
tax cut and a trimming of other budgets would
pave the way to continued high funding for all uni-
versities.
The fundraiser, sponsored by the Better
Michigan Fund, included addresses by Sen. Alma
Wheeler Smith (D-Salem Twp.), Mayoral candi-
date Chris Kolb, incumbent county board member
Martha Kern and supporters of the environmental
proposals on November's ballot.
Although disappointed with the turnout, Smith
said she hoped that by hearing the Fieger message,
turnout at events and at the polls could ensure a
strong Democratic showing.
"If we don't get the turnout, we could be in trou-
ble in races we expected to be safe in," Smith said.
Nl ichigan will go under if we don't get out and
vote."
Smith said that while many Democrats have
been distancing themselves from the controver-
sial candidate, Fieger's address at the Democratic
convention actually displayed the "first true
Democratic message" she had heard in years.
Kolb, in an impromptu time-filling address,'
talked about the deteriorating Ann Arbor environ-
ment, blaming the "do-nothing" mayor as a major
contributor to the problem.
"There are people that let things happen,
and there are people that make things hap-
pen," Kolb said. "Too often, our mayor lets
things happen."
Chinook salmon slim down
WANT TO
WRITE FOR
PORT SANILAC, Mich. (AP) -
Lake Huron's chinook salmon are
getting skinnier.
"The length is there, but the
weight is not," fisher Lance Larson
told the Times Herald of Port Huron
&a story yesterday.
arson, of Lexington, is not alone
in his observation.
State fisheries biologists said
they're concerned that the 3-and 4-
year-old chinook salmon fish are
working too hard to find something
to eat.
In the long run, that could open
the chinook population in Lake
Huron to a kidney disease that could
destroy the multi-million dollar
hery.
A 1996 Travel Michigan study
shows sport fishing accounts for
about $1.5 billion spent in the
state.
Jim Johnson, a fisheries biologist
at the Department of Natural
Resources in Alpena, said
researchers in the fall of 1997
noticed smaller chinook at Rogers
C ty and in the Au Sable River.
he 4-year-old fish were on aver-
age about four pounds lighter than
the year before. The 3-year-olds
were about two pounds lighter.
Jim Baker, a Bay City DNR dis-
trict fisheries biologist, said the
trend continued this summer.
"Our fishermen are telling us this
year that they're having a hard time
catching a fish more than 12 to 16
pounds," he said. "Twenty pounds is
*remely rare."
Bill Van Luven of Marysville,
"... big chinooks, they're working
harder and enjoying it less."
- Jim Johnson
of Natural Resources biologist
Department
who runs a charter out of
Grindstone City, said fish have been
smaller, but anglers caught lots of
them.
"We're getting 12- and 14-pound
fish instead of 20- to 25-pounders,"
he said.
Fisheries biologists believe the
drop in weight is related to a scarci-
ty of alewives.
Chinook feed almost exclusively
on the small fresh and saltwater
fish.
Johnson said a Lake Huron net-
ting survey this summer found few
large adult alewives.
"But they're reproducing well,"
he said. "That's good for little chi-
nooks. They have plenty of little
alewives to eat.
"But big chinooks, they're work-
ing harder and enjoying it less."
Skinnier chinook are less resis-
tant to bacterial kidney disease.
The illness in 1986 ravaged chi-
nook in Lake Michigan, collapsing
the fishery there.
In Lake Huron, salmon largely
avoided the disease and business
remained steady.
The DNR is proposing to cut
Pacific salmon stocking in Lake
Huron by 700,000 to 800,000 fish in
May 1999 both in Michigan and
Canadian waters.
Last year, 4 million chinook and
coho were stocked in the lake.
Fisheries biologists hope that
would enable the forage fish popu-
lations to remain steady.
Johnson said the state initially
introduced Pacific salmon into the
Great Lakes to control alewife pop-
ulations.
Alewives are invaders from the
Atlantic Ocean that entered the
lakes through the St. Lawrence
Seaway.
They dominated the food chain in the
lakes in the 1960s after another invader
- the sea lamprey - decimated native
predators such as lake trout.
The decline in salmon weights
could indicate that Lake Huron has
reached its capacity to sustain chi-
nook at large weights in large num-
bers, Johnson said.
Cutting the alewife population in
Lake Huron has been one of the
DNR's goals since stocking began,
Johnson said.
"One of our objectives is to reha-
bilitate our native species," he said.
"This is not a bad thing. We've con-
trolled alewives. Now we're tweak-
ing the system."
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I. I
THE BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP
Invites all PhD students nearing graduati n
to a presentation
"Why Would a PhD come a
Strategic Manageine
Consultant"
*
*
r i*
The lhiga League Hussey Room
Monda , October 12th, 1998
7:00 PM
/
/
Reception to follow where members of the firm
/ill be available to answer questions
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