Russ Sanford And More
Russ Sanford and MORE
Still anonymous, still trying
Joe Scalzo
TWO QUESTIONS that could probably stump most motorcyclists are: 1. Which organization, including the AMA, believes it is working the hardest to guarantee the rights of California’s rank-and-file cyclists? 2. What is the name of its president and founder?
Give up? The answers are: 1. The Motorcycle Owners, Riders & Enthusiasts (MORE), and 2. Russell L. Sanford, 48, who, incidentally, never does. Give up, that is.
But perhaps Russ Sanford should consider giving up. His dedicated but anemic organization remains as financially troubled as ever, and just as anonymous. Yet its president and founder, enthusiastic as usual, staunchly contends that he has only begun to fight.
“At this point in time, practically every California motorcyclist has heard of MORE. . . .” So begins a typical Sanford-written MORE newsletter, but unfortunately the bubbling optimism is matched only by the basic falseness.
"We, the motorcycle owners, riders and enthusiasts of California let him down. We killed Russ Sanford as surely by our own neglect and our stinginess as if we had squeezed his neck... ."
After seven disappointing years, roughly 6000 (no official figures are available) of the state’s estimated 2.5 million street and off-road motorcyclists have bothered to pony up the $10 yearly dues required to join MORE. To Sanford this is an embarrassment. All 2.5 million might join, he argues, if only they knew about his organization’s long, stubborn uphill fight against motorcycle harassment and ultimate legislative banishment. But they don’t. To spread the word, Sanford needs membership donations, but if no one knows about MORE, they obviously can’t join. That has been MORE’s Catch 22 since its founding in 1969.
Sanford says the organization’s credo has not changed in seven years, and he has it down to a single, slightly longwinded sentence:
“MORE is operated and administered by motorcycle enthusiasts who devote their time and effort, without pay, to providing both written and personal representation for you with the California legislation and the various local, state and federal agencies that can enact prohibitive and restrictive measures that have an effect upon our form of recreation, sport and transportation.”
In this case, the operative words are “without pay.” MORE is non-profit and incorporated as such. Volunteer staff help is always welcomed; unfortunately, Sanford cannot afford salaries. Whatever donations come in go toward paying telephone bills, office rent, postage costs and the president’s own evermounting travel expenses. Going here, there and all around the state in his quiet quest to help motorcycling, Sanford racks up 60,000 road miles a year. . .without pay.
Altruism like this being so rare, it probably isn’t surprising that Sanford’s two most devoted followers actually use the term “saint”—as in St. Russ—when describing him.
One of them, Cycle News publisher Charles Clayton, two years ago wrote a fraudulent Russ Sanford obituary in which he took motorcyclists to task for not joining and supporting MORE. Clayton piously eulogized:
“I don’t know why motorcyclists are so lucky, or what we did to deserve the blessings that the man Russ Sanford laid on us without asking anything for himself. . .a saint is single-heartedly devoted to a religious task, usually with some miracle involved, and his life is an instruction to us lesser mortals in how we could be better than we are. . . .We, the motorcycle owners, riders and enthusiasts of California let him down. We killed Russ Sanford as surely by our own neglect and our stinginess as if we had squeezed his neck. . . .”
Maudlin perhaps, but the outrageous story focused more temporary attention on Russ Sanford and MORE than anything before or since. Which had been Clayton’s intention. In the loud outcry that followed, Sanford first professed dismay, then asked for and got a printed retraction. Whether or not the fuss attracted fresh MORE members is hard to say, but it did generate a flow of cash donations to Sanford’s family. The alive-and-well Sanford immediately returned all of them, complete with notes of apology.
Despite the obituary caper, Sanford and Clayton—one of MORE’s lifetime members—remain close friends today. But Sanford’s second most devoted follower, Jim Manning, a former corporate officer of MORE, did more than defend the faked obit. He identified himself as the person who first suggested the idea to Clayton.
“Russ Sanford is a saint,” Manning maintains. “He has to be. How many other people would do all that he does for bikers, and for such little return? For no return.”
But what, exactly, does Russ Sanford do in his travels and confrontations as president of MORE? According to another newsletter: “Perhaps MORE’s most important purpose is to act as a ‘clearing house’ for the resolution of problems confronting motorcyclists, and to serve as an official communications network.
“In this respect, we issue monthly newsletters (to members) that describe new laws and regulations which will have an effect upon motorcycling, and further describe the type of response required by motorcyclists if it is necessary to support or defeat such proposals. In some instances we ask that our members write letters to their elected and appointed representatives in government, and we describe the type of statement that their letters should contain.
“In other instances, we request that our members attend meetings that are being conducted in their local areas, so that they may express their own views on relative subjects. Unfortunately, your MORE staff is limited in the number of meetings and hearings that can be attended at the same time, and if
"The important thing to remember is that Russ is dealing with legislators who could probably get more votes for taking all motorcyclists off the streets than they could for helping motorcyclists!'
motorcycling is to survive, representation is essential.”
Russ Sanford, in a nutshell, is motorcycling’s self-appointed lobbyist. He has devoted himself to “helping motorcycling save itself from the government.” That motorcycling in California has survived as long as it has, wrote Charles Clayton, is largely because of Sanford’s and MORE’s good but underpublicized works. (“Sanford beat down the legislation that would have cost extra fees, special equipment, insurance, etc. and more legislation that would have cost the industry 13 to 16 million dollars a year. He rewrote the registration rules to give off-road riders a land equity that may yet assure the survival of dirt recreation in California, and quietly killed countless bills aimed at criminalizing motorcycle riders. Year after year he explained the dangers of the helmet law successfully.”)
Clayton has loaned Sanford money to keep MORE afloat during particularly stormy times, has given him free column space in his paper, and, of course, extolled him in print at every opportunity.
“As long as I’ve been in motorcycling,” says Clayton, who’s been in motorcycling a long time. “I’d say we have had two really important and influential names who have helped us. The first is Evel Knievel. And the second is Russ Sanford.
“Sanford doesn’t have Knievel’s personality or magnetic appeal. As a public speaker he’s a little stilted, really a terrible public speaker. But Russ is our Gandhi.”
The extolling aside, Russ Sanford’s is not a widely known name among motorcyclists. He has no press agent, and rarely gets to take the bows his devoted followers believe he deserves. He remains something of a shadow
"You take a lobbyist working for a big company, like, say, General Motors.
Russ probably sees less money in a year than that guy's bar bill for a week!'
personality, and his organization remains impoverished.
“What shoots Russ down,” says Jim Manning, “is that too often he can’t go out and take credit for what he does. You know, someone from the press might ask him, ‘Well, what have you specifically done for motorcyclists?’ And Russ can’t really say because of his delicate position as a lobbyist.”
Sanford sits inside his tiny office in downtown Sacramento intently studying the various bills being considered by the state legislators. Of 4000 bills proposed each year, perhaps 450 will affect motorcycles in one way or another. When Sanford, acting for MORE, finds a bill he doesn’t like, he tries to call upon the legislator who drafted it, then work with him to point out the bill’s shortcomings and have them modified or changed. If he’s successful, Sanford is left feeling highly pleased with himself. But the last thing he can do, Manning repeats, is to go crow about it.
“Russ has to be satisfied with results, not fame,” says Manning. “As a lobbyist, he can’t tell everybody, ‘Boy, I sure changed old so-and-so’s mind about that bill.’ That would only get old so-and-so mad. And likely get him in trouble with his voters back home.
“The important thing to remember is that Russ, after all, is dealing with legislators who could probably get more votes for taking all motorcyclists off the streets than they could for helping motorcyclists.”
Sanford may not be able to talk of his legislative accomplishments, but Manning can and will.
“He’s done so much. Like, I remember when I was working with MORE and a new tollway was ready to open that was going to discriminate against motorcycles. Russ didn’t go out and raise a loud flap. He calmly went and talked to the proper agency, reasoned with them, and talked them out of it. And no one on the outside knew a thing about it.
“Another time, more recently,” Manning continues, “Russ heard about a cumbersome vapor recovery system all gas stations might start to use. For motorcycles it would have been impossible. Russ was the only one who knew about it and could talk about it, and he got it changed.”
Clayton tells how Sanford stopped a bill that would have forced motorcyclists to carry huge litter containers and ash trays on their machines. “He (Sanford) did a million little services you never heard about: putting on trail rides for government officials, speaking to city and county councils and seminars and school boards.”
Sanford is not a registered lobbyist, although he once was. He says he sees no need to buy a license and then go through endless red tape and paperwork when, after all, MORE pays him no fee for his lobbying.
“You take a lobbyist working for a big company, like, say, General Motors,” says Manning. “Russ probably sees less money in a year than that guy’s bar bill for a week.”
Sanford, to hear his followers tell it, doesn’t do what he does to help California motorcycles per se. He’s there to help motorcyclists. The difference is subtle, but all-important to him. Sanford says he’d willingly accept donations to MORE from some of the major manufacturers (none have stepped forward to offer any) but only if there were no strings attached. “I guess I’m like a consumer advocate,” he says. “I couldn’t be subservient to one of the big companies.”
He doesn’t deny, though, that financial donations—or the lack of them— make for MORE’s most chronic problem. There’s so little money trickling in, it is claimed, that Sanford often cannot afford the gasoline to drive to many of the legislative meetings he’d like to attend.
Lacking a regular budget to cover his expenses, he’s frequently forced to accept temporary outside jobs. He’s worked as a consultant and lobbyist for the Motorcycle Industry Council, an organization whose members are the motorcycle manufacturers themselves. He helped defeat a noise bill that, if passed, might have put Harley-Davidson out of business in the state. Last year he worked as a part-time lobbyist for a group trying to bring motorcycle racing back to the Sacramento Fairgrounds; thanks largely to his efforts, the meet came off on schedule. He also announces at some races. Still, he has trouble making MORE’s ends meet.
“Russ is too proud to beg for help,” explains Manning. “He’d go hungry rather than do it. Hard as he works, and the hours he puts in, he should be making $60,000 a year minimum. All that keeps him going, I suppose, is the personal satisfaction he gets out of what he’s doing.”
Personal satisfaction alone wasn’t enough for Manning. As an unsalaried officer of MORE, Manning worked elbow-to-elbow with Sanford, writing and printing the MORE newsletter, making
"If Russ ever loses that enthusiasm of his and finally gets disgusted enough to leave the motorcycle scene, that's when people finally will miss him. Dealers will suffer, consumers get jabbed, there'll be mass land closure____"
long-distance calls, etc. He watched Sanford’s marriage suffer and his home be foreclosed upon. Still Sanford toiled on. Manning took it for 18 months—all he could stand—then had to withdraw. Today he’s the president of the Scholastic Motorsport Association, the high school motocross group.
“If Russ ever loses that enthusiasm of his,” he predicts, “and finally gets disgusted enough to leave the motorcycle scene, that’s when people finally will miss him. Dealers will suffer, consumers get jabbed, there’ll be mass land closure. . . .”
Before working for MORE, Manning worked for the AMA. He doesn’t have the confidence in that group’s legislative expertise that he has in MORE’s. But as a former employee who left the AMA under strained conditions, perhaps Manning’s view isn’t objective.
Strangely, the powerful AMA, with its reported 100,000-plus membership, doesn’t take much interest in either Russ Sanford or MORE. Legislative director Gene Wirwahn chooses his words carefully: “Anyone who helps the cause of motorcycling in any way obviously deserves support. No question about it.” Did that mean that AMA members should be encouraged to send in the $10 dues and join MORE?
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“I wouldn’t say that,” Wirwahn replies quickly. “They have the AMA working for them. We have defense funds in California, you know. We are doing the job out there. We check back and forth with the Bureau of Land Management folks all the time. You might ask them how often Russ Sanford does that.”
Archly, Wirwahn concludes: “Perhaps I shouldn’t say this. But I don’t feel it’s in the best interests of a national publication to be doing a story on one person in the motorcycle legislation fight. Why just Russ Sanford? Why not Joe Lunchbucket in Missouri? There are a whole lot of people in this country working for motorcycles. It’s not good judgment to spotlight one individual.”
"If people have enough faith in MORE to sign up for life, then we're going to keep it going. Somebody has to do this work?
Sanford’s feelings toward the AMA are equally lukewarm. In fact, he recently resigned his AMA membership of 27 years duration. He’s in wholehearted agreement with Wirwahn, however, that no one person should take credit for defeating or revising anti-motorcycle legislation. Wirwahn believes that Sanford is upset because the AMA, not Sanford, took credit for upsetting the recent law that would have made it mandatory for cyclists in California, Illinois and Utah to wear helmets. “Sanford came back to Washington and gave some testimony on the matter,” Wirwahn says. Sanford says the AMA has never liked him since he turned down a job offer from it five years ago.
In any case, the AMA’s reluctance to fully endorse Russ Sanford and MORE is not much different from the reluctance and apathy of California’s motorcycle community. Faced with such towering indifference, it is difficult to understand why Sanford persists in his work. Yet he does.
When he spent $2600 establishing MORE in 1969, Sanford was hopeful of getting the state’s millions of motorcyclists to join. “I’d been a biker 38 years of my life, and for half that time had sat around motorcycle shops listening to guys arguing, ‘We should get organized, we should get organized.’ I just decided to do something about it. I figured if every one of California’s bikers would send in a dollar a year— that was the original MORE membership fee—we’d have enough money to buy our own lobbyist and enough clout to control the state.”
It didn’t work out that way. Instead, after five months, MORE had only 240 members. The situation was as bleak then as it is today. Sanford treated it as a part-time job until 1971, when it became his only job, and his passion. He also had to jump the dues to $10.
A couple of seasons back an attempt was made to turn MORE into a national organization rather than just a statewide one. Due to internal conflicts, the attempt flopped. Sanford today continues to concentrate on California simply because it is the state with the most motorcycles and potential problems, including cataclysmic legislation.
Sanford must be, one assumes, the most fanatical of all motorcyclists, loving to ride bikes on and off the road. Yet until recently, because of his round-the-clock schedule, he owned no motorcycles and rarely got to ride. Oh, there was that old Bultaco cowtrailer of his, and Yamaha once loaned him a 500
Twin that was later wrecked. Finally, if for no other reason than to preserve his motorcyclist image, Sanford broke down and bought a Honda Gold Wing roadster. He commutes on it to legislative sessions.
Clayton tells a remarkable story about Sanford, then a $20,000-a-year civil servant, as well as an avid motorcyclist, slowly dying of an incurable heart ailment back in the ’60s. But he made a miraculous recovery, unexpected by any of his doctors. Not long afterwards, it came to Sanford to start MORE.
Fiscal difficulties notwithstanding, there’s no likelihood—none at all—that MORE will disappear. Sanford is adamant on that point. He says it has to do with integrity. “I don’t know how many life memberships we’ve sold. Chuck Clayton bought one, so did people like Joe Parkhurst. Originally I hadn’t wanted to sell life memberships in MORE; I felt uneasy about taking the money.
“But now I’m glad we did. It gives me a sense of commitment. If people have enough faith in MORE to sign up for life, then we’re going to keep it going. Somebody has to do this work.”
The apathy that greets his best efforts must be frustrating. . .and difficult for him to shrug off. Certainly no motorcyclist appointed Russ Sanford as his keeper; Sanford took the job himself, and for his own reasons. There continue to be those who wonder what he’s really up to, how successful he is, and what he hopes to get out of it in the end. Money? Fame? Neither has come his or MORE’s way so far, nor is likely to in the future. Sanford doubts he’ll ever attract all the members he once dreamed of.
Well, at least 6000 people believe in him.
“Don’t knock those 6000,” he warns. “It may not sound like a great number, but those are some.hard-working letter writers. I’m proud of them, because they’re involved in this fight. As a grass roots group we’re pretty damn effective. And I’d much rather have 6000 active, involved members than I would 100,000 who just sit back and do nothing.”
Somewhere between the lavish praise of his devoted followers and the cool indifference of the AMA must lie the real Russ Sanford. But where? Or is he, in reality, St. Russ?
For information about motorcycle legislation, lobbying or MORE, write to Russ Sanford at 1129 11th St., Sacramento, CA 95814.
