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ANCHORAGE - Luki Akelkok thinks he knows why Alaska voters failed to pass the Clean Water Initiative in Tuesday's statewide primary.

"Money talks and everyone got brainwashed," said the 71-year-old lifelong resident of Bristol Bay. "I knew it was going to fail because people got bought off."

One day after voters failed to pass Ballot Measure 4, initiative supporters were regrouping Wednesday, trying to come up with strategy for fighting the mining industry and the Pebble Mine, a huge copper and gold deposit in Southwest Alaska near the world's most productive wild salmon streams.

With nearly all the votes counted Wednesday, Ballot Measure 4 failed with more than 57 percent of voters opposed.

Members of Alaskans for Clean Water, the Bristol Bay Alliance and the Renewable Resources Coalition said at the very least the fight over Ballot Measure 4 helped put the issue of Pebble before the public.

The next step is reaching out to the "pale green" Alaskans, the ones who favor responsible resource development, and provide them with accurate information, said Pat Flatley, outreach coordinator for the Bristol Bay Alliance.

"We've identified the folks that are very concerned about the Bristol Bay watershed and the clean water and the fish," Flatley said. "We believe they are savvy people and tired of the rhetoric and the fibs on both sides and the emotion."

In the end, rhetoric overruled common sense, said Dave Atcheson with the Renewable Resources Foundation, the education arm of the group promoting Ballot Measure 4.

"I think they had a campaign of fear and clouded the issues with things that weren't true, mainly that mines would be shut down," he said. "Really, all it said was that you can't put certain toxins into salmon streams."

Atcheson said their side needs to get back to a grassroots campaign to fight the large amounts of money spent by foreign mining conglomerates "to convince people that something evil was going to happen, that jobs would be lost and that wasn't the case."

Records filed with the Alaska Public Offices Commission show that Alaskans Against the Mining Shutdown received more than $7 million in the months leading up to the primary, most of it coming from industry group Council of Alaska Producers.

On the other side, an Alexandria, Va.-based group called Americans for Job Security provided $1.2 million to Alaskans for Clean Water. The group does not have to disclose where it gets its money.

Bristol Bay lodge owner and Anchorage businessman Robert Gillam also donated more than half a million dollars to Alaskans for Clean Water.

Art Hackney, the ballot measure's main sponsor, said opponents spent closer to $15 million to defeat the measure. His side spent less than $3 million, he said.

Steve Borell, executive director of the Alaska Miners Association, said claims being made by the other side, including how much money was spent to defeat the initiative, are "hogwash."

He accused the other side of not being upfront with where it got its money.

"It is for sure the monies being spent on that side did not get reported properly," he said.