Part of the beef between PDT and AS back in the day was PDT wanted multiple daily flights to PDX. AS wanted to move the PDT flights to SEA as the connecting opportunities are/were so much greater in order to try and make the service profitable. When the EAS contract came up for renewal, Seaport proposed PDT-PDX and AS proposed PDT-SEA. City council supported PDX despite Seaport not offering any onward connections at PDX or even being based at the main PDX terminal. The other issue is that when AS left town, so did TSA. As Penair recently learned with its brief foray to LMT, once TSA is gone it is hard to get it back.

Tl;dr as far as the EAS contract goes don't expect the Pendleton city council to back service that's not to PDX.