Called Okuma Service Department two weeks ago to order a replacement graphite right side-plate. Got delivered yesterday.
The original plate turned out to have the bridge left screw hole stripped by a previous owner (the CLR-203L was a big-auction-site acquisition). Suspected this allowed everything to pull out of alignment once the star was tightened and caused binding when cranking even if out of gear. Moved all the internals over to the new plate and the issue was fixed. A slightly bigger screw could have solved the problem with the old plate but I preferred to to have the issue positively and definitively ID'd with a new plate.
Hope this helps someone in diagnosing any binding with any graphite framed star drag...YMMV.