Airport Foes Hire Firm to Craft Ballot Measure

South County airport foes have hired a political consulting firm in San Diego to begin crafting a 1999 ballot initiative asking voters to choose between a commercial airport at the El Toro Marine base and a non-aviation plan.

Tom Shepard, a political consultant who heads the firm Campaign Strategies, was retained this month by a coalition of anti-airport business groups and individuals in South County.

The anti-airport group hopes to appeal to voters countywide to scuttle earlier approval of plans for an airport at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, slated to close in July 1999.

Steven Myers, a member of the South County coalition, said airport opponents hope to put the initiative on the ballot before the Board of Supervisors takes a crucial vote in December 1999 on environmental documents and the final plan for the base.

“I think that we need to create a sense of urgency and that we need to focus on a time frame that is not too far off,” said Myers, chairman of SM&A; Corp., a Newport Beach-based aerospace and defense-engineering consulting firm.

Myers said the wording of the initiative probably would give voters a choice between the airport plan and the Millennium Plan, which seeks to put residential and commercial sites, a park, a museum and a university at the base.

The South County group also wants to rally support for anti-airport candidate Dave Sullivan of Huntington Beach, who faces airport backer Jim Silva, the incumbent, in a Nov. 3 race for a seat on the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

Consultant Shepard was a key strategist behind passage of Proposition 198, approved by voters in 1996, which created the state’s new open primary. That system, first used in this year’s June primary, allows voters to cross party lines to nominate candidates for the November general election.

Shepard confirmed Monday that he has been hired but would not discuss his role in detail. He said recent surveys in Orange County suggest that voters are open to alternatives for how to use the air base.

Initiative backers would not say how much they expect to spend to gather the 154,801 valid voter signatures needed to place a measure on the ballot or to sell the idea to a majority of voters.

An airport measure on the ballot in 1994 cost about $1.2 million. A second referendum two years later cost about $850,000. In both cases, voters supported plans for an international airport at El Toro.

“We believe that we will have the wherewithal to match the spending of the other side,” Myers said. “We have sufficient financing to get out there with the truth.”

If a new initiative is placed on the ballot for 1999, it would require a special election because no regular election is scheduled next year. A special election would cost the county about $800,000, according to the county registrar of voters.

A Times poll in May found that two-thirds of Orange County voters would welcome another chance to vote on whether an airport should be built on the 4,700-acre military base.

Political consultant Frank Caterinicchio, who worked for airport advocates in 1994 and 1996, said an anti-airport ballot measure could be passed “with some aggressive political engineering.”

He said an off-year special election would be better for airport opponents because voter turnout typically is low in such cases. And because the issue is so contentious in South County, he said, the most motivated voters would be from that area and would be anti-airport.