It’s not just the late-night journalists that are tired today. Airport authority Chairman Joe Craver didn’t get to bed until late and said he had trouble sleeping.
The two sides of the debate are reacting to the voting totals that are now conclusive. The airport measure was overwhelmingly defeated by a 62 percent to 37 percent margin.
Here are the numbers:
No: 349,731.
Yes: 213,981.
Craver said this about the result: “The opposition did a very good job of presenting the issue as a vote for Proposition A would be a vote against our Marines. I thought that was a very good strategic move – not good for us, but good for the opposition.”
Xema Jacobson, an airport authority board member who opposed the ballot measure, said this: “I really believe that yesterday’s vote vindicated me and my position – and Mary (Sessom)’s position – that this is not the right way to do this. After two-and-a-half years of fighting to do the right thing, I really feel vindicated.”
Both Craver and Jacobson agreed that the region’s 50-year-old airport question hasn’t been answered.
“I think that’s the next battle,” Jacobson said. “I don’t think the march to Miramar is over. The next push in the march to Miramar is what do you do with Lindbergh? Do you fight to maximize Lindbergh or do you poison pill Lindbergh so people say you have to go to Miramar? That’s going to be the next battle.”