Commission votes to keep Ellsworth, Cannon open

WASHINGTON — The base closing commission voted Friday to keep open Air Force bases in South Dakota and New Mexico — rejecting the Pentagon's plans to close them — as the panel labored toward conclusion of a politically delicate task that has brought alternating sighs of relief and exasperation in communities across America.

Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota would stay as is, but Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico would lose all of its aircraft and still face the possibility of closure in 2010.

The decisions cheered in the bases' home states were setbacks for Pentagon leaders.

The Ellsworth vote was a blessing for South Dakotans who feared losing some 4,000 jobs and a victory for Sen. John Thune and the state's other politicians who lobbied vigorously to save the base. Thune, a freshman Republican, unseated then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle partly on the strength of his claim that he would be better positioned to help save the base.

"This fight was not about me," Thune said just after the vote. "This whole decision was about the merits. It had nothing to do with the politics."

The panel's decision on Cannon was a compromise among commissioners who struggled to balance national security interests with fear that closing the base entirely would devastate the economy around tiny Clovis, N.M.

Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M., portrayed the outcome as a "partial victory."

As the commission began debating a huge shakeup of the Air National Guard, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled that the Pentagon lacks the authority to close a Guard unit in the state without the governor's approval. The judge declared the Pentagon's plan "null and void," but it was not immediately clear how that would effect the commission's work.

Word of the ruling spread quickly through the hotel conference room where the commission was meeting. Commission Chairman Anthony Principi quickly announced a recess, but resumed work minutes later on the Air Guard proposals.

As they voted this week on the first round of base closings in a decade, commissioners endorsed much of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's plan to streamline the nation's military bases. But besides Ellsworth and Cannon, they also bucked the Pentagon by voting to keep open two major Navy bases in New England and two Army depots in Texas and Nevada.