SACRAMENTO -- On Aug. 25, 1999, Wal-Mart officials left Eureka like the generals of a beaten army.
It was the day after their $235,000 attempt to muscle onto the city's waterfront to build a giant discount store was soundly defeated by a grass-roots force with a war chest that was but a fraction of the world's largest retailer's.
On Tuesday, Aug. 24, 1999, Eureka voters rejected Wal-Mart-backed Measure J by 61 to 39 percent in a special election.
The measure would have changed the city's general plan to rezone Eureka's Balloon Track property from "public" to "commercial."
Also commonly called the "balloon tract," this property is a former railroad yard featuring a large segment of track shaped like a hot-air balloon occupying 34 acres of land near Eureka's waterfront that has been vacant for more than 30 years.
The drama that unfolded in the months before this election would prove to be one of Eureka's most sensational political fights ever -- rivaling the recent recall battle in nastiness -- and at the time the most expensive.
It's hard to say where this story begins.
Wal-Mart never submitted a formal application for the project. Company officials talked at length about their concept and commissioned an artist's drawing, but very little about their proposal was in writing.
In 1997 Harvey Rose, Eureka's city manager, began sending memos to Mayor Nancy Flemming and the City Council advising that Wal-Mart might be interested in the Balloon Track.
But it wasn't until July 1998 that the Union Pacific Railroad, which owns the Balloon Track, told Rose the company is working "exclusively to sell the property to Arizona's Eisenberg Corp. who represent Wal-Mart," the city manager wrote in a memo.
Fast-forward to early 1999.
In the intervening months, the story had been reported at length.
Wal-Mart's somewhat vague proposal was to build a 130,000-square-foot general merchandise store and a waterfront park, plus provide a shuttle service for shoppers.
Wal-Mart also talked about buildings for restaurants and cafes.
The Bentonville, Ark.-based company said its store would create 250 jobs, plus construction jobs while it's being built, generate millions in sales tax revenue for Eureka over the years and offer truckloads of low-cost merchandise for local shoppers.
The Balloon Track property, between Waterfront Drive on the west, Washington Street on the south and Broadway on the east, would require extensive environmental cleanup.
Wal-Mart would have to convince the city of Eureka to re-zone the property, then get approval from the California Coastal Commission for the project.
The previous November, a county employee had came across a crew conducting geotechnical test drilling at the Balloon Track. It turned out the drilling was illegal -- undertaken without permission -- by a Wal-Mart contractor.
A Wal-Mart attorney in San Francisco called it a "misunderstanding."
By February 1999, the Wal-Mart issue had already been debated thoroughly.
Letters filled the Times-Standard editorial pages.
On one side was Flemming, Eureka's mayor, who was in favor of anyone willing to come in and develop the Balloon Track, which she called a "blighted, heavily contaminated site unused for 30 years."
Flemming had one ally on the City Council, Cherie Arkley.
They were supported by a group of residents who wanted more competition in the local retail arena.
On the other side was County Supervisor Bonnie Neely.
Neely, who represents the Eureka area, spoke for those who wanted the Balloon Track preserved for the day someone might want to develop it for a port use, involving the maritime industry, or a light industrial park.
Neely called the Wal-Mart proposal a "lazy" and "uncreative" use of the Balloon Track and accused Eureka city government of operating in secret over the issue.
Neely and Flemming had been close friends for years; Flemming considered Neely her political mentor.
This fight would destroy that friendship. The two rarely speak to each other to this day.
On Neely's side were advocates of reviving Eureka as a port, a number of organizations and associations who issued statements opposing Wal-Mart's proposal, and a grass-roots organization that recently formed, calling itself the Friends of Humboldt County Inc.
This group, which was somewhat secretive at first, brought in Al Norman, a hired gun from Massachusetts who made a living battling Wal-Mart projects around the country.
The city prepared for a showdown between Wal-Mart and its opponents at a forum scheduled for March 3 in the Eureka Municipal Auditorium, sponsored by the Times-Standard and KIEM, Channel 3.
On March 2, Eureka resident Jerri Murphy walked into City Hall and filed paperwork for a ballot initiative that would accomplish the zoning change Wal-Mart was seeking for the Balloon Track.
The next night, hundreds of Eurekans missed Barbara Walters' exclusive interview with former White House intern Monica Lewinski, when a crowd of at least 700 packed the Muni to watch Norman and Wal-Mart Community Affairs Director Daphne Davis duke it out verbally.
Most of them heard for the first time at this meeting that Wal-Mart was seeking a ballot initiative.
Norman called the tactic "a classic example of divide and conquer."
He also warned Wal-Mart's low-paying jobs would bring down the area's already low wage scale.
The crowd was polarized.
Speakers on both sides of the debate were simultaneously heckled and applauded.
"Residents of Eureka do want a Wal-Mart," Davis said, countering Norman's harangue. "Another thing we learned is that they want a say."
Davis brought in employees from Wal-Mart's Crescent City store to testify how happy they are working for the company.
The forum served to intensify the increasingly divisive debate that would dominate headlines for months to come.
Meanwhile, opponents were furious with Wal-Mart and Murphy -- who said she was not paid for her political work on behalf of the retailer -- for trying to circumvent the city's normal planning process.
The initiative, officially titled "Citizens Right to Vote on Wal-Mart in Eureka," would need 2,067 signatures to qualify -- 15 percent of the registered voters in the city.
The debate raged on through March.
In April, Flemming answered her critics, including Friends of Humboldt County, which had paid for a newspaper ad accusing the mayor of "waffling" on the Balloon Track, with a couple of letters to the Times-Standard.
"I support free enterprise and freedom of choice to the consumer," Flemming said in one letter. The initiative "is a right guaranteed by state law," Flemming said, adding that Wal-Mart's proposal fits Eureka's Victorian Seaport theme.
She also noted the Pierson family was able to build the Eureka Mall on Harris Street as a result of a zoning change approved by voters.
In mid-April Flemming accused the Friends of Humboldt County of "sneak attacks" against her because the group had not revealed its membership.
On April 19 a local political action committee (PAC) Wal-Mart had recently formed filed a complaint with the state against the Friends of Humboldt County for failing to register itself as a PAC.
The Fair Political Practices Commission eventually ruled the Wal-Mart PAC's complaint was baseless.
However, the Friends group did later reveal who they were: a mixture of local citizens, including six attorneys, politicians, business owners and labor leaders who met at the Eureka Inn.
In late April Murphy delivered 3,293 signatures on the Wal-Mart petition to City Hall.
On May 18, the City Council set an election date of Aug. 24 for Measure J and authorized an election budget of $30,000.
Both sides prepared for the summer-long battle.
In mid-June Eureka residents started receiving phone calls from a Wal-Mart polling firm asking probing questions about Eureka city leaders.
The 20-minute survey asked how residents how they felt -- on a sliding scale from "very favorable" to "unfavorable" -- about Neely, Flemming, each city councilmember, Rose, Norman and the Times-Standard.
Neely called the survey a "bullying tactic." Flemming said she had no problem with it and would like to see the results.
Wal-Mart's Davis said the company has no intention sharing the survey's findings.
A Times-Standard editorial made an off-hand comparison between the survey and President Richard Nixon's Watergate-era "enemies list."
"We want to get a good read on what's on people's minds," Davis explained.
In late June, the Friends group formed a PAC, the "The Think Twice Campaign, No on Measure J," and recruited Patty Berg to run it.
Think Twice started running newspaper ads opposing Measure J and began a get-out-to-vote campaign.
Both PACs invested heavily in signs, which popped up all over the city, much like what would happen five years later during the district attorney recall campaign.
In early July, the county Board of Supervisors, led by Neely, came out against Measure J with a 4-1 vote. North County Supervisor Paul Kirk cast the lone dissenting vote.
In mid-July, a committee appointed by the Board of Supervisors to study the impact of locating a big-box store in the county released its report, which concluded it would "reduce the overall quality of life in Humboldt County." It also strongly suggested that municipalities enter into sales tax revenue sharing agreements to avoid "a war of big-box stores."
In late July, Eurekans started receiving "saturation phone bombs," as a Times-Standard editorial described them.
Residents reported receiving as many as 11 phone calls a day from phone bank callers asking if they were going to vote yes for a Wal-Mart store that would "offer shoppers substantial savings on thousands of items."
Wal-Mart's Davis issued an apology: "We're appalled that it happened. We're mortified."
However, Wal-Mart fumbled again in early August when County Elections Manager Lindsey McWilliams learned Wal-Mart's PAC was preparing to send out mailers -- which included an application for an absentee ballot -- that had the County Elections Office's mailing address as the return address.
Davis agreed to redo the mailers with the PAC's return address, but said she thought it was acceptable to use the elections office's address.
On Aug. 17, Wal-Mart suffered another blow when the Eureka City Council passed a resolution opposing Measure J with a 3-1 vote. Flemming, who as mayor did not vote, made it clear she did not support the resolution.
A few days later, campaign statements revealed Wal-Mart, the sole funder of the pro-Measure-J campaign, had spent $235,257, compared with Think Twice's $41,572.
Berg called Wal-Mart's spending "incomprehensible."
It was a record amount spent on a Humboldt County political campaign.
On Aug. 23 the Think Twice campaign ran a full-page advertisement in the Times-Standard urging a "no" vote.
Aug. 24 finally arrived. While the polls were open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., more than 6,600 Eurekans cast their votes -- the turnout would be slightly more than 50 percent.
When the votes were counted later that night, "no" outnumbered "yes" 4,105 to 2,605, with about 400 absentee votes yet to be counted.
When the election results became clear, Berg punched the air in victory.
"In the end, people thought twice," she said.
Wal-Mart's Davis was contrite.
"We're obviously disappointed," she said before leaving town. "We still believe this a great place for a Wal-Mart store."
Five years later, the Balloon Track still sits vacant.
Next week the Times-Standard talks to the players involved in the Wal-Mart fight, who reminisce about the battle to keep the world's largest retailer off the waterfront.