Prairie Towns Brace for Base Closing’s Blow

Tracey Scott was discussing the benefits of gourmet coffee in this small prairie town when the cups began to rattle and a deafening roar shook her small cafe.

A sleek B-1 bomber rose from a nearby runway, its engines echoing like thunder as it knifed just overhead.

Scott barely noticed. She just talked louder.

“I always wanted to own my own coffee shop, and I thought this place would bring a little class to Box Elder,” she said. “There really wasn’t anything nice here before.”

So in July, 41-year-old Scott opened Gizzi’s Coffee just yards from Ellsworth Air Force Base. In no time, she was serving as many as 200 people a day, most of them military personnel.

But the good times didn’t last long. Just a few weeks ago, Scott and the rest of South Dakota got the bad news: Ellsworth is slated for closure.

The state’s second-largest employer probably will close within six years, its 29 bombers sent to join the rest of the nation’s B-1 fleet at Dyess Air Force Base in Texas.

Box Elder, nearby Rapid City and other communities spread west across the rolling Black Hills are now bracing for the loss of nearly 4,000 jobs, hundreds of houses going on the market and the exodus of more than 10,000 people in a state already struggling to retain population.

“In retrospect, we should have seen it coming,” said Rapid City Mayor Jim Shaw.

But people here had long convinced themselves that the base’s modern infrastructure, its unimpeded airspace, its role in the war on terrorism and its outsized effect on the economy would allow it to slip past Pentagon budget cutters as it had a decade ago.

And this time, they thought they had a secret weapon in newly elected Sen. John Thune, the Republican who defeated longtime Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle last year.

During the campaign both men claimed they could keep Ellsworth open. Daschle emphasized his long experience in Congress and his successful intervention in 1995 to keep the base off the closure list. Thune said he “had the ear of the president” and believed that defeating Bush’s chief antagonist would put him in line for a favor or two.

Daschle lost, Thune won and the base was still tagged for closing.

“Thune came by two weeks ago and met with six of us,” said Scott, the cafe owner. “He didn’t say anything that made me feel very good. I didn’t come away feeling all warm and fuzzy. I left thinking I would have to move if I wanted to stay in business.”

Not only would Box Elder, a town of about 3,000, lose a coffee shop, its school system would lose half its students, many from military families. Local businesses that depend on the Air Force probably would shut down.

“I believe they will try their hardest to keep the base open,” said Angelique Mills, who owns a sewing shop that makes alterations on uniforms. “About 98% of our business is military.”

Her husband, Ruben, believes there is a 50-50 chance Ellsworth will remain open.

“A lot of people think Bush owed Thune for getting rid of Daschle,” he said. “I thought Daschle was a strong senator and now Thune is low man on the totem pole.”

Rapid City, with 60,000 residents, is the second largest city in the state and home to numerous Ellsworth employees. Many stationed at the base over the years ended up settling in the area when they left the military.

“Losing 4,000 jobs in South Dakota is a big hit when you have just 750,000 people in the state,” said Shaw. “The impact will be fairly dramatic in Rapid City but not as much as it would have 10 to 15 years ago. Our economy has become more diversified.”

Home to Mount Rushmore and former stomping grounds of Crazy Horse, the Black Hills region is isolated even by South Dakota standards. With just 155,000 residents, it borders rural Wyoming and Nebraska with the nearest big cities -- Denver and Minneapolis -- hundreds of miles away. For years, the major industry was gold mining, then ranching and timber. Now, tourism and service jobs make up the bulk of the employment; plans are afoot to open a high-tech corridor in the Black Hills that officials hope will generate 7,500 jobs over the next five years.

But since 1942, Ellsworth has been a fixture and economic anchor of western South Dakota. It began as a bomber base in World War II then added Titan and Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles during the Cold War.

After the demise of the Soviet Union, Ellsworth lost its B-52 bombers, its missiles and gradually some of its strategic importance. The B-1s, built to fly low with nuclear payloads, arrived in 1987 and took part in the Persian Gulf War and the war in Iraq. It was an Ellsworth B-1 that struck a palace where ousted President Saddam Hussein was thought to be hiding at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Ellsworth has a $278-million economic impact on the Black Hills every year, an Air Force study reported. It has 4,491 employees who have 5,640 dependents. The base is the state’s second largest employer after Sioux Valley Hospitals and Health System, based in Sioux Falls.

Economics aside, the political implications of the base closing could be enormous for Thune, and his opponents are already on the attack.

“You obviously can’t predict what would have happened if Daschle had remained senator but we can say for certain that as a member of the leadership he could have appointed a commissioner from South Dakota to sit on the base closing commission,” said Steve Hildebrand, Daschle’s former campaign manager. “There is clearly disappointment that Thune said he had the ear of the president then failed to deliver on his promise. We are going to make sure this comes back to haunt him.”

But Daschle declined to pounce on his onetime opponent and instead offered his help to save Ellsworth. He said he came to know many of those involved in the base closing network in 1995.

“Ten years ago I sat down with President Clinton and told him the base was vital and important to the Air Force and to me personally and it was not put on the list,” said Daschle, a special policy advisor in the Washington law firm of Alston & Bird. “I have talked to the people involved in this effort now and have made myself available to them. The effort isn’t over.”

He said the base closings were a combination of military need and politics. Had he won reelection, Daschle isn’t sure how Ellsworth would have fared.

“I think that’s impossible to know,” he said.

In a recent interview at his Rapid City office, Thune said if Daschle had won the outcome would have been the same.

“If Daschle was senator there would have been very little incentive for the president to help him,” he said. “I would contend that Daschle would have needed John Kerry to win the presidency to save Ellsworth.”

But Thune was clearly angry at being blindsided by the base decision, going so far as to say he wouldn’t support John R. Bolton, President Bush’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton, he said, was not “the right man for the job.”

“This is not a retaliatory thing; I will display a voting record in the best interests of South Dakota and the nation,” he said. “My loyalty is to the people of South Dakota; you are elected by these people.”

Thune said he was upset by the entire base closing process and worried that the Pentagon was more interested in saving money than national security. He is pinning his hopes on a June 21 meeting in Rapid City between members of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission and state political leaders. The goal is to persuade the panel to spare Ellsworth. A final decision is expected this fall.

“This makes no sense,” Thune said. “If they were closing half the bases in the country, maybe, but not with this small number. We think three or four will come off the list and we will make a compelling case.”

The outcome may dictate his political future.

“Certainly the visible pain of this base closing will be here for some time,” said William Richardson, political science professor at the University of South Dakota. “But there is always the possibility that Thune could pull it off and if he does he’ll be the hero of South Dakota. He won’t have to worry about reelection again.”

Residents are quietly hoping for a miracle but reserving a healthy dose of Midwestern skepticism.

“Unless he has a cape and tights I don’t know how he will pull it off,” said 37-year-old Dori Kamm of Box Elder.

At an American Legion post near the base, Fred Stern believes it could go either way.

“I’m not surprised they want to shut it,” said Stern, 73. “They want to save money and [Defense Secretary Donald H.] Rumsfeld wants consolidation.”

Bob Powers, a 51-year-old Air Force veteran who worked at the base, said he voted for Daschle last time because he helped save Ellsworth.

“It’s not a done deal but I do think Mr. Thune is on a one-term senatorship because of this,” he said.

Back at Gizzi’s Coffee, Tracey Scott was discussing her options when another B-1 rumbled overhead. This time she listened.

“The B-1s are so pretty,” she said. “When we were kids, my grandfather would bring us out here to watch the planes take off.”

Scott is waiting until fall to see if the base really will close.

“If it does, then I guess I’ll move,” she said. “There won’t be anything left here.”

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Economic anchors

If Ellsworth Air Force Base is closed, the Rapid City area would lose its largest employer.

The top employers in the area:

*--* Ellsworth Air Force Base 3,943 Rapid City Regional Hospital 3,000 Rapid City School District 1,593 Federal government 1,435 City of Rapid City 1,375 State of South Dakota 1,049 Wal-Mart 965 Army National Guard 866 Sanmina* 672 Pennington County 536 *--*

* Electronics manufacturing

Source: Rapid City Area Economic Development Partnership