Word: charlestoning
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...Corps installations, including such well-known ones as Miramar Naval Air Station and Presidio of Monterey in California and McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. None of the targeted bases, though, has defenders more fervid than the partisans of three East Coast naval shipyards: at Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Charleston, South Carolina; and Norfolk, Virginia. All three can claim long, distinguished service to the U.S. Navy, are particularly proud of being "Navy towns" and typify the head-to-head competition for survival taking place across the country...
...their part, the Charleston defenders were not letting Mitchell's invidious remarks go unparried. In fact, the venerable South Carolina city had cranked up a campaign long before, because its shipyard was on the originally proposed Pentagon closure list, while Portsmouth and Norfolk were added by the commission for consideration only last month. That explains the placards the Portsmouth workers were waving at the panel hearing in Boston in early June: THE NAVY KNOWS BEST. In other words, close Charleston...
...soon as Charleston saw the Pentagon's list, the city's political leaders and Chamber of Commerce launched a public relations counterattack. They raised $1 million to pay for a full-time staff and Washington-based lobbyists. In 18 days they rounded up 140,000 signatures on protest letters. The operation mobilized not only the shipyard's employees but also local businessmen from auto dealers to restaurateurs...
Adopting offense as a good defense, Charleston decided to go after the far larger Norfolk, arguing that the shrinking Navy and defense budget called for eliminating a facility with more dock space than the Charleston yard. "If you close Charleston or Portsmouth," says Elizabeth Inabinet, president of the Charleston Chamber of Commerce, "you just don't take out enough capacity...
...Charleston's best argument still is the closure's potential economic impact. Four other naval facilities in the city are also on the list and closing them all would, supporters claim, wipe out 27% of the area's jobs and 1 of every 3 payroll dollars in the region. In a gust of rhetoric that would make a soap- opera writer blush, Mayor Joe Riley Jr. says the city could begin to die "and the tumbleweeds of broken dreams and shattered lives blow down the street...