ENCINITAS —— Proposition A, the Paul Ecke Ranch land-use measure, lost decisively in Tuesday's election, according to unofficial results. With 100 percent of the vote tallied, "no" votes totaled 65.39 percent and "yes" votes 34.61 percent.

Early in the evening, supporters gathered at the ranch, where Paul Ecke III handed out purple poinsettias to members of his campaign.

He said earlier he would abide by the voters' decision.

"That's what we said we'd do," Ecke said.

Opponents assembled at an undisclosed location.

Former planning commissioner Bruce Ehlers, an outspoken opponent, said the numbers represented a mandate.

"I don't know any other way to interpret it, given the difference in the amount of money spent," he said.

Ecke and his company have contributed $187,000 toward the campaign; opponents have raised $14,000.

Defeat of the nonbinding measure amounts to a popular recommendation that the Encinitas City Council not rezone 38 acres of the 68-acre ranch from permanent agriculture to residential.

Council members, who would need to ratify the rezoning by a 4-1 or 5-0 vote, have said they would respect the voters' decision.

Throughout the hotly contested campaign, Ecke, a fourth-generation grower has said he must subdivide and sell the land for 101 homes to pay for modern greenhouses to replace deteriorating ones on the 80-year-old flower farm.

Without energy-, water- and labor-efficient facilities, the headquarters of the international business, where the poinsettia was domesticated for mass production decades earlier, would be forced to leave the city, Ecke has warned.

The Yes on A campaign has played up the Ecke family's philanthropy and its role as a pioneer of Encinitas' once-thriving floricultural scene.

Opponents have rejected those claims.

Grower Gilbert Foerster, former Councilwoman Sheila Cameron and members of the Encinitas Taxpayers Association have ripped the Ecke campaign's effort to renegotiate a 1994 agreement that promised to keep the Saxony Road ranch as agricultural in perpetuity.

Opponents have said a vote for Prop. A is a vote for more traffic and housing on land where homes don't belong.

Ecke had offered public parkland, road and trail construction in exchange for the rezoning.

Contact staff writer Adam Kaye at (760) 943-2312 or akaye@nctimes.com.