A bunch of land owners/developers and some subset of the government in Santa Clara wanted to kick out the airport so the land could be developed and to make the surrounding land more valuable. Killing all the GA traffic based out of there would do the trick. Banning the fuel would kick out GA. Don't pretend that it was some altruistic pursuit. They only went after the lead because it has a ton of existing ideological baggage they thought they could capitalize on. The FAA looked at the big picture and laughed at them.