Miles Risley, the city's senior assistant city attorney, said the expanded ban will take effect 30 days after approval, or on June 13.

Complete returns that won't be official until canvassed by the city council Tuesday showed 4,830 people voted to approve the smoking ban. Another 2,098 voters were against it.

The city council voted late last year to adopt a smoking ban for Victoria's restaurants. That was followed by a council decision earlier this year to let the voters - not the politicians - decide if they wanted to expand that ban to all buildings open to the public.

Neurologist Leon Gilner with Smokefree Victoria, which sought voter approval of the ban, said the results were about what he expected based on a telephone poll the organization was conducting. He said voters clearly wanted a change.

"I think it was an idea whose time had come," he said. "I think Victorians understood the message. They wanted a smoke-free city and said it loud and clear."

He said the Smokefree Victoria campaign was a clean grassroots effort. But he said for the most part those against the ban operated clandestinely.

"I think their message was one of confusion and disorientation," Gilner said. "I don't think people bought that at all. If anything, it worked against them in the long run."

Anita Staffeldt with Advocates for Choice, a Victoria group opposed to smoking bans, said she was disappointed with the results.

"I thought it would be closer than that," she said. "I don't think people really caught that the issue was not so much smoking or non-smoking, but interference with the right of businesses to determine their own policy."

Staffeldt predicted that the ban would prompt businesses to move outside the city limits, where smoking in public buildings is not banned. She said that could hurt sales tax income, which is what city officials are hoping to use to pay for the sports complex approved by voters Saturday.

"I still think the election is illegal under the city charter," Staffeldt said.

Saturday's election on the smoking ban took place despite a last-minute legal challenge that started in the court of appeals and ended up in the Texas Supreme Court.

Victoria businessman Chip Dence and East End Lumber Co., of which Dence said he is a partner and part owner, initiated the challenge in the 13th Court of Appeals in Corpus Christi. He sought to stop the election and to stop the city from using the smoking ban ballots.

The appeals court denied the requests and the decision was appealed to the Texas Supreme Court, which also denied both requests.

Dence has said the proposed ban is more than just a smoking issue. He said it's also a private property rights issue because it would make him a criminal for smoking in his own office.

• David Tewes is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact him at 361-580-6515 or dtewes@vicad.com, or comment on this story at www.VictoriaAdvocate.com.