Veto Hurts GOP, Rights Activists Say : Politics: They believe the move damages Bush’s popularity and will cost the party black votes. Both sides are preparing for a firestorm of protests.

George Bush’s veto of major civil rights legislation Monday could cost him support among blacks and undermine his party’s attempts to woo black voters, civil rights activists said.

Some black Republicans reacted with intense personal disappointment.

Eugene Dibble--a Republican most of his 62 years and a lonely black voice singing the praises of Bush and raising money for GOP candidates in heavily Democratic Chicago--said that he is embarrassed.

“It makes me very uncomfortable to have these two or three pictures of President and Mrs. Bush sitting on my desk,” Dibble, a businessman, said. “I don’t know what to say when someone black comes here and asks me: ‘How could you support the man who vetoed civil rights?’

“I can’t make any excuses for him,” he continued. “And I can’t tell people to vote Republican and to support the Republican ticket when the top man does something like this.”

John L. Wilks, executive committee chairman of the National Black Republican Civil Rights Task Force, an ad hoc organization formed in 1987 to promote the GOP’s commitment to civil rights, predicted more such reactions.

“This is the one issue that will really cause a mobilization of concern,” said Wilks, who estimates that the veto will cause Bush’s approval rating among blacks and other minority groups to slip in percentage “from the 70s to around the 30s.”

But White House officials said they will defend the President by stressing his past commitment to the concerns of minority groups. GOP leaders and strategists said that most Americans--including a majority of blacks--eventually will appreciate Bush’s veto as an earnest move to prevent employment decisions based on formulas or quotas.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who opposed the bill, said he believes black Americans will listen to President Bush’s arguments and reject those of the civil rights lobby.

“There will be an attempt to make an impact against the President’s popularity,” he said. He predicted, however, that in the end “most blacks will continue to support the President.”

But black Republicans are not so certain. For them, defending GOP policies has always been difficult. But Bush’s rejection of the top-priority legislation for most black Americans is likely to make it even tougher, they believe.

“It’s going to be a rough, rough ride,” said Arthur A. Fletcher, chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and one of the highest ranking blacks in the Administration. “The Democrats were waiting for an opportunity to torpedo his (favorable) image with blacks. They’re all set with their attack posture to do a job that will demonstrate that Bush is less than what he seemed.”

The veto is a bitter defeat for Fletcher, a Republican Bush named to the Civil Rights Commission.

“We were beginning to make inroads, beginning to get blacks to see the party in less emotional terms,” he said. “Now all I can see is us having real trouble.”

Indeed, the Democrats wasted no time in going on the offensive.

“The Bush veto guarantees that blacks will want to stay in the Democratic Party,” said Rep. John Conyers Jr., a black Democrat from Detroit. “Just think of the damage the President has done to his credibility for any support he enjoyed in the African-American community.”

Some black Republicans whose dealings with Bush go back decades said that the President has been more supportive of and accessible to black Americans than any other GOP leader in recent history.

“He definitely cares,” Wilks said. “He’s been on the record. He’s somebody we know very personally. We’ve discussed these issues with him.”

The President’s rejection of civil rights legislation--he joined Andrew Jackson and Ronald Reagan as the only U.S. presidents to veto a civil rights bill--is “the defining moment for the Bush presidency,” declared an outraged Ralph Neas of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

That opinion is shared by Mario Moreno, a spokesman for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in Washington. “We are angered and appalled that President Bush, who pretends to champion civil rights and the rights of minorities, refuses to champion civil rights and the right of minorities (and) refuses to provide the kind of leadership this country needs to protect the rights of racial minorities and women in the workplace,” he said in a statement.

But some black Republicans who were interviewed blamed Bush’s advisers--particularly Chief of Staff John H. Sununu, White House counsel C. Boyden Gray and Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh--for misleading the President.

“There’s no question he’s poorly informed by them,” Fletcher charged.