NAACP Vows Action Against Wilson on Vote

The Los Angeles branch of the NAACP is gearing up to ensure that Sen. Pete Wilson is “held accountable” in the upcoming gubernatorial election for his role in sustaining President Bush’s veto this week of a major civil rights bill, the branch president said Thursday.

Joseph Duff, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People branch, would not say exactly what actions the group would take against Wilson, the GOP candidate, but vowed that the NAACP and its supporters statewide will “make it clear to voters he is against civil rights.”

Duff said details of the strategy against Wilson, Duff said, will be formulated this weekend in Riverside at a previously planned meeting of NAACP officials from California.

Other local activists, including an officer of the Los Angeles chapter of National Organization for Women, said they are urging their supporters to deluge the president and Congress with letters, telegrams and phone calls protesting the actions of the president and the U.S. Senate, which Wednesday that failed to override Bush’s veto of the Civil Rights Bill of 1990.

Bush said he vetoed the measure, which would have reversed or altered six recent Supreme Court decisions, because he felt it would have led to hiring quotas for women, African Americans and other ethnic groups that have traditionally been the victims of employment discrimination. Supporters of the bill have assailed that position as dishonest.

The Senate Wednesday upheld the veto, falling a single vote short of the two-thirds majority needed to override.

Supporters of the bill, and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dianne Feinstein, are criticizing Wilson for upholding the veto, with Feinstein charging that he cast “the deciding vote against this historic measure.”

James Lee, a Los Angeles-based spokesman for Wilson’s campaign, said Wilson “did not vote to uphold the veto of a civil rights bill. He voted to uphold the veto of a quotas bill.”

Latino activists said they are planning a series of meetings on how to deal with elected officials when a revived version of the civil rights measure is introduced in Congress, some hope as early as next year. A day before the Senate override vote, a coalition of Latinos held a news conference in Los Angeles at which they denounced Wilson for not supporting the bill.

Alicia Maldonado of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) said Wilson “could have been the key vote” in overriding the presidential veto.

Mark Ridley-Thomas, director of the local branch of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said Wilson has sent “a very clear message” to women and members of ethnic groups. “We ought to respond to it accordingly and cause him to live with the consequences in ways that he will never forget.”

Lee, asserting that Wilson’s record on civil rights is unassailable, said the wrath now directed against him in the governor’s race is no more than “partisan politics.”