Democrats Try to Save Civil Rights Talks

Congressional Democratic leaders attempted Monday to renew talks on civil rights legislation with top corporate executives--negotiations they charged were sabotaged by the White House.

House Speaker Thomas S. Foley of Washington and House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri tried to revive the 4-month-old discussions on how to deal with job discrimination against women and minorities by asking for a meeting with Robert E. Allen, chief executive of American Telephone & Telegraph Co.

Allen was the principal spokesman for executives on the Business Roundtable who were trying to hammer out a compromise.

Alluding to strong opposition to the negotiations from the White House and other business groups, Allen announced Friday that “for the time being” the Roundtable was pulling out of the talks, despite significant progress.

“There is some optimism that a positive outcome might be possible,” Allen said in a statement. “But for that to occur requires that the political process be receptive.”

Democrats and civil rights leaders accused the White House of sabotaging the attempt to find a compromise to maximize the political value of opposing what President Bush has labeled a racial quota bill.

Sen. John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), for example, told a Raleigh, N.C., audience last weekend that the Administration’s interference in the negotiations was political.

“The sad reality is, that for the Republicans, civil rights isn’t a cause--it’s a political issue,” Rockefeller said. “This issue isn’t about racial quotas. It’s about racial politics.”

While proponents of the measure insist that the bill would not require quotas, they realize that chances of overriding a Bush veto of the legislation are slim without some major concessions to business concerns.

Without the Roundtable’s endorsement of compromise provisions, Democratic leaders were sure to consider a fall-back strategy to overcome conservative resistance, Capitol Hill sources said.

As a result, sponsors of the measure appeared likely to accept a Republican move to put a ceiling of $150,000 on damage awards in cases of sexual harassment or discrimination--a figure proposed in the Administration’s alternative civil rights proposal.

Other changes worked out in the talks with Roundtable representatives also may be introduced at some point in the legislative process, congressional sources said, in hopes of generating enough support to avert or override a veto.

But key decisions on strategy have not yet been made by the Democratic leadership, although the civil rights bill could be called up as early as next week.

“We want to see how this effort to resume the talks works out,” said one well-placed Democratic source. “They seemed ready to reach agreement on the verge of a deal.”

Another congressional aide said that the recommendations expected from the civil rights organizations and the Roundtable “could have eliminated the quota issue” from the debate over the legislation.

Meanwhile, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater fended off questions on actions by White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu and Bush’s counsel, C. Boyden Gray, to discourage corporate executives from taking part in the talks.

“Anyone can talk to anyone,” Fitzwater reiterated.

A spokesman for the Business Roundtable, however, put it this way: “We were being bombarded by critics, so we decided to cool it for awhile.”