Affirmative Action Stirs Unforeseen Division in GOP

When Republicans launched their assault against affirmative action earlier this year, it was heralded as the perfect “wedge issue,” well designed to split the Democrats by pitting their white voters against the blacks who make up that party’s staunchest constituency.

What hardly anyone expected was that the issue would divide Republicans too. Yet such schisms abound:

* On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Newt Gingrich has positioned himself to block, or at least delay, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole’s drive to erase all federal affirmative action programs.

* On the presidential campaign trail, California Gov. Pete Wilson has been branded an opportunist and hypocrite for his push to dismantle affirmative action in his own state.

* Among governors, Republican George Voinovich of Ohio, a state both parties covet in the 1996 presidential race, has come out foursquare for affirmative action, recalling his own experience as the grandson of immigrants who suffered discrimination. And most of his colleagues are standing apart from Wilson’s anti-affirmative action crusade.

Underlying this unaccustomed fractiousness within the GOP are the thorny complexities of this country’s race relations, which sociologists long have termed “the American Dilemma.”

“Gingrich and other Republicans who have backed off the attack on affirmative action are wise,” said UCLA political scientist John Petrocik. “It can tarnish them with the stain of racism, which can cause people who might otherwise support Republicans to avoid doing that because it makes them seem indifferent to the needs of blacks.”

Poll results outline the issue’s complexity.

Survey after survey shows that most Americans oppose discrimination and favor affirmative action--in theory. But the polls also show that most Americans are just as strongly opposed to the idea of racial preference, which often becomes part and parcel of affirmative action programs.

Drive for Equality

As some Republicans seek to appeal to this latter sentiment by opposing quotas, set-asides and the like, other Republicans fear the party runs the risk of seeming to support, or at least tolerate, discrimination.

Calling for his party to take a more deliberative approach as it gears up for the affirmative action battle, Oklahoma congressman and former gridiron star J.C. Watts, one of only two black Republicans in the House, warned his congressional colleagues: “This is the only issue that we deal with that could pit black against white, white against black and man against woman.”

The cracks that have developed among Republicans have their origin in the mid-1960s, when the civil rights movement was cresting and affirmative action was born. “This was an era when high moral ground was the drive for racial equality,” said Stanford University political scientist Paul Sniderman, co-author of a book about the impact of prejudice on politics, “The Scar of Race.”

In that environment, it was a matter of course for Republicans, Democrats, civic officials and business leaders to endorse efforts to provide more equal opportunity for blacks and other minorities in education, employment and contracting.

The trouble was that in practice, achieving these lofty goals often required the hard-edged tool of racial preference for minorities, leading to charges that affirmative action was tantamount to reverse discrimination and stirring discontent among whites.

Dole Opposition

“If by affirmative action you mean preferential treatment, from the very first time academic surveys began to study public opinion on this issue about eight to 10 out of every 10 whites opposed this,” Sniderman said. “What’s really surprising is how few politicians really tried to exploit this opposition” in the 1970s and ‘80s.

It took the political upheaval created by the 1994 midterm election to shift affirmative action off the back burner. Many triumphant conservatives believed the time at last was ripe for them to strike in full force in an attempt to wipe out affirmative action “root and branch,” as one partisan put it.

The main legislative thrust toward this goal has been led by Dole (R-Kan.), the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. Like many GOP leaders, he had supported affirmative action measures. But in July, he introduced a bill to end all federal affirmative action efforts that involve preferences for minorities and women.

“Fighting discrimination has become an easy excuse to abandon the colorblind idea,” Dole declared in defending his shift. “You do not cure the evil of discrimination with more discrimination.”

The ink was hardly dry on Dole’s bill before the surprising counterattack within the GOP began, led by former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp, long a vigorous spokesman for the concerns of minorities and the needs of cities.

Kemp, in language clearly aimed at all of the major Republican presidential candidates, said the party “would find it very hard to govern the country if it runs a campaign that separates people by race and gender.”

Though backing a review of existing programs to measure their fairness and effectiveness, Kemp added: “It’s putting the cart before the horse to throw out affirmative action without any idea of what is going on.”

Hard-line foes of affirmative action may have dismissed those remarks because they came from Kemp, whom they view as a displaced liberal.

What was hard to dismiss was much the same argument coming a few days later from the lips of Gingrich, Mr. Conservative Counterrevolution himself.

Gingrich Outburst

The fiery Georgia lawmaker spoke out first at a private dinner for conservative journalists and activists.

According to American Conservative Union Chairman David Keene, he warned them: “You simply cannot just campaign against affirmative action. That’s not enough. What you have to do at the same time is recognize problems and offer your own solutions.”

He also lashed out at Republican politicians seeking to use affirmative action to advance their political ambitions, singling out Wilson.

Word of that outburst was still circulating among GOP leaders and strategists when Gingrich struck again--this time on NBC-TV’s very non-private “Today” show.

While reaffirming his opposition to quotas, set-asides (which ‘set aside’ a portion of federal contracts for firms owned by minorities and women) and other preferential tactics, he said: “I think we ought to spend about four times as much effort reaching out to the black community to ensure that they know they will not be discriminated against, as compared to the amount of effort we are spending saying we’re against quotas and set-asides.”

More Dissent

Broadening the counterattack, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, another GOP presidential aspirant, reprimanded Wilson for using the phrase “the deadly virus of tribalism” in a speech criticizing affirmative action: “Coded racial epithets such as tribalism have no place in public debate because they only serve to fan the flames of racial and gender divisiveness in this country.”

Specter agrees with Kemp on the issue, according to his campaign chairman, Roger Stone. “He thinks that affirmative action may need to be repaired,” Stone said. “But he thinks it serves us well and it needs to be kept.”

A candidate also has emerged whose main aim is to ensure continued debate on the issue on the presidential campaign trail. Arthur Fletcher, an African American who as a Labor Department official helped devise a major component of the federal affirmative action effort, has launched a presidential candidacy devoted mainly to beating back the assaults of its detractors.

Republican Misgivings

Fletcher anticipates invitations to GOP presidential candidate debates in key campaign states in the coming months. He vows to elevate the divisive issue to high prominence at these televised forums.

“The handful of black Republicans are tickled to death about my candidacy,” Fletcher said. “And some of the moderate Republicans in both the House and Senate are calling and being very encouraging.”

Tellingly, abolition of affirmative action was not even a part of the Gingrich-inspired “contract with America” that has served as the manifesto for the conservative counterrevolution on Capitol Hill.

And when Rep. Gary Franks (R-Conn.), who with Watts makes up the black GOP contingent in the House, recently sought to introduce an amendment to halt set-asides, he was rebuffed by Republican leaders. The apparent reason was their desire to avoid prolonged debate that could delay other legislation holding a higher priority.

A key reason for misgivings among many Republicans about abolishing affirmative action--in addition to fear of being branded as racist--is concern over the effect of overturning arrangements that they believe have helped stabilize racial relations in business and politics.

Exercising Caution

“Much of the Republican Party is conservative in an institutional way,” said onetime Richard Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips, editor of the American Political Report newsletter.

“Which means you can’t rock the boat too much. You’re asking for trouble. You may not like the direction that was taken 25 years ago, but after you’ve done it for a quarter of century, you can’t just turn it off.”

Many analysts say that this helps explain the reluctance of Voinovich and other governors to join the assault on affirmative action.

“I don’t dispute the fact that there are problems and even abuses of well-intentioned affirmative action programs,” Voinovich told a news conference last month. But he added that he does not “think it’s wise to throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

Reinforcing the counsels of caution are polls showing that Republican voters are almost evenly divided on whether affirmative action has been good or bad for the country. The surveys also show that Republicans, by 2-1 margins, believe that affirmative action programs should be “mended” rather than “ended.”

That, of course, happens to be the approach favored by President Clinton, the man some Republicans hope to oust from the White House with the help of the affirmative action issue.