UC Regent to Take Over Initiative Campaign Against Affirmative Action

Ward Connerly, the University of California regent who sponsored Gov. Pete Wilson’s successful drive last summer to end UC ethnic preference policies, said Thursday that he will take over the struggling effort to qualify an anti-affirmative action initiative for the 1996 ballot.

The former head of the so-called “California civil rights initiative,” Joe Gelman, resigned last week after reports that the campaign was out of money even though it had raised about $500,000.

Connerly said Thursday that he believes the campaign is doing a good job of raising money but that it was not adequately focused on the immediate need to gather at least 690,000 signatures to qualify for next November’s ballot.

“I would not have taken this had I not been fairly certain that this is a win situation,” he said.

Connerly, however, described himself as a reluctant recruit because he was not eager to step back into a highly controversial job after he was the target of protests last summer when the UC regents approved his proposal to end affirmative action programs.

The vote became a national platform for Wilson as he worked to gear up his failed presidential campaign.

Connerly said he accepted the job on the condition that the campaign focus on the need to end racial discrimination.

He said the campaign will portray affirmative action as a policy that exacerbates the nation’s racial divisions by treating various ethnic groups differently. He argued that racial harmony is only possible when groups are subject to the same standards.

“In my view, this is really a moment of celebration for black Americans because the mere fact that we can even think that we don’t need preferential treatment . . . says to me that this nation has made an awful lot of progress in this respect,” said Connerly, an African American and president of Connerly and Associates, a business planning consulting firm in Sacramento.

In a statement released Thursday, Wilson echoed Connerly’s argument and promised to help the campaign pass the initiative.

In a related development, supporters of affirmative action held a news conference in Sacramento on Thursday to announce that they have gathered about a third of the signatures they need to qualify a ballot measure that would counter the one backed by Wilson and Connerly.