The Risks of Wooing Strange Bedfellows

Listen up, Republican Party. Hear the new radio commercial airing soon from the people at Proposition 209. “Some Republican insiders are going to go ballistic,” predicts campaign chairman Ward Connerly. “I don’t care.”

The GOP surely will be appalled by the ad’s message: That it’s perfectly OK, indeed logical, to vote for both Proposition 209 and President Clinton. Or vote for Bob Dole, for that matter. It’s just irrelevant to the main mission--supporting 209.

This message--that affirmative action is a nonpartisan issue--is aimed directly at Democratic voters and is an in-your-face to the Republican Party. The latest Times poll found that 42% of Democrats favor 209, but 37% are opposed and 21% still are undecided.

To Connerly’s chagrin, the GOP has begun running anti-Clinton, pro-209 TV ads that clearly are partisan. The party’s goal is to excite conservatives and increase their vote turnout, thereby helping GOP candidates from top to bottom.

Connerly’s immediate goal now is to counter the GOP’s partisan pitch. He’s worried it could backfire against 209 by offending Clinton voters. The Times survey illustrated the potential: Four in 10 Clinton supporters favor 209. The measure is 23 points ahead, but support has been declining.

“I need to assure voters that our initiative is not the flagship of the Republican Party,” Connerly says. “People get nervous. They think, if Republicans are trying to use this for their own gain, maybe there’s something wrong with it.

“This is an issue that transcends partisan politics. And if this ad doesn’t convince people we’re independent from the Republican Party, I don’t know what will.”

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Connerly plans to begin airing the one-minute radio spot Tuesday. There are no actors--just Connerly, a black male Republican, and Pam Lewis, a white female Democrat. She’s also an attorney who represented a white male architect in a successful reverse-discrimination suit.

In the ad, Lewis and Connerly each mention their diverse backgrounds and say who they’re voting for--she for Clinton, he for Dole. But they share a view: “affirmative action policies” are “buzzwords” for “preferences and quotas”; they’re “tired of people dividing us by race and gender.”

Connerly--as well as the two low-profile academicians who wrote 209--always had hoped voters would see the initiative as nonpartisan. Connerly, a Sacramento land-use consultant, is an unabashed Republican and longtime friend of Gov. Pete Wilson. But he also viscerally opposes racial preferences. He’s of mixed race and his wife is white. For him, this is about principle.

Principle and politics often mix, however, like spring water and crude oil.

For the Republican Party, this ballot measure is about partisan politics. As in wedge, hot button and polarize. That’s how you energize your base, shape the electorate and define the candidates.

At least one GOP campaign consultant, Wayne Johnson, is now running anti-quota TV ads for congressional and Assembly candidates in Northern California. The spot depicts a young husband walking into the kitchen and telling his wife he didn’t get the job because of “quotas.” “It’s just not right,” she exclaims.

That commercial doesn’t mention 209. But the GOP ad latches onto the initiative as a vehicle to sully Clinton by telling voters he’s on the wrong side of a popular issue. “Just like he opposed Proposition 187,” says the ad, which shows unflattering footage of the president crossing his arms and frowning. “Bill Clinton is wrong to oppose Prop 209.”

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Party ears may burn when they hear Connerly’s radio ad sanctioning support for Clinton. But among voters, the spot will be drowned out by the party’s TV commercial. The GOP--state and national--is spending “in excess of” $2 million for time buys, perhaps tenfold what Connerly is.

“The Ward Connerlys of the world who thought [209] was all on the up-and-up are finding out it’s just another Pete Wilson partisan stunt,” asserts Clinton’s California strategist, Bill Carrick.

The GOP feels it has a proprietary interest in 209 because it invested $800,000 last winter to get the measure on the ballot. The 209 campaign was flat broke and desperate.

State party Chairman John Herrington says he decided to run the partisan twofer ad--pushing 209 while smacking Clinton--because “frankly, this is a political organization.”

Says a national GOP official of Connerly & Co.: “They wanted to be nonpartisan. That’s fine. They shouldn’t have taken our money, then. We’re not in this for altruism. We’re in this to win seats.”

Faustian bargain. He who pays the piper. . . . No one leaves the mob. There’s a relevant expression here someplace.