Why This Campaign Has Been More Civil

Now at the last weekend before the election, and with a watershed civil rights proposition awaiting decision, Californians seem in no mood to tear themselves apart over their differences.

Proposition 209 is a ballot measure to repeal the 30-year-old civil rights principle of affirmative action in state and local government. An amendment to the California Constitution, it would outlaw preferences based on race or gender in government employment, contracting and education.

Remembering contentious Proposition 187 of two years ago, which took aim at illegal immigrants, and the fury unleashed by the Rodney King and O.J. Simpson verdicts, many feared what might happen this autumn. Would Proposition 209 once again put fire to the state’s racial powder keg?

So far, not so.

“I just don’t think government affirmative action touches people in their personal lives,” said John Kobylt of the John and Ken radio talk show on KFI-AM (640). “O.J. and 187 were like nuclear explosions. They generated wild rage, wild emotion. You just hit the phone button and people would explode. But not with this. . . .

“We recently did an hour on 209, and there was some emotion, yes. But people tended to be calmer and more intellectual in their views. They weren’t screaming their heads off. This measure isn’t in peoples’ faces,” he said.

Mary Cox, letters editor at The Times, says Proposition 209 has resulted in more mail to the newspaper than all other November ballot measures combined, but that the tone has been “more civil” than with earlier racially charged headline topics, such as Proposition 187.

Granted, as the election approaches, at least some of the campaign efforts are becoming more heated--meaning that tempers could still rise.

But experts are trying to divine why the long sweep of the campaign occurred as it did and what that means for the final two days of electioneering, as well as for race relations thereafter.

Many Californians believe that one of the aims of Proposition 209 was to divide Californians for political gain. After all, independent public opinion polls consistently show that affirmative action ends up near the bottom when voters are asked to list their concerns. Why then raise the matter when race relations already are so tender?

Further, Gov. Pete Wilson and more recently GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole both suggested that the measure was of value politically and could serve as one of those modern “wedge” issues that drive deeply into the body politic, splitting Californians into polar camps and helping Republicans.

The idea is that when Californians are divided by fear and race, white swing voters can be pushed to the right, benefiting like-minded conservative candidates. And even though whites now account for only 53% of the population, they still cast 80%-plus of the votes.

Wilson and the Republicans used the tactic to advantage two years ago by championing Proposition 187, which targeted illegal immigration. When Proposition 209 began to take shape, Wilson was a candidate for president--and some people envisioned a repeat in the making.

What happened instead is that Wilson dropped out of the presidential race, slipped badly in home state esteem, and the two sides in the campaign found themselves arguing the same lofty goal. That is, both agreed that discrimination was wrong and debated which of their views would lead California toward social fairness and justice.

Almost by definition, wedge issues are incompatible with campaigns that speak to a common aim.

By now, the arguments pro and con are familiar to many.

Supporters, who named their proposition the “California civil rights initiative,” say that affirmative action has become a spoils system and imposes on society the very thing its designers promised it would not, racial and gender quotas.

Opponents argue that the initiative is misnamed and would abolish a pillar of civil rights law--the promise of a helping hand to those who have not shared equally in society’s fruits.

Other factors are at work, too, in setting the mood of the Proposition 209 campaign.

One of the most intriguing was expressed in early polls conducted by opponents. Overwhelming numbers of Californians said they could not bear the thought of another ugly racial showdown now.

“They did not want any more racial division, any more racial scapegoating. The numbers on this were off the scales,” said Constance Rice, western regional counsel of the NAACP Legal and Educational Defense Fund.

In the final week of the campaign, however, one of the leading opposition committees began airing a television ad that seemed designed to stir those very passions--portraying a burning cross and a white-robed Ku Klux Klan member as behind Proposition 209. As one expert interpreted it, the anti-209 campaign was attempting its own version of the “wedge,” suggesting that Californians had a choice of aligning themselves with the KKK or with opponents.

At the same time, the chief committee in support of the initiative last week began running a “bring us together” commercial that is the antithesis of a wedge tactic, hoping opponents will suffer a backlash.

Perhaps polls showing 209 in the lead explain the divergent tone of each side’s commercials.

Another reason that affirmative action and Proposition 209 have not fueled greater anger may be California’s economic rebound. When times are getting better, competition among social groups is more diffuse.

Proposition 209 may also lack the necessary ingredient of “victims.” Costs associated with affirmative action are modest enough not to rouse taxpayers. A few have come forth to say they have been hurt by reverse discrimination. But beneficiaries and potential beneficiaries of affirmative action don’t always acknowledge--or even know about--special treatment in their own lives, even as they may defend the social principle of it.

And from the beginning, the issue of gender has served to both restrain the debate and broaden it. The same laws and outreach programs covering minorities also include women, whose numbers and influence discourage direct assault. Supporters chose to argue principle instead.

For all these reasons, Proposition 209 did not bring political leaders into the fight full-throated as expected.

After the governor dropped out of the race for president, he urged Dole to take up the cause--which Dole did occasionally but not with the vigor that some Californian Republicans asked of him.

For his part, President Clinton came to California in the final week of the campaign and explained his opposition to the proposition. But he spoke in the calmest terms, not a call to arms, criticizing “quotas” and supporting the “right kind” of affirmative action to grant people “a chance to prove they are qualified.”

Further down the ticket, hardly any California politician in a close contest chose to kick up a storm about it. And up to now, neither have voters.

Times staff writer Dave Lesher contributed to this story from Sacramento.