Connerly Won’t Seek Top UC Regents Post

Ward Connerly, the Sacramento businessman and University of California regent who led the campaign against affirmative action, said Monday he has backed away from making a bid to become chairman of the UC governing board.

“I have the votes, I believe, if I wanted to be chairman, to be chairman,” said Connerly. “But, given the fact that there is some controversy in this and I don’t want the university caught up in more controversy . . . I decided last Friday I didn’t want to be chairman.”

Connerly’s comments came after Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat and ex officio member of the regents board, held a news conference in Sacramento on Monday to announce that he would fight to prevent Connerly’s elevation to the leadership post.

“Ward Connerly is absolutely the wrong person at the wrong time to lead this great university,” Davis said. “It’s rubbing salt in the wounds left from [the board’s 1995 vote to eliminate affirmative action]. . . . What the board needs is someone as chair who was not a fierce contestant in that debate.”

The board’s current chairman, 72-year-old Los Angeles surgeon and Republican activist Tirso del Junco, was rejected Monday in his quest for a second 12-year term by the Democrat-controlled state Senate Rules Committee.

He could remain a regent until next spring. But the committee’s action, which was widely anticipated, creates an opening for a new chairman, a post that Connerly reportedly had coveted. Del Junco’s rejection is expected to be seconded by the full Senate on Thursday.

Connerly sponsored a ban on the consideration of race and gender in UC admissions and hiring and, with the help of Gov. Pete Wilson, saw it approved by the regents after a raucous 12-hour session in July 1995.

He then led the successful campaign for Proposition 209, which prohibits the state from considering race and gender in hiring, contracting or education. More recently, he has launched an effort to end affirmative action programs nationwide.

Although Connerly’s prominence on the issue has resulted in his rubbing shoulders with such national figures as House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Connerly has said that he does not plan to parley his growing fame into a run for elected office.

On Monday, Wilson decried the rejection of del Junco, an opponent of affirmative action who, like Connerly, is seen by Democrats as a politically divisive force.

“It is very regrettable that the Democratic members of the Senate Rules Committee took political retribution on Dr. del Junco because they were not successful in defeating Proposition 209 at the ballot box,” Wilson said. “Today’s action . . . denies an extremely qualified and respected individual the opportunity to continue serving the people of California because of raw politics.”

It was not clear, however, when the chairmanship might open up. Under the regents’ rules, the nominating committee, which Connerly chairs, could recommend a replacement within 72 hours of the Senate’s final vote on del Junco.

But Velma Montoya, vice chairwoman of the regents, said she hoped that del Junco would be allowed to serve out his term and remain chairman until next spring.

“The university doesn’t need a succession crisis right now,” she said.

The ban on affirmative action championed by both Connerly and del Junco is already remaking the face of the UC student body, even though it currently affects only graduate admissions.

This fall, only one African American student will enroll at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, down from 20 a year ago, and only 18 Latinos, down from 28. UCLA’s law school will also experience a drastic drop in minority enrollment and UC San Diego’s School of Medicine did not admit a single black applicant out of the 196 who applied.

The ban will be extended to undergraduates applying to enter the university next spring.

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