Bid to Export Prop. 209

Angered by the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the use of affirmative action in university admissions, Ward Connerly and other conservative activists plan to sponsor ballot initiatives in other states akin to California’s 1996 measure banning racial and ethnic preferences.

Connerly, a University of California regent, is set to launch the effort today by announcing a statewide initiative campaign at the University of Michigan, whose admissions policies were the subject of the recent court rulings. The ballot measure would seek to outlaw the use of race, ethnicity or gender in admissions, hiring or contracting in public institutions there.

“We have to prove to the court, the president and the Congress that the Supreme Court’s decision was an aberration,” Connerly said. “It was not consistent with where this country is or where it ought to be. And we’re going to do that by taking it back to the people.”

The court ruled last month that colleges may consider a minority student’s race as one of many factors in weighing an application, but that they may not use quotas or other point scales. In response, Connerly and other affirmative action opponents are refining their approaches to combating racial preferences.

Affirmative action opponents said that the Michigan initiative, as yet unnamed, would be modeled after California’s Proposition 209 and a similar measure approved by voters in Washington state in 1998. The California proposition bars “preferential treatment on the basis of race,” thus the court’s decision has no direct effect on California’s public colleges or universities.

Connerly, a Sacramento businessman and leading advocate of Proposition 209, said he and his supporters will decide in the next few weeks where to launch other initiative drives. He said they hope, in addition to Michigan, to have three or four such measures on state or local ballots by November 2004 for a sort of “Super Tuesday” of public sentiment on the issue of racial and ethnic preferences.

Targets of their efforts could include Colorado, Arizona, Missouri and certain cities or counties in Florida and Texas, according to Connerly and others at his American Civil Rights Coalition, an anti-affirmative action group, and its political allies.

For instance, Edward Blum, a senior fellow at the Sterling, Va.-based Center for Equal Opportunity, said that he expected Connerly to take the lead in the various campaigns but that groups like Blum’s would “lend a hand.”

In addition, Blum said, conservative political groups in states that don’t provide for voter ballot initiatives would probably push for legislative and regulatory reforms that limit the use of racial preferences.

But political analysts said prospects for passage of a Proposition 209-like initiative in Michigan and elsewhere are uncertain.

Despite various polls in recent years showing that most Michigan residents oppose affirmative action, many political analysts in the state say Connerly’s campaign will face tough opponents -- possibly including the state’s Republican Party.

Greg McNeilly, executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, said Monday that he was predisposed against Connerly’s idea.

McNeilly explained that two key objectives of Michigan Republicans are racial reconciliation and fixing K-12 education so that affirmative action will fade as an issue. Especially with regard to achieving racial reconciliation, Connerly’s campaign “is arguably divisive and therefore counterproductive,” he said.

Political analysts added that Michigan voters have a track record of rejecting most statewide ballot initiatives, even when polls show substantial early support for the measures.

“People tend to favor the status quo. You really have to prove your point in order to get them to affirmatively change the law,” said Tom Shields, a Lansing, Mich.-based political consultant with Republican ties.

In addition, major corporations and other civic leaders who defended the University of Michigan’s affirmative action practices were expected to fight the initiative.

Steve Mitchell, chief executive of Mitchell Research & Communications, a Lansing political polling firm with Republican ties, disagreed.

“People aren’t as forthcoming and honest in a survey when it deals with racial issues because they don’t want to be perceived by the interviewer as being a racist,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell predicted that Connerly’s effort would succeed unless an “enormous amount of money” is spent by pro-affirmative action groups to defeat it.

If Connerly’s measure is crafted as an amendment to the Michigan Constitution, it will require at least 317,757 valid signatures to go on the ballot -- 10% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election.

Connerly estimated that gathering the signatures alone would cost $850,000, which he hopes to raise mainly in Michigan.

Connerly said that the Supreme Court decision, although it sparked the current effort, was nonetheless a setback for activists like himself.

“We were one Supreme Court decision away from ridding ourselves of the shackles of race,” he said in an interview last week in his Sacramento office. He said that the opposition was prepared for the end of affirmative action, but that “now, by embracing the diversity rationale, the court has done a terrible, terrible thing. It has said to higher education, ‘You are legally authorized to disregard the principle of equal treatment under the law.’ ”

In California, Connerly also is leading the campaign for a measure to end the collection of data related to race and ethnicity as part of an effort to create what he calls a colorblind society.

Affirmative action supporters on Monday denounced Connerly’s various efforts. At the University of Michigan, students said that they planned to demonstrate at his news conference today and that they would call on unions and civil rights groups to boycott businesses or other organizations that support his initiative.

Agnes Aleobua, a 22-year-old fifth-year student at the University of Michigan and an affirmative action activist on campus, called the proposed measure a mistake.

“We won the case,” she said. “The Supreme Court upheld affirmative action.”

Aleobua also said she was concerned that Connerly would try to deceive voters by couching his initiative in “civil rights-ish” language.

“It’s only to trick voters into voting for it when most people stand for affirmative action,” she said.

Connerly’s allies say they won’t rely exclusively on the initiative process, because many states do not allow for that.

The Center for Individual Rights -- which represented plaintiffs in the cases against the University of Michigan -- said it was planning to pursue lawsuits to challenge what it sees as violations of the high court’s intent.

“The court drew a murky line between what’s permissible and what’s not, and the only way to put meat on the bones of that distinction is through litigation,” said Curt A. Levey, director of legal and public affairs.

Similarly, Blum said his group would focus on serving as a watchdog of college admissions programs to make sure they operate within the bounds defined by the Supreme Court.

He said his group also is continuing its effort to pressure universities to drop or revamp enrichment programs or other initiatives aimed exclusively at black, Latino and Native American students.