Michigan Meets Malcolm X
WSJ.com
By S.D. MELZER
August 11, 2005; Page A13
DETROIT -- Liberals have been beating their collective breast in recent years over the Bush administration's post-9/11 assault on civil liberties. But Michigan Democrats -- from Gov. Jennifer Granholm to the State Board of Canvassers -- have joined ranks with a radical, 1960s-style Trotskyite group to deny state residents the most basic of all rights: the right to vote.
The group, which lives in a Malcolm X-inspired fantasy world and calls itself By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), has been engaged in a long guerilla campaign to prevent the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) from getting on the state ballot.
[Ward Connerly]
This initiative, backed by Ward Connerly, the California businessman who successfully spearheaded a similar effort in his home state, seeks to end, once and for all, racial preferences in public universities and state government.
Polls have repeatedly shown that over 60% of Michigan voters oppose preferences, even though the U.S. Supreme Court last year ruled them constitutional in a lawsuit challenging University of Michigan admission polices.
But instead of doing the hard work required in a democracy to convince voters, BAMN has been using its patented formula of political intimidation and legal harassment in an attempt to strangle the initiative in the crib. Last year, it disrupted initiative meetings on college campuses and tailed initiative signature-seekers, denouncing through bullhorns any student who approached them.
At the same time, it mounted a legal challenge questioning the language of the petition. Even though it lost twice, including in the Michigan Supreme Court, the delay made it impossible for MCRI to gather enough signatures for the 2004 ballot deadline. That will not be a problem for the 2006 ballot. MCRI has already obtained 500,000 signatures and the secretary of state's office has certified around 450,000 of them -- about 125,000 more than necessary.
Undeterred, BAMN is now trying to invalidate the signatures. And, unfortunately, instead of distancing itself from BAMN's thuggish tactics, the Democratic establishment in Michigan is backing them with its political muscle.
BAMN alleges that MCRI signature gatherers engaged in "systematic and racially targeted" verbal fraud by claiming that the petition would protect affirmative action.
But BAMN's evidence of fraud consists not of any audio or video recording of the deception, something that Stephen J. Safranek, the legal counsel for MCRI, notes it could have easily obtained given its habitual shadowing of signature-seekers. Rather, its evidence consists mostly of affidavits that BAMNers themselves signed after supposedly conducting phone interviews with duped voters. Only a handful of the affidavits were actually written and signed by the voters themselves.
Longstanding Democrat Mark Grebner -- a political consultant who has advised BAMN and who supports affirmative action -- believes that even if initiative representatives verbally misled voters, that is not sufficient to throw out the signatures. In a democracy, of course, voters bear the ultimate responsibility for reading any petition they sign.
Despite the flimsiness of BAMN's case, the Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer has joined BAMN in condemning the Republican secretary of state for certifying the petition signatures -- never mind that career civil servants with unimpeachable credentials verified the signatures using long-established methods.
Mr. Brewer is also accusing the Republican attorney general's office of partisanship. Why? Because the Deputy Attorney General Gary P. Gordon -- who also served under Ms. Granholm when she held the same office -- wrote a letter rejecting Mr. Brewer and BAMN's demand that the State Board of Canvassers investigate MCRI for fraudulent inducement.
Attorney General Gordon's letter pointed out that well-established case law limits the board's powers to ensuring that the petition conforms to a prescribed form and has the requisite number of authentic signatures -- not conducting wide-ranging investigations.
But the irony is that if anyone is co-opting the Board of Canvassers -- a bipartisan office -- for partisan ends, it is Mr. Brewer himself.
At a recent hearing held by the Board of Canvassers, supposedly to give both sides a fair opportunity to express their concerns, Mr. Brewer huddled with one of the Democratic members after the member called a five-minute recess. Soon after, the board split 2-1 along party lines (with the Granholm-appointed Republican member abstaining) and against the secretary of state's recommendation refused to certify the petition -- a move that even liberal editorial pages such as the Detroit Free Press and the Lansing State Journal condemned. MCRI has filed an appeal.
Incensed by the board's shenanigans, the Michigan Legislature a few weeks ago approved a bill to limit the board's powers. But Gov. Granholm vetoed the bill on the grounds that her approval might signal that she was ignoring allegations of fraud and misrepresentation against the Initiative.
"The governor's move has made BAMN the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, its agent in circumventing the democratic process," says Bill Ballenger, publisher of the highly respected and nonpartisan Inside Michigan Politics.
Why BAMN has no use for democracy is perfectly clear. In its totalitarian, morally righteous universe, political opponents deserve no voice. Those who reject racial preferences are not honorable individuals with different views -- they are "racist devils."
But what's more troubling is the Michigan Democrats' willingness to ally themselves with BAMN despite its contempt for the democratic process. As at the national level, there is an intellectual void, a lack of vision, among mainstream Democratic leaders in the state -- a vacuum that extremist fringe groups are filling. |
