Preferences on the Ballot
by Jennifer Rubin
June 5, 2007
SUN
latestpolitics.com
Election Day 2006 was a wipe-out for conservatives across the country. The big exception was the victory of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), which banned racial preferences in state university admissions and government employment and contracting. Despite overwhelming opposition by elected officials, liberal civil-rights leaders, and labor unions, the measure passed 58% to 42%.
The chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI) and backer of MCRI, Ward Connerly, will be going national on Election Day 2008. Seeking to qualify referenda in five states (Missouri, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, and South Dakota) modeled on the MCRI, he hopes to deal a mortal blow to racial preferences. The measures will make for political fireworks and potentially affect the presidential race.
A key battleground will be Missouri, always a swing state and home to a large African American population. The director of state and local initiatives for ACRI, Jennifer Gratz, hopes to "shine a light" on the racial favoritism she finds endemic in the state and appeal to a basic message that "government should treat everyone equally."
Shanta Driver, the national co-chair for By Any Means Necessary, the organization which opposed Mr. Connerly in Michigan, vows to challenge the Missouri initiative at the signature-gathering stage. She claims that the MCRI got on the ballot due to massive ballot fraud, alleging that black signature gathers attended traditional civil-rights events and told voters the measure was supportive of affirmative action. This time, she says, her group will "defeat it before it gets on the ballot."
Ms. Driver promises a well-organized effort with unions, civil rights groups, "parent groups," and student activists recruited from high schools and colleges. Their campaign will try to convince voters that the measure in Missouri and other states will mean the "resegregation of higher education" and a "return to Jim Crow" where some states use affirmative action and some do not.
Conservatives and most of the Republican presidential contenders see it differently. As this issue heats up, candidates will jockey to convince Republican voters that they favor equal, but not preferential treatment.
On this issue, Rudy Giuliani has a strong hand to play. He boasts a record in New York of vigorously opposing racial preferences in city hiring and contracting. He also threw out open admissions in city colleges designed to bolster admission of minorities whose academic credentials would not have qualified them. Asked about the Connerly initiatives, he responded through his spokesman: "I am a strong believer in a commitment to equal treatment before the law for all Americans. I ran on the principle of one city, one standard and carried it out when I was the mayor."
John McCain's campaign spokesperson, Kevin McLaughlin, echoed this theme, saying that the senator "strongly opposes policies that give preferential treatment to one group at the expense of another based on factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, or national origin. Such polices, however well intended, serve to divide, not unite Americans."
As with other issues, Mitt Romney currently champions the position which appeals to the conservative base. His spokesperson Kevin Madden explains: "Governor Romney does not support quotas or specific laws that require a certain percentage of ethnicity to fill a job or a slot."
However, in his 1994 debate against Ted Kennedy when he was running for Senate, Mr. Romney sang a somewhat different tune. When asked about affirmative action, he declared his belief in the "glass ceiling" and urged that "public companies and federal agencies … be required in their annual report the number of women and minorities by income category, so we can identify where the glass ceiling is, and we can break through it." (Mr. Madden says that this was simply encouraging "the disclosure of numbers of minorities in top positions of companies as part of an effort to shine light on the situation.")
Fred Thompson's spokesman, Mark Corallo, did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the senator's position or past record regarding racial preferences. Nevertheless, in 1995, Mr. Thompson sided with supporters of affirmative action, voting against a Phil Gramm-sponsored amendment that would have barred use of federal funds for contracts awarded on the basis of a contractor's race, national origin, or gender.
Democratic contenders Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have taken predictably liberal positions in favor of preserving affirmative action.
By contrast, Barak Obama, in a recent appearance on ABC'S "This Week," stated that when his daughters apply for college they "should probably be treated by any admissions officer as folks who are pretty advantaged." Mr. Obama explained further that "if we have done what needs to be done to ensure that kids who are qualified to go to college can afford it, that affirmative action becomes a diminishing tool for us to achieve racial equality in this society."
As 2008 shapes up, politicians will nervously eye the emotional battle over preference initiatives. If, as was the case in Michigan, voters appear to have soured on racial preferences, politicians of both parties will surely be deploying their best "colorblind" rhetoric. What they say and how voters in these five states cast their ballots will go a long way toward determining whether racial preferences live on.
Ms. Rubin is a writer and attorney in Virginia.
Original article available at: latestpolitics.com |
