How a Wedge Issue Cuts Many Ways
The Republican leadership has been spinning around like a weather vane in a hurricane on this issue.
REPRESENTATIVE CHARLES CANADY
(R-Florida) in an interview at the Republican National Convention
Through the years, Ward Connerly had run his consulting business with a tight grip. And in the beginning, he was able to do the same as the chairman of the California Civil Rights Initiative. "I was a dictator," he said almost wistfully in May 1996 as he recalled the days before Pat Buchanan, Colin Powell, Bob Dole, and Jack Kemp insinuated themselves into his campaign.[1]
Ward Connerly, interview, May 7, 1996.
By May, Connerly had discovered that few men dictate in American politics. He could, with the governor's help and the state GOP's money, get CCRI on the ballot, but his belief that he could control the campaign, that he could determine how others would use the issue of affirmative action, met reality as the presidential primary season got underway.Affirmative action is a national issue mixed up in how Americans feel about race, the civil rights movement, and themselves. Although Connerly hoped for a civilized debate,
affirmative action focused squarely on race and inclusion—emotional issues with a political history. That history wasn't pretty, and it was likely to reemerge in any debate over a ballot measure that promised to end affirmative action in the country's most populous state.
Politicians have long used racial wedge issues to attract white voters. "Attacks based on race survive," wrote Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and author of several books on the media and presidential politics. The racial appeals of the late 1980s and early 1990s, she argued, "were forecast in earlier years in such coded words and phrases such as 'the tyranny of the courts,' 'law and order,' 'Your home is your castle,' 'neighborhood schools,' 'forced busing,' 'individual rights,' and 'quotas.'"[2]
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dirty Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 81.
It didn't take long before this brand of racial politics began to affect the debate in California. Connerly was prominent and capable, but he could not control the debate. In May 1996 he shook his head at the wonder of it all: "When I started this at the university in July 1994, the construct was pretty well defined, but this is totally different. You're totally unable to define it."[3]Ward Connerly, interview, May 7, 1996.
The Republican Primaries and Race Baiting
Specifically, affirmative action became enmeshed in Republican Party politics, and in the winter and spring of 1996, that domain defied definition. On the surface, all of the major candidates held the same position: They were against affirmative action. But beneath the appearance of unity, sharp differences existed between the new religious and social conservatives and the old-line suburban Republicans.
First there was the problem of Pat Buchanan. The conservative commentator and presidential candidate had been one of the first politicians to recognize the beauty of CCRI as a vote-getter. "To win back California, the party must win back the Perot vote, that vast middle-class constituency, alienated
and populist, that felt itself abandoned by the Beltway," he wrote in his syndicated column in February 1994. "To the point: If the GOP is casting about for a populist issue to reunite its old coalition and to slice Bill Clinton's new coalition asunder, that issue is at hand. The California Civil Rights Initiative. …"[4]
Patrick Buchanan, San Francisco Examiner, February 3, 1994.
For Buchanan, CCRI wasn't merely a matter of convenience. He was genuinely opposed to affirmative action. Buchanan's rivals didn't feel the same ideological commitment. But by the time the Republican primaries rolled around, they had all taken the pledge to end affirmative action. Buchanan showed them early on how to use the issue to win votes. It was in Louisiana, far from California, where affirmative action would actually be on the ballot, that Buchanan demonstrated how the issue can appeal to white voters. Texas Senator Phil Gramm had been working Louisiana for months and was widely expected to win handily and have the momentum going into the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.[5]
Alan Keyes also competed in the Louisiana primary, but in deference to New Hampshire's primary as the first in the nation, the other Republican challengers declined to participate.
Buchanan, however, knew that despite Gramm's strong lead he still had a chance. As Wayne Parent, a political science professor at Louisiana State University, put it, "there's a black-white thing going on here."[6]Wayne Parent, interview, May 8, 1996.
Buchanan was unafraid to exploit it.Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the south's "black-white thing" was explicit in the Jim Crow laws of segregation; afterward, it became implicit in white opposition to federal civil rights programs such as busing and affirmative action. Campaigning against busing or affirmative action—directly or using the code of states' rights—secured the white vote. The strategy gave former Alabama Governor George Wallace some success in 1968 and 1972, and it provided the modus operandi of President Nixon's southern strategy in 1972.
By 1990 Republican politicians had found that attacks on affirmative action offered a particularly effective bridge to white voters. North Carolina senator Jesse Helms proved this in his 1990 race against Harvey Gantt, the popular black
mayor of Charlotte. Trailing with two weeks to go, Helms aired an ad that zoomed in on the hands of a white man crumbling a rejection letter. "You need that job," the voice-over said in an ad created by Alex Castellanos, a political media consultant. "And you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota. Is that really fair? Harvey Gantt says it is. …"
That same year, Louisiana state representative and former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke made the runoff in the governor's race by campaigning against affirmative action.[7]
In the 1991 runoff for governor, David Duke won 38 percent of the votes, including 55 percent of the white vote.
In 1995 Duke was still playing the race card. "We have got to make a choice if we want this state to look like Haiti or have it be like it was planned by the forefathers of Louisiana,"[8]Tyler Bridges, Times-Picayune, July 28, 1995, p. A1.
he said in one early debate for potential gubernatorial candidates. When Duke declined to run, he backed Mike Foster, a white state legislator whom few had expected to capture the Republican nomination. Running on an anti–affirmative action platform, Foster not only clinched the nomination, but also won handily in a runoff against the black congressman Cleo Fields. No sooner had he been sworn in than Foster issued an executive order barring state affirmative action programs. The order was gratuitous—Louisiana had only a handful of such programs—but the fact that it was issued at all made it clear whom Foster wanted as allies. "Most of his vote was remnants of the Duke vote and he did it to appease a constituency," said Parent.[9]Wayne Parent, interview, May 8, 1996.
When critics called the new governor mean-spirited, Buchanan rushed to the Bayou state to stand "squarely behind Mike Foster and his decision to end set-asides."[10]
Dallas Morning News, January 17, 1996.
Then, just in case his message had been overlooked, Buchanan drove it home by hiring Foster's campaign manager, Ray Fletcher, to run his campaign in Louisiana, and airing commercials that emphasized the connection. "Mike Foster is right," Buchanan told Louisiana voters in a thirty-second spot in which he promised to end affirmative action nationwide.[11]Courtesy of Charles Rand, curator of the Commercial Archive, University of Oklahoma.
Although Gramm also vowed an end to affirmative action, he failed to understand how much Louisiana voters wanted to
hear this promise over and over again. In contrast, Buchanan's reiterated opposition to affirmative action and abortion, and his alliance with Foster—the only governor in the nation to endorse him—defined him as the kind of conservative many Louisiana Republicans like—and those were just the voters who actually went to the polls.[12]
Exit polls showed that more than half of those who voted identified themselves as part of the religious right. They went two to one for Buchanan.
"Race was the main concern here," said James Llorens, chairman of the political science department at Southern University in Baton Rouge. "That's exactly what it came down to."[13]James Llorens, interview, May 9, 1996.
Buchanan's upset victory in Louisiana effectively took Gramm out of the running. Suddenly, Buchanan was the conservative challenger to front-runner Dole. Shifting his emphasis to economic populism, Buchanan ran a close second in Iowa, then came in first in New Hampshire. Mainstream GOP leaders were aghast. All winter, Clinton had successfully used the budget battles with Congress to cast the Republicans as extremists. Now, Buchanan was proving how extreme the party could be.
Senator Bob Dole and Affirmative Action
In California, where the citizens believe they are far too sophisticated for Louisiana-style race baiting, Connerly watched the Buchanan juggernaut with horror. Although the conservative commentator had been one of the first to endorse CCRI, Connerly didn't want him anywhere near the CCRI campaign. The black U.C. regent had nothing in common with Buchanan. True, they both supported CCRI, but the press was reporting speculation that Buchanan was anti-Semitic and racist,[14]
Jonathan Atler and Michael Isikoff, Time, March 4, 1996, p. 28.
while Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal described Connerly as "daring" and CCRI as "the most important election of 1996, the presidency included."[15]Paul Gigot, Wall Street Journal, April 12, 1996.
Buchanan was threatening to crash Connerly's party. Connerly was determined to keep him out. In no uncertain terms, Connerly rejected Buchanan's backing. "Will I go to a press conference where Pat Buchanan is endorsing CCRI?" Connerly asked rhetorically. "Absolutely not."[16]Ken Chavez, Sacramento Bee, March 7, 1996.
Instead, Connerly and Wilson prevailed on Dole to endorse CCRI. The state's March primary would be the perfect moment. Dole's primary victory was a foregone conclusion, and his endorsement would tie CCRI to the moderate winner.
Up until the winter of 1994, Dole, like many Republicans, had long supported affirmative action. He hadn't abandoned that position when the Reagan administration tried to repeal Executive Order 11246—the 1965 order signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson that calls for the government to "provide equal opportunity in federal employment for all qualified persons." Attorney General Edwin Meese III had argued that the executive order imposed quotas and resulted in reverse discrimination. Ralph Neas, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, had participated in the negotiations and said that Dole was one of twenty-three Republican senators who asked President Reagan not to change the executive order. They argued that goals and timetables had been an effective measure in countering discrimination. In 1991 Dole played a key role in persuading President George Bush to sign a civil rights bill that retained goals and timetables.
The senator's views changed abruptly, however, after November 1994. At that time, Republicans led by Georgia Representative Newt Gingrich and a bevy of new conservatives, known as "the freshmen," took control of Congress. For a few frantic months, House Speaker Gingrich's Contract with America became Washington's legislative blueprint. Although the plan didn't include affirmative action, there were plenty of conservatives eager to correct that omission. Early in 1995 Dole began attending the meetings with conservatives Clint Bolick from the Institute for Justice and Linda Chavez, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a Washington-based think tank. Another important voice at these meetings was Dennis Shea, a senior Dole aide. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Shea had taken a leave of absence as Dole's counsel in 1992 to run for Congress in New York's middle-class, Seventh Congressional District, in Queens. Shea's contribution to the
race was to test the issue of affirmative action. He accused the incumbent, Queens Democratic Party chief Tom Manton, of "making skin color more important than merit and qualifications." Although Shea lost, he and others in the GOP felt that he was on to something. "Republicans have an opportunity to stake out principled positions in the areas of affirmative action and immigration policy," he wrote in a February 1993 op-ed piece in the Washington Post .[17]
Dennis Shea, Washington Post, February 16, 1993, p. A13.
"For Reagan Democrats, unfettered affirmative action means fewer jobs and reverse discrimination; unfettered immigration means more welfare and more chaos. With his so-called diversity pledge, Clinton appears to have swallowed whole the ideology of affirmative action, giving Republicans the rhetorical opportunity to promote the principle of race-blind merit."[18]Ibid.
When he returned to Dole's office, Shea began testing the idea on his boss.Whereas the meetings with Dole were dominated by libertarians and the conservative wing of the Republican Party, the campaign against affirmative action was moving rapidly into the mainstream. With Bill Clinton, the most prominent advocate of civil rights, calling for a review of all affirmative action programs, it was only a matter of time until Dole fell into step. That happened on March 15, 1995. "After nearly thirty years of government-sanctioned quotas, timetables, set-asides and other racial preferences, the American people sense all too clearly that the race-counting game has gone too far," Dole announced on the Senate floor.[19]
Congressional Record, March 15, 1995, p. S3929.
Despite his conclusion that discrimination continued to be "an undeniable part of American life," Dole had soured on affirmative action as a remedy he had so long defended. "Race-preferential policies, no matter how well-intentioned, demean individual accomplishment," he told his Senate colleagues.At the end of the speech he asked his fellow senator from Kansas, Nancy Kassebaum, to request hearings on Johnson's Executive Order 11246.[20]
Ibid.
Kassebaum, then chair of the Labor and Human Resources Committee, was less than enthusiastic. "I think we have to be careful not to throw the baby outwith the bathwater," she told a reporter.[21]
Kevin Merida, Washington Post, March 17, 1995, p. A4.
First she wanted to hold hearings on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and its backlog of 100,000 discrimination complaints.[22]Ibid.
Dole promised in early 1995 to introduce legislation in the Senate to end federal affirmative action programs. But as spring progressed, he hesitated. "His heart wasn't in it," said Bolick. Dole's interest in the issue might have died altogether if it hadn't been for events in the West. There, one of Dole's challengers for the presidential nomination was making headlines with the issue of affirmative action. Governor Pete Wilson successfully engineered an end to affirmative action at the University of California at the July meeting of the U.C. regents. His reward: national coverage and a five-point jump in the polls. Watching these developments from Washington, Dole lost his timidity. Seven days after the California regents' meeting, Dole introduced the Equal Opportunity Act of 1995. Representative Charles Canady of Florida followed suit in the House. The Dole-Canady bill promised to end affirmative action in the awarding of federal contracts and the employment of federal workers. Still, conservatives questioned whether it was politics or passion that had moved Dole. "I watched his speech on CNN and even then you could see he was not into it," said Bolick. "He never looked up from the podium. He didn't feel comfortable with the issue."
No matter. Dole had committed himself to legislation that would end affirmative action and if he wasn't impassioned, he appeared increasingly at ease with the issue. In November 1995, in an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times , Dole endorsed CCRI. The article, which Shea helped to write, argued that CCRI was a direct descendant of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. "Both measures stand for the simple proposition that Americans should be judged as individuals on the basis of their own unique talents and abilities and not on the basis of skin color or gender," it read.[23]
Bob Dole, opinion, Los Angeles Times, November 19, 1995, p. M5.
Connerly was delighted to have Dole join his party and excited when the senator agreed to endorse CCRI publicly before the state's March primary. On a campaign swing designed by Governor Wilson, the presumptive nominee would use immigrant California as a backdrop. On Sunday, March 23, Dole would endorse CCRI and make a major policy address on affirmative action in the heart of Republican Orange County's Vietnamese community. Two thousand people—most of them Vietnamese, many of whom spoke only broken English—gathered early in the atrium of the Little Saigon Shopping Mall on Westminster Avenue. It was a small, two-story shopping mall packed with shops and a food court offering everything from egg noodles to jade bracelets. The banner behind the speaker's podium read "Bob Dole and CCRI."
It might as well have been in Greek. No one of more than two dozen people interviewed knew what CCRI stood for and what it would do. Only a few recognized it when the acronym was spelled out. Many of those who did recognize it believed CCRI was a civil rights initiative, that it extended opportunities for racial minorities.
Dole's speech failed to elucidate. In fact, the segment on CCRI was over so quickly that some in the audience missed it altogether. Backed by Governor Wilson, Ward Connerly, and Korean, Vietnamese, and Irish dancers who had warmed up the crowd, Dole gave his long-awaited major policy address on affirmative action: "So, Ward, I will thank you for your commitment and courage and I believe too that the governor is right, we should support and I have supported the California Civil Rights Initiative," the senator said quickly, barely looking at the audience. "We ought to do away with preferences. It ought to be based on merit. This is America and it ought to be based on merit." That was it. The candidate moved on to foreign policy.
Back in Sacramento, Connerly offered an explanation for the brevity of Dole's endorsement: "He's still getting comfortable with the issue. It takes a while. It's difficult for a lot of
people to grasp." Aides told reporters that the segment of Dole's policy speech on affirmative action was jettisoned at the last minute because his notes kept slipping off the podium.
The Senator Pursues the General
Even if Dole's failure to deliver a major policy address on affirmative action could be blamed on the tilt of the podium, he was less than eager to reschedule. As soon as he had wrapped up the nomination in California, affirmative action appeared only briefly in his California stump speeches. Nor was he pushing the Equal Opportunity Act in Congress. The reasons for Dole's inertia went beyond any personal discomfort with his newfound position. The truth was that affirmative action had yet to electrify any voters except the most conservative Louisianans. True, CCRI was popular in California, but polls showed that many voters failed to understand that in voting for CCRI they would be ending affirmative action. And when voters were polled on what concerned them, affirmative action ranked near the bottom of the list. In other primary states, affirmative action registered as a concern with less than one percent of the electorate. "The term welfare will empty the room," said William Schneider, a political scientist with the American Enterprise Institute and CNN's leading on-air elections analyst.[24]
William Schneider, interview, April 24, 1996.
"Illegal immigration will empty the room. But the term affirmative action does not empty the room. In southern states, there is an anti-affirmative action backlash, and there are voters who will vote on that issue, but to most voters it is not an intense concern."Moreover, the powerful wedge issue that political analysts predicted a year earlier turned out to be trickier than expected. Not only had it failed to excite voters; it was just the kind of issue that threatened to push the button of two types of voters with whom Dole was already weak: women and moderate swing voters. Republican women were deserting Dole in droves. By spring, Dole's gender gap vis-à-vis Clinton's registered between seventeen and twenty points. If affirmative action
was not at the top of a woman voter's list of reasons for this, the national women's movement was trying to put it there. This scared Dole. "It makes him extremely nervous," said Linda Chavez, who had attended the early 1995 meetings with Dole.[25]
Linda Chavez, interview, July 10, 1996.
"He has terrible gender gap issues, and CCRI doesn't help."Swing voters—Republicans who voted for Clinton in 1992, Democrats who voted for Bush, independents, and Perot voters—also favored Clinton. One of the principal reasons was that Clinton succeeded during the winter budget deadlocks in casting the Republican-led Congress as extremist in its zeal to cut Medicare and Social Security. A battle on affirmative action, congressional leaders believed, might only reinforce that reputation. "There are very few people who are opposed in principle to what we are going to do," said Bill McGrath, Representative Charles Canady's assistant on affirmative action in the spring of 1996.[26]
Bill McGrath, interview, April 19, 1996.
"But there are those who think that tactically it is a mistake to do it now. It is clearly the case that some members say we got our clocks cleaned on the budget, and we don't need to take on another controversial issue. This will be a bloody fight and we might lose."Even California's staunch Republicans were starting to backpedal on affirmative action. With California still recovering from the 1992 Rodney King riots and the 1995 O.J. Simpson acquittal, former governor George Deukmejian cautioned that a heightened campaign around CCRI could "create further divisions in the community."[27]
Christian Science Monitor, June 14, 1996.
"I support the language of CCRI; however, I am concerned about it appearing on the November ballot," Deukmejian wrote, explaining his advice to Dole. "The Los Angeles area has recently felt the impact of the jury decision in the first Rodney King trial, the campaign and passage of Proposition 187, and the reaction of the African American and non-African American communities to the jury decision in the O.J. Simpson case."[28]Deukmejian to author, August 26, 1996.
Militant groups on both sides of the issue, he feared, "will try to exploit this issue, which could create a dangerous atmosphere."[29]Ibid.
Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan, a Republican businessman, also feltstrongly about the initiative's divisiveness—and his inability to get reelected without the backing of minority leaders in Los Angeles whom he would offend if he stayed silent or supported the initiative—and he came out against it.
Connerly, flustered by charges that the initiative was anything less than a bold call for fairness, became entangled in a semantic knot. He wasn't against affirmative action, he told the press. He was against race-based preferences. CCRI, Connerly explained in an April press conference, "is an attack on preferences. It is not an attack on affirmative action. You will not find the words affirmative action in it anywhere."[30]
Doug Willis, Associated Press, April 18, 1996.
Opponents believed this omission was deceitful, and the press could not get Connerly to give them any examples of affirmative action that excluded race and gender criteria. Finally, Connerly tried a new qualifier—CCRI wasn't anti-affirmative action but "anti-race-based affirmative action."One other factor stopped Dole from carrying the flag to end affirmative action: retired General Colin Powell. By early summer, the only source of enthusiasm for Dole was the very hypothetical possibility of putting Powell on the ticket. The retired general had already said he was unavailable as a running mate, but Dole and the press refused to believe it. In May, Dole began courting the popular general. In a commencement address at Bowie State University in Maryland over Memorial Day weekend, Powell made it clear where he stood on affirmative action and, specifically, on CCRI. "We must resist misguided efforts that seek to shut it all down, efforts such as the California Civil Rights Initiative, which poses as an equal opportunity initiative, but … puts the brakes on expanding opportunities for people who are in need."
The impact of Powell's statement was immediate. When Dole met with Powell the first week of June, the candidate complimented the general on his Bowie State speech. When Dole returned to California the following day, affirmative action and CCRI were dropped from his stump speeches. On June 11, Candy Crowley, CNN's congressional correspondent,
asked Dole about the differences he had with Powell on affirmative action. Dole responded, "Well, affirmative action I think we can certainly disagree on that. … I mean as I told him (Powell) Saturday I've been for affirmative action. I think there are some changes that should be made." Suddenly, Dole's position on affirmative action sounded no different than Clinton's—mend it, don't end it.
Others were having second thoughts as well. House Speaker Newt Gingrich had sent out a fund-raising letter for CCRI in October 1995, and the Republican Party had been responsible for saving the signature drive from bankruptcy. But by the end of June, Gingrich was arguing that CCRI was too important to be a partisan issue. It would be, Gingrich decided, a "strategic mistake" for Dole to become a strong advocate of CCRI.[31]
Ken Chavez, Sacramento Bee, June 27, 1996, p. A1.
Haley Barbour, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, also advised caution: "I think the people of California … don't have to have somebody from outside to make a big issue of it."[32]Los Angeles Times, June 13, 1996.
Connerly was flustered. "People who run for office, especially for president, should be expected to give their definition of the kind of society we should have," he said. "On an issue this important, they should not only be expected, but required to speak out."[33]
Ibid.
The Republican retreat meant that Connerly was left holding the bag. He didn't like it. He wanted the issue to be mainstream and moderate, but by late July, his allies had been reduced to some of the country's least popular politicians—Buchanan and Governor Pete Wilson.A Matter of Timing or Conviction
Some veteran political observers, however, suspected that Dole had merely put affirmative action on his back burner. At the end of May, Fred Barnes, the executive editor of the Weekly Standard , laid out the conservative's scenario: "Now, born again, Dole has one final chance to prove himself nationally. And this time, he has a model: the Bush campaign in 1988.
Bush created his own issues against Democrat Michael Dukakis—the Pledge of Allegiance, Willie Horton, Dukakis's ACLU membership—that the media and much of the Republican establishment loathed."[34]
Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard, May 27, 1996, p. 21.
No matter, Scott Reed, Dole's campaign manager, told Barnes: "That's exactly what we're going to do. A half-dozen conservative issues have been chosen: a tax cut, ending affirmative action, opposition to gay marriage, cutting wasteful spending, real welfare reform, and crime. That's the package."[35]Ibid.
Negative issues play best late in a campaign because the short time frame lessens the risk of backlash. Some strategists looked on affirmative action's retreat from the forefront of the campaign, therefore, as pure serendipity. "Issues management is a tricky thing," said Scott Taylor, the Republican National Committee's political liaison in California.[36]
Scott Taylor, interview, August 21, 1996.
"We had a major problem when affirmative action heated up on its own last year. It was very hard to manage. The issue cooling down now is a very good thing, because the likelihood that an issue will stay intense through the whole campaign is not good. We would like it to come back to the forefront in early fall or late summer. I would much rather [voters] be aware of CCRI in mid-October than in mid-June."But Connerly needed the money in mid-June, and he struggled to get affirmative action back in the news and to bring along the reluctant GOP. In the same week that Dole told the CNN reporter that he had been a longtime supporter of affirmative action, Connerly reminded him in the Los Angeles Times: "Whether he likes it or not, this issue is already around his neck. Whoever is the candidate needs this issue more than CCRI needs that individual."[37]
Dave Lesher, Los Angeles Times, June 13, 1996, p. A1.
When it became clear that he would not be asked to address delegates at the Republican Party's convention, Connerly became petulant. "I am trying to avoid coming to the conclusion that they are deserting this, but I am getting that impression," he said. "All you need is to say it's divisive and there they go running for the hills. Right now we're not the ones who are thirty points behind inCalifornia. Dole and the Republicans should recognize that they need us more than we need them."
Instead of hearing Connerly's version of civil rights, they would hear Powell's. Connerly was beside himself and publicly scolded the retired general. "You have not served us well by your contribution to the debate," Connerly wrote in the letter published in the Weekly Standard the same week the Republicans held their convention in San Diego. "For General Powell to use this convention to take on an issue supported by eighty percent of Californians is the ultimate insult."
The news that Dole would name former Housing and Urban Development secretary Jack Kemp to be his running mate represented yet another setback to Connerly's hope that his issue would be front and center in the presidential campaign. Although Kemp had called Connerly a "hero in the making" in March 1995, he had conspicuously refused to endorse CCRI. It had been Kemp, after all, who warned Dole and others in 1995 that he would not participate in a campaign that took advantage of racial wedge issues.
"Jack Kemp would endorse this in a heartbeat, but this is what is tearing at him," a frustrated Connerly explained.[38]
Ward Connerly, interview, May 7, 1996.
"He was secretary of HUD and he met a lot of black people, and he became the one guy in the Republican party viewed as a moderate champion of the poor. He gets on the board of Howard University and he's still kind of perceived as moderate. People who he rubs elbows with all the time say, 'You are different.' I think he likes being perceived in that fashion. He likes that persona and that is outweighing his natural instinct."[39]Ibid.
As soon as Connerly heard that Kemp was likely to go on the ticket, he faxed a long memo to Kemp outlining the arguments against affirmative action. As Dole prepared to announce that Kemp would be his running mate, Connerly had still not heard back. The Sacramento businessman went to San Diego grudgingly. "I want to become a deeply committed Dole soldier," he said. "I want to do that. Thus far, I haven't found a reason to place my energy in him to that extent. He's a decent man and
he's very knowledgeable. But he has to make the case. We're not talking about electing a city council member here."[40]
Amy Chance, Sacramento Bee, August 9, 1996, p. A1.
Connerly was not alone in his concern for how the Republican retreat on affirmative action would affect the CCRI campaign. For Arnold Steinberg, CCRI's manager, the summer had been disastrous. Once again, the campaign had money problems. "It's going badly. People are not coming through with what they said they would. Worse, when they say they will do something, then they don't," Steinberg complained on the night Powell would address the convention.[41]
Arnold Steinberg, interview, August 12, 1996.
"I can't plan, or plans get fouled up, because you make plans based on what money you think you will have. I don't have a paid finance staff or a finance director and I don't have a real donor community. I'm getting worn down." By August, Steinberg could not see where the money would come from to finance a big media campaign. He complained to conservative columnist Robert Novak, "I have never in my life been lied to so much and double crossed so often."[42]San Diego Union Tribune, July 16, 1996.
The campaign team for CCRI—now christened Proposition 209 by the Election Commission—had taken on two cochairwomen—Pamela Lewis, a Democrat and a lawyer from Walnut Creek in the East Bay, and Gail Heriot, a law professor at the University of San Diego. Wood and Custred as well as Lewis and Heriot attended strategy sessions in Sacramento, but most of the decisions were made by Connerly and most of the planning was done by Steinberg. The truth was that plans could be drawn up, but, without money, few decisions had to be made. As long as they had no money of their own, the most important task the CCRI team had in the summer of 1996 was keeping the opposition from getting any. Steinberg didn't feel that large Democratic Party donors were a threat as long as Clinton remained on the sidelines, but California corporate donors might feel local political pressure to enter the fray. To keep them away from the opposition, the campaign needed a heavy hitter and no one was more effective than Governor Wilson.
As his tactics at the U.C. regents July 1995 meeting had demonstrated, Wilson knew how to play hardball. When the chairman of Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Stanley T. Skinner, observed in a press release on August 1 that Proposition 209 would "represent a serious setback," Wilson immediately fired off a letter. "Dear Stan," the governor wrote. "I am more than disappointed by your news release expressing opposition to Proposition 209."[43]
Copy of a letter from Governor Pete Wilson to Stanley Skinner, August 2, 1996.
And when Steinberg, now a member of the California Coastal Commission, where utility executives sometimes had
And when Steinberg, now a member of the California Coastal Commission, where utility executives sometimes had to appear to get permits, ran into one utility executive, Steinberg gave him some advice: "If you think it is so important for the state to enforce these preference programs, maybe commissioners should investigate the utility practices more closely to see if they are in compliance before giving a license or passing a procedure."[44]
Arnold Steinberg, interview, October 29, 1996.
When asked if such a threat was a misuse of his position, Steinberg said, "No, because I sort of said it in jest. I was trying to impart to them in a humorous way that there were people other than myself interested in this. These people really respond to a squeaky wheel."[45]Ibid.
It wasn't subtle, but it worked. "They got the message," Steinberg said flatly in mid-August.[46]Arnold Steinberg, interview, August 12, 1996.
No corporate sponsors stepped forward to fund the "No on 209" campaign.Money wasn't the only problem for the CCRI advocates. All of the energy Connerly had spent trying to cast Proposition 209 as a measure that would retain certain types of affirmative action—as an initiative that was not anti-affirmative action—had begun to confuse their supporters. This became apparent when he and Steinberg listened to a focus group reacting to the ballot summary. The summary reads: "Generally prohibits discrimination or preferential treatment. …" One member of the focus group, hearing that Proposition 209 would "generally" end affirmative action, responded: "Aha, see, we told you." The participant wanted to support an initiative that would end affirmative action, but all of the press around what it would do had begun to make him feel that it might actually
extend preference programs. "They saw conspiracy" in the language, Steinberg said.[47]
Ibid.
"Three of the participants felt the initiative called for more preferences."The only bright spot was Steinberg's success in developing the campaign's slogan, and in this he acknowledged the opposition's help. Equal Opportunity Without Quotas had been the title of their alternative initiative strategy, and try as he might to come up with something else, Steinberg kept returning to it. Already poll-tested, it was, Steinberg said, "better than anything I came up with."[48]
Arnold Steinberg, interview, November 19, 1996.
The Republican Convention
The Friday before the convention opened in San Diego, Steinberg visited the coastal city to attend a fund-raiser for Proposition 209. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who had now decided the initiative could help Republican candidates, was there, as were representatives from the Dole campaign. Gingrich appealed to donors to support the initiative, arguing that it was a good one for Republicans running for office in California. Just as Proposition 187 had helped Republicans in 1994, Proposition 209 would help in 1996. Although checks never materialized, Steinberg was optimistic.[49]
Arnold Steinberg, interview, October 29, 1996.
Other developments in San Diego indicated that support from the GOP and the party's ticket would finally fall into place.Even before Steinberg arrived in San Diego, the platform committee had endorsed Proposition 209. Although its stance on abortion provoked a fight, its anti-affirmative action message sailed through without debate. "We never even discussed it," said William Gribbin, an aide to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and a cochair of the platform committee team responsible for the section on individual rights. Gribbin drafted the section, and his view on civil rights programs favored an uncomplicated approach. It ignored the problems of how to provide equal opportunity in a skewed world and instead simplified a Republican-led government's role. It had only to ensure
"equality before the law" and "individual rights." The platform stated, "Because we believe rights inhere in individuals, not in groups, we will attain our nation's goal of equal rights without quotas or other forms of preferential treatment. We endorse the Dole-Canady Equal Opportunity Act to end discrimination by the federal government. We likewise endorse this year's Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, to restore to law the original meaning of civil rights."[50]
The 1996 Republican platform, Individual Rights and Personal Safety, adopted August 12, 1996.
By mentioning Proposition 209 by name, the committee had given Steinberg more than he had expected. Connerly, too, was comfortable with the platform. "The government has no business making the playing field level," he told wealthy donors later in the week.[51]
Ward Connerly, public remarks at a GOPAC meeting, San Diego, August 14, 1996.
The task of getting the Republican presidential ticket to embrace Proposition 209 as unquestioningly as did the platform committee would be more difficult. Or at least it appeared so. Dole's choice for vice president was in step with his summer retreat on affirmative action. Kemp had been one of the Republican leaders who had encouraged retreat, advising that the initiative sent the wrong message. Although Kemp never opposed Proposition 209 specifically, its anti-affirmative action message was at odds with the image of a man who reached out to blacks and Latinos. As early as July 1995, Kemp had warned in an interview with the Washington Times , "Our nation needs racial recognition now and healing, not division, and we need to be a party of growth, jobs, and equality of opportunity, not racial division. … Theoretically, you could win on a wedge issue like race, but you can't govern" on it.[52]
Joyce Price, Washington Times, July 23, 1995.
But a closer look at Kemp's public statements on affirmative action showed that he avoided any attempts to take a clear stand. He reached out to blacks and Latinos, but never so far that he alienated conservatives. His need to please both groups came to the foreground during and after a 1995 summer breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor . Kemp attended the breakfast shortly after Dole introduced legislation in the Senate to end federal affirmative action programs.
At the breakfast, Kemp had spoken candidly about his views on affirmative action. The news stories that followed quoted Kemp as having opposed the Republican position on affirmative action. Kemp objected. His remarks, he protested, had been taken out of context. Not so, said Godfrey Sperling, an editor who tape-recorded the conversation at the breakfast.[53]
Godfrey Sperling, Christian Science Monitor, August 8, 1995.
"He clearly was stating his opposition to the GOP position on affirmative action when he told us his party 'would find it hard to govern the country if it runs a campaign that separates people by race and by gender.' And beyond and doubt, he told us he would vote against the position taken by California Governor Pete Wilson when Wilson led the majority of the University of California regents in ending minority preferences in university hiring and admissions."[54]Ibid.
A month after Sperling's article appeared, Kemp responded in a Washington Times op-ed piece.[55]
Jack Kemp, Washington Times, September 3, 1995, p. B4.
A clarification it was not. There was something in it for everyone—sometimes in the same sentence. "Counting by race in order to remedy past wrongs or rewarding special groups by taking from others perpetuates and even deepens the divisions between us, but race-based politics is even more wrong and must be repudiated by men and women of civility and compassion," Kemp wrote.[56]Ibid.
This kind of obfuscation would not serve Proposition 209 well, Steinberg feared. In the campaign, Kemp would need to defend Proposition 209 on its merits, so Steinberg attempted to appeal to Kemp's intellectual side—the one that liked big ideas.To do this, he enlisted the help of Thomas L. (Dusty) Rhodes.[57]
Arnold Steinberg, interview, November 19, 1996.
The former partner at Goldman, Sachs, and Company had taken over the National Review from William Rusher in 1992, and, like Rusher, he disliked affirmative action and enjoyed influencing policy. He founded Change-N.Y., an anti-tax group, in 1991 and helped elect George E. Pataki governor of New York in 1994. Unlike many of the other monied men who damned affirmative action, Rhodes had experienced poverty. He looked like the son of a Boston Brahman, but hewas actually the child of Welsh blue-collar immigrants. His was the Horatio Alger story: public schools in Spanish Harlem, scholarships into the Ivy League, and, after attainment of a master's degree at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of business, a lucrative life on Wall Street. His interest in affirmative action seemed to come from his dislike of any government regulation—from taxes to employment reports.
Rhodes wanted Kemp to signal an eventual endorsement of Proposition 209 by highlighting the Fourteenth Amendment in his acceptance speech. The Fourteenth Amendment provided a classic example of the problems inherent when politics and policy collide. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees "equal protection under the laws" and was ratified in 1868 to counter state laws limiting the civil rights of slaves who had been freed three years earlier. The drafters recognized the disconnect between intent and practice by giving Congress the power to "enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article." Essentially, the amendment underscored the government's commitment to ensuring equality to recently freed slaves.
More than a century later, however, whites invoked the Fourteenth Amendment to argue that affirmative action programs violated their right to "equal protection under the laws." Indeed, the Supreme Court decided in its 1978 Bakke decision that the university had violated the equal protection clause by establishing two separate committees to review applications—one for whites and one for minorities. But the Court upheld the legitimacy of guaranteeing equal protection while considering race as a factor in admissions. To do this, the university had to have one committee review all the applicants. Race, like geography, could be considered a plus factor, but no slots could be reserved for one group. Up until the 1989 Croson decision, the Court strengthened the notion that affirmative action and equal protection were compatible. But Croson and the 1995 Adarand decisions made the grounds for compatibility more tenuous by cautioning that
state and federal affirmative action programs had to meet the test of "strict scrutiny."
This judicial history gave the constitutional doctrine of equal protection meaning, but in politics it could be ignored. Strategists such as Rhodes or anyone else could replace the complex legal history with a cleaner plot line that went like this: The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law, and affirmative action gives preferences to different groups: ergo affirmative action is unconstitutional.
Delving into the Supreme Court's decisions interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment, however, proved beside the point in San Diego. Kemp didn't need big ideas to support Proposition 209. All he needed was an offer to join Dole's presidential ticket. Just hours before Powell gave his opening night address, Kemp was interviewed by NBC anchor Tom Brokaw. "Are you opposed to 209 or not?" Brokaw asked impatiently after Kemp tried to avoid a direct answer. "I am going to be a supporter of Bob Dole's position on CCRI, the California Civil Rights Initiative," he finally acknowledged. "The usually ebullient Kemp looked as if he had swallowed the new Republican platform whole, which in a sense he had," wrote Richard Cohen.[58]
Richard Cohen, Washington Post, August 14, 1996.
Kemp later explained that his main problem with the attack on affirmative action—that it failed to offer any new solutions—had been resolved. "With enterprise zones and educational opportunity and access to credit and capital and housing, I think we can say we have a better civil rights initiative than liberals," he said. Many viewed his epiphany with suspicion. "Before he got his bell rung in San Diego, the old Jack Kemp used to believe that it was premature to cut off such aid to victims of historic discrimination without having effective programs to replace them," a New York Times editorial noted. "His blithe assurances that he and Mr. Dole will come up with such alternatives defies belief, given the Republican Party's current ideological makeup."[59]
"The Jack Kemp Reverse," lead editorial, New York Times, August 15, 1996, p. A26.
Steinberg was also nervous—but for different reasons. "We had been working with Kemp for over a year. He needed to do
this in a principled way, but Dole's people started pressuring him and then he makes a total reversal, and then the way he does it makes it seem like he cut a deal, like he was going to support Dole's position on 209 because he wanted to be part of the ticket."[60]
Arnold Steinberg, interview, October 29, 1996.
Steinberg understood that this could mean trouble on the campaign trail. Connerly, however, believed that the conversion was genuine. "It has been an evolution in his thinking," he explained with obvious delight.[61]Ward Connerly, interview, August 14, 1996.
Kemp's conversion had so lifted Connerly's spirits that he got over his disappointment at not being asked to address the convention to speak against affirmative action and sat in the audience to listen to Powell endorse it. "It is our party, the party of Lincoln, that must always stand for equal rights and fair opportunity for all," Powell declared on Monday night. "And where discrimination still exists, or where the scars of past discrimination still contaminate and disfigure the present, we must not close our eyes to it, declare there is a level playing field, and hope that it will go away by itself." If that wasn't an explicit enough support of affirmative action, later in the speech he made it perfectly clear: "You all know that I believe in a woman's right to choose, and I strongly support affirmative action."
Connerly had previously threatened a walkout during Powell's speech and published a blistering open letter to the ex-general that appeared in the San Diego Union Tribune during the convention. Having received Kemp's endorsement, Connerly's attitude toward Powell had brightened noticeably: "It was one of the greatest speeches I've ever heard. I was the first one up on my feet."[62]
Ibid.
Connerly explained that Powell's support of affirmative action was unimportant: "He did not make any reference at all to Proposition 209. That was my overriding concern."Kemp's speech on Thursday night failed to mention the Fourteenth Amendment or lay the groundwork for using affirmative action in the campaign. Instead, Dole made the case in his acceptance speech. "He had help from a lot of people,"
Steinberg said, referring to others who helped Dole write his speech.[63]
Arnold Steinberg, interview, October 29, 1996.
In his acceptance speech, Dole referred to Lincoln, not only in calling for an inclusive party, as Kemp and Powell had done, but also in criticizing multiculturalism. "Though I can only look up, and at a very steep angle, to Washington and Lincoln, let me remind you of their concern for the sometimes delicate unity of the people," he said. "The notion that we are and should be one people rather than 'peoples' of the United States seems so self-evident and obvious that it is hard for me to imagine that I must defend it. … When the blood of the sons of the immigrants and the grandsons of slaves fell on foreign fields, it was American blood. In it, you could not read the ethnic particulars of the soldier who died next to you. He was an American. And when I think of how we learned this lesson, I wonder how we could have unlearned it." He called on "every American to rise above all that may divide us and to defend the unity of the nation for the honor of generations past and the sake of those to come."[64]
Bob Dole, speech presented at the Republican National Convention, San Diego, August 1996.
Having set the stage, Dole then moved to the language of the Fourteenth Amendment, implicitly calling for an end to the use of race and gender in hiring and education. "The Constitution of the United States mandates equal protection under the law. This is not code language for racism, it is plain speaking against it. And the guiding light of my administration will be that in this country we have not rank order by birth, no claim to favoritism by race, no expectation of judgment other than it be evenhanded. And we cannot guarantee the outcome, but we shall guarantee the opportunity in America."
At the end of the convention, leery of any fight over affirmative action, Kemp tried to soften the message. "Whatever we do in California," he said, "I promise you Bob Dole and Jack Kemp are not going to be divisive, we are not going to use wedge issues."[65]
Ronald Brownstein, Los Angeles Times, August 14, 1996, p. A1.
But that would prove a difficult promise to keep.