Collision at the California Border
Arnold Steinberg, Proposition 209's campaign manager, had long wooed Dole, but when Dole finally came around, his belated presence was irritating at best—and "best" was rarely the case. If Dole had been more convincing about 209, Steinberg might have been happy to see the candidate cross the state line. He was, after all, coming with money, a commodity that Steinberg desperately needed. But Dole equivocated, and Steinberg was no longer anxious to do business with his team. The Republican National Committee had asked Steinberg in early October to make Proposition 209 commercials pitting Dole against Clinton, and Steinberg refused. "It would have compromised the campaign—my interest was in 209 and not Bob Dole, and there was no reason for me to diffuse 209 with something about the presidential campaign," Steinberg said.[6]
Arnold Steinberg, interview, November 19, 1996.
Instead, Steinberg had been running a nonpartisan radio campaign for Proposition 209. The first ad, which began to appear after Labor Day, featured Ward Connerly. The second ad, appearing in early October, cleverly undercut the gender arguments against the initiative. It featured Janice Camarena, who purported to be a young white female victim of reverse discrimination. The ad was timed to start running just as the
Claremont Institute released a study on white victims of reverse discrimination and as Assemblyman Bernie Richter geared up to hold hearings on discrimination against whites in higher education. These stories turned emotional anecdotes into potent political messages. And despite the power of personal stories, the opposition never countered the dozen or so cases of reverse discrimination that the Proposition's supporters had at their disposal with any of the hundreds of thousands of discrimination cases civil rights advocates had at theirs.
Steinberg's ability to make the most of the available cases of reverse discrimination was apparent in the Camarena ad. At twenty-six, Camarena was not glamorous. She was a sad, blue-eyed blond whose life in San Diego, and later in Crestline, had been touched more than once by tragedy. A working single mother with three young children, she enrolled in San Bernardino Valley Community College to realize her ambition to become a nurse. In January 1994 she was denied entrance into an English 101 class reserved for students in the Bridge Program, a remedial course designed for African American students. The teacher, she said, told her to leave because she was white, and as she walked out the other students laughed. A year later she sued the college, and in 1996 the case was settled. The college reimbursed her legal fees and agreed to remove any language in course descriptions implying that a certain class was "designed" for any specific group of students.
College officials disputed key facts, including the classroom scene, and argued that the Bridge Program, as well as a similar program designed for Latino students, did not exclude any students. Camarena was not accepted in that particular class, they said, because she had not preregistered, nor had she taken the prerequisite class. Moreover, they argued, another English 101 class, open to all students, was available in the same time slot. The settlement, they insisted, was a financial decision rather than an admission of wrongdoing.
From Camarena's story, Steinberg produced the following ad.
Male Announcer: The following actually happened January 19th, 1994.
Camarena: The teacher said to me, "You have to leave."
Male Announcer: Because you're white.
Camarena: Yes. The I left. (door slams shut—sound undercurrent)
Male Announcer: As she went out the door, students laughed. (laughter fades) But for this young, widowed mother trying to enroll in a class at a public college, racial quotas were no laughing matter.
Camarena: I thought that discrimination was illegal.
Male Announcer: But the law allows preferential treatment.
Camarena: Another class was for Mexican American students only.
Male Announcer: These programs are based not on merit, or even on need, but on race. Janice Camarena Ingraham is white. Her deceased husband was Mexican American.
Camarena: Recently our public school asked the race of my children. I said the human race.
Male Announcer: Janice now is one of many women and men leading the campaign for Proposition 209. Proposition 209 prohibits discrimination and preferential quotas. It protects men and women of all races.
Female Announcer: Equal opportunity without quotas. Yes! Proposition 209. Bring us together.
The Camarena story, a classic example of reverse discrimination, set white women off from racial minorities and undermined the opposition's argument that women and minorities had a shared interest in maintaining affirmative action. The commercial stresses that Camarena's "whiteness" excluded her from educational opportunities. The radio spot also heightens its emotional appeal to a white audience by showing Camarena not only excluded, but humiliated by the minority students, who laugh as she leaves the classroom. Camarena does not claim racial superiority but moral superiority ("I said the
human race"). The advertisement promises that Proposition 209 will protect victims against any such future incidents.
Nonpartisan ads did not interest the Dole campaign, and when the candidate was ready to spend money in California the Republicans did not bother to ask Steinberg again for help. To cut the ads the RNC wanted, John Herrington, chair of the state Republican Party, called Sal Russo, a Sacramento-based Republican media consultant. Within days, Russo had prepared two ads—one with Herrington as the spokesperson and the other with an unknown middle-aged woman. When focus groups nixed Herrington, the second commercial went out to television stations to begin running October 23.
The commercial opens with a montage of faces.
Female Narrator: We should be judged on merit, not by gender or the color of our skin.
A solo piano melody plays in the background as a middle-aged white woman with blond hair steps out from a group of thirteen people, including some Latinos and Asians. The camera focuses on the woman.
Female Narrator: Job quotas and preferences are wrong. Proposition 209 ends quotas and special treatment. But Bill Clinton opposes Proposition 209, just like he opposed Proposition 187.
As she speaks of Clinton, his image comes on screen in grainy black and white. It is the image of a callow Bill Clinton, in shirt sleeves, sitting in front of a microphone, crossing his arms. He looks like he's listening to someone else talk and he doesn't look happy. The commercial then cuts to footage of Martin Luther King's 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
Martin Luther King, Jr.: … where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!
The ad cuts back to a close-up of the woman.
Female Narrator: Martin Luther King was right. Bill Clinton is wrong to oppose Proposition 209. Let's get rid of all preferences.
The commercial ends with a plug to vote "Yes" on Proposition 209 in white letters against a backdrop of the Declaration of Independence and a waving American flag.
As soon as word leaked out that the California Republican Party was to run a television commercial linking Proposition 209 to Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights leaders exploded. Many who had previously avoided Proposition 209 now spoke out with bitterness and anger. "Those who suggest that [King] did not support affirmative action are misrepresenting his beliefs, and indeed, his life's work," Coretta Scott King said in a joint statement with her son, Dexter Scott King. Even Proposition 209 co-author Thomas Wood—who along with Glynn Custred, Connerly, and others speaking for the campaign had been using King's line in debates—acknowledged that the ad crossed the line of propriety. "The problem is that there is plenty of evidence that King thought that blacks were entitled to preferences," Wood said, adding that there was also evidence that King would have included poor whites.[7]
Thomas Wood, interview, February 21, 1997.
"He probably would have been somewhere around 'mend it don't end it.'" Worse than the misinformation the commercial conveyed, Wood said, was its tactical error in shifting the debate on Proposition 209 to Martin Luther King. "That couldn't possibly be to our advantage."Steinberg was furious. He had lost control of the campaign he had shepherded for nearly two years. Compounding his problems was his lack of leverage. None of the state Republican officials who had supported him before could help now. Earlier in the Proposition 209 campaign Wilson had directed money from the state party to the Proposition 209 campaign because
he had been responsible for raising it and because Herrington, the party's chair, agreed. Now the former Secretary of Energy's loyalty was to the Dole campaign. If Dole won, Herrington hoped for a cabinet position. If Dole lost, he wanted Haley Barbour's seat as chair of the RNC. Such goals made him eager to curry favor with the Dole campaign and the RNC. "Whatever was needed to be done, Herrington would do it," said a high state Republican Party official.[8]
Interview, December 1996.
Moreover, Herrington had reason to feel that the California Republican Party owned the Proposition 209 campaign. It had been responsible for nearly half of the initiative's bankroll, with much of the balance coming from national Republican donors. If Dole wanted to use the proposition to salvage his campaign or if the RNC believed it could increase their congressional victories, Herrington felt it was theirs to use. If Govenor Wilson disagreed, he would not win in a showdown with Herrington. "The chair has the power to make unilateral decisions and that's it," said Schroeder, who became chair in 1997.[9]
Michael Schroeder, interview, March 19, 1997.
Although Wilson might have been able to persuade a close political ally to listen to Steinberg, Herrington did not fit that bill. Their differences went back to 1976, when Wilson endorsed Gerald Ford for president instead of Ronald Reagan, and it continued into the 1990s with Wilson's tax hike and his support of gay rights. Nor was Connerly able to help Steinberg. The U.C. regent had been a compelling spokesperson, and his access to the governor had been critical in promoting Proposition 209, but his political influence within the state Republican Party was only as strong as Wilson's.Steinberg, however, refused to back down. Making Proposition 209 partisan so late in the game, Steinberg feared, would lose it votes. The initiative's financing may have come primarily from Republican Party sources and donors, but its popular support came from Democrats as well.[10]
The field poll showed that one-third of those who supported Proposition 209 and one-quarter of those undecided on 209 also planned to vote for Clinton.
When Wilson failed to dissuade Herrington, Steinberg attacked. He fired off faxes to officials in the state party callingfor Herrington's resignation. Then he jumped into a public shouting match with Scott Taylor, the liaison with the RNC. "I cannot stress enough how strongly we feel that Prop 209 has been mismanaged by the staff," Taylor told the Los Angeles Times . He praised Connerly and damned Steinberg.[11]
Dave Lesher and Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times, October 23, 1996, p. A3.
The "only decision we have made is that we would never give the money directly to the initiative campaign because we're afraid of how it would be managed," he added. Steinberg retaliated. "The use of King was juvenile at best and counter-productive at worst," Steinberg told the Sacramento Bee .[12]Ken Chavez, Sacramento Bee, October 25, 1996, p. A1.
"People who don't know the issue probably shouldn't be creating ads about the issue. … This was an unnecessary controversy." To add punch, he filed a defamation lawsuit against Taylor.Steinberg, party officials decided, was out of control. Connerly asked him to lie low, but Steinberg refused and Connerly was insulted. "The chair of the campaign was telling him to do something and he was rejecting it," Connerly said, referring to himself in the third person. Such insubordination was "unforgivable," he said.[13]
Connerly made this comment in response to a question I asked when the U.C. regent visited a U.C. Berkeley course on March 31, 1997. Connerly also said that Steinberg was upset because he would not get the 15 percent commission from the television commercials. However, Steinberg had turned down earlier offers to do commercials that included Dole and Clinton.
"I fired him." Technically, Connerly lacked the authority to fire Steinberg, but he didn't even bother to ask Custred and Wood for their opinions. Dismayed, for a few short days they considered firing Connerly. But how would it look? Two white men firing their black spokesperson? They let it pass.Steinberg, however, had made his point, and after all the bad press the RNC and Herrington sent Russo back to the studio to revise the commercial.
As before, a white woman steps out of a multi-ethnic group of people, and the same Clinton image appears on the screen. But King has been eliminated. Instead, the commercial cuts to the initiative's text, which is shown in black letters on a piece of ivory paper. The first words of the proposition, "The State shall not discriminate," are extracted from the text and shown in blue against a stark white background.
Female Narrator: Proposition 209 is only 37 words and it says we shall not discriminate. It's right for California.
Again there is a close-up of the woman as she finishes speaking.
Female Narrator: Bill Clinton is wrong to oppose Proposition 209. Let's end all discrimination. Vote yes on Proposition 209.
The commercial concludes, as before, with the message to vote "Yes" on Proposition 209 in white letters against a backdrop of the Declaration of Independence and a waving American flag.
Steinberg didn't like the revised ad any better; mentioning Proposition 187 showed that Herrington was "in a time warp," he snapped. More significantly, voters were revising their views on Proposition 209. The field poll released on October 30 showed that the race had narrowed to 46 percent for 209, 41 percent against, and 13 percent undecided. The following day Connerly, echoing Steinberg, asked the state Republican Party to pull its television ad. "We have ads that are more powerful, that are nonpartisan, and that accentuate the fact that this is about preferences," Connerly pleaded.[14]
Edward W. Lempinen, San Francisco Chronicle, October 31, 1997, p. A15.
Herrington refused and told reporters, "Ward Connerly is a very good spokesman for Proposition 209, but he doesn't run the Republican Party.[15]Eric Brazil and Annie Nakao, Fresno Bee, November 2, 1996, p. A5.
Connerly retorted that if 209 lost, it would be Herrington's fault. "To the extent that our lead might have diminished a few points it is directly a response to an ad that, to be charitable, does not accentuate the core of this debate. And to the extent that this initiative is endangered, let it be at the doorstep of John Herrington."[16]Ibid. In the final two days of the campaign, Steinberg's Proposition 209 television ads began running in the Los Angeles market. Their run, however, was very limited, and the main 209 ad continued to be the one produced by Russo. Steinberg's ads highlighted the themes of equal opportunity without quotas—once the opposition's slogan for the alternative initiative. They ended with the "bring us together" tag line and were strictly nonpartisan. The ads featured Connerly, Janice Camarena, and Pam Lewis, a white woman who was one of the co-chairs.
Connerly, however, didn't matter to Herrington, and the ad stayed on through the end of the campaign.