The Angry White Males of 1994
The web of American communications, influence and politics is so sensitive that when touched in the right way by men who know how, it clangs with instant response.
THEODORE H. WHITE
The Making of the President, 1960
He was only running for governor in 1994, but Pete Wilson's stance on immigration transformed him into a national figure with presidential prospects. More important, Wilson had demonstrated with Proposition 187 that California was fertile political ground for racial wedge issues—issues that could split white males away from the Democrats and send them to the Republican Party. White men voted 63 to 37 percent in favor of Proposition 187—in nearly the same proportions in which they voted for Wilson.[1]
Los Angeles Times exit poll.
With a presidential campaign less than two years away, political analysts looked at the Proposition 187 vote and saw the beginning of a new backlash building. "Whites are confronting futures that look increasingly limited even as women, minorities and others get the lion's share of the establishment's attention as worthy subjects of concern," wrote Peter Schrag, a Sacramento Bee columnist and editorial page editor, one week
after the 1994 elections. "Never has the disaffection been so strong and never before has it had as big a megaphone as it has developed in the (largely male) talk shows."[2]
Peter Schrag, Sacramento Bee, November 16, 1994, p. B6.
No matter that income for black men had declined at nearly twice the rate of income for white men since 1978.[3]San Francisco Chronicle, March 20, 1995, p. 1.
"The truth is people are really facing declines in their wages," said Stanford economist Martin Carnoy. "When the guy can't get a job and he sees a minority person get it, he thinks: 'Affirmative action.'"Custred and Wood mark December 27, 1994, as the turning point in CCRI's life—the day it went from being "their" initiative to becoming the lure for all those angry white males who had voted in November. Up until then the post-election analysis of the Republican sweep mentioned affirmative action as a likely target, but few reporters called Custred and Wood's office on Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Berkeley. On December 27, however, Washington officeholders and journalists opened the Washington Post to read: "California voters gave the nation a jolt from the right last month when they passed Proposition 187, which would deny nonemergency medical care and education to illegal immigrants. Now the state could be on the verge of doing it again. Conservatives hope to place the anti–affirmative action measure on the 1996 presidential primary ballot."[4]
John Boudreau, Washington Post, December 27, 1994, p. 3.
Wood told the reporter, "The tide has turned; there is an anti–affirmative action issue coming down the pike in California that is going to make 187 look like kindergarten."[5]Ibid.
Suddenly, the media bombarded Custred and Wood. "It was like the phone was levitating," said Wood.[6]
Tom Wood, interview, June 1995.
Soon CCRI became a buzzword for the end of affirmative action. Scott Reed, who worked for the Republican National Committee and would later become Senator Bob Dole's campaign manager, sent a note to Scott Taylor, the Republican National Committee's field person in California: "This looks like something to watch."[7]Scott Taylor, interview, April 1995.
Custred and Wood could not handle all the press calls, much less the questions about strategy and timing. They desperately needed a political campaign team, and waiting in the wings
was a group of conservative Republican men—libertarians all—whom they had met during the previous year. On a rainy December day at the Radisson Summit Hotel in West Los Angeles, the new team gathered to split up the responsibilities.
Larry Arnn, the forty-two-year-old president of the Claremont Institute, became chairman. Arnn, a personable man more interested in talking about British history and the American Revolution than about current events, founded the conservative think tank with three other graduate students in 1979. In the mid-1980s it opened an office in Sacramento and began funneling policy papers to conservative legislators, many of them concerning Arnn's thinking about returning the country to core values. One of the institute's distinguished fellows was William Rusher, the publisher and founder of the National Review and one of CCRI's early supporters. Arnn first ran into Custred and Wood at a 1994 National Review conference in San Diego. Arnn had long been a foe of affirmative action. Although he believed it went against the basic American principle of equality under the law, he explained, "It had never occurred to me to make it a public issue, but the minute I heard the idea, it resonated with me."[8]
Larry Arnn, interview, February 27, 1996.
Joe Gelman, Mayor Richard Riordan's appointee to the Los Angeles Board of Civil Service Commissioners and a Republican Party activist, signed on to run the Los Angeles office. Gelman, an Indianapolis native who had grown up in Israel, became friendly with Arnn because of a mutual interest in Winston Churchill. The two, along with a group of other Churchill buffs, had been meeting at Arnn's home to smoke cigars and share their favorite stories of the British leader.[9]
Joe Gelman, interview, August 24, 1996.
Gelman had the zeal of a true believer and the energy of a twelve-year-old.Arnold Steinberg, a Los Angeles-based pollster for Republicans, had contacted Custred and Wood after reading Rusher's 1993 National Review article about CCRI's promise. "Most of the time it's just business," Steinberg, a slim man with sandy red hair, later recalled.[10]
Arnold Steinberg, interview, 1995.
"But I feel in synch withthis issue. I really believe government classifications by race are wrong. It pits tribe against tribe." Moreover, his own experience with affirmative action had not been a positive one. In his 1976 work, The Political Campaign Handbook , he wrote: "Some broadcast reporters may attend a news conference without any prior research or preparation, their questions are often sophomoric, and they may even be unable to define the story's lead. These problems have been aggravated by the FCC's 'affirmative action' emphasis to encourage or force television and radio stations to hire reporters on the basis of racial, ethnic, or sexual quotas."[11]
Arnold Steinberg, The Political Campaign Handbook. San Francisco: Lexington Books, 1976, p. 53.
Steinberg, who lived and worked out of a mansion he built on a hilltop in Calabasas, just north of Malibu, had developed a reputation as a wunderkind in Republican political circles. In his work for CCRI, he would fret over the most minute detail, writing memos and considering every aspect of the campaign's strategy. "He's considered a kind of hermit genius," said Shawn Steel, the treasurer of the California Republican Party. He was also connected. Steinberg played chess with Republican Mayor Riordan and was good friends with Democratic presidential advisor Bill Wardlaw. From his hilltop mansion, he kept in touch with a number of influential congressmen in Washington and, in his efforts on behalf of CCRI, Steinberg used all of these connections.
When the new CCRI team met in December, they decided Wood and Custred would participate in strategy sessions and speak on behalf of CCRI in public forums. Arnn, Steinberg, and Gelman would run the day-to-day operations. In early January, Arnn drafted a "Confidential Overview" of CCRI that provides insight into their libertarian—get the government out of everything—thinking. The section titled "Introduction" stated, in a tone that sometimes sounded like a manifesto written by teenage zealots, "CCRI has begun in the past few months, to generate intense publicity without the use of professional help—indeed, without the making of any coordinated effort. It has done this because it appeals to the basic
belief of the public inequality and fairness, and because it promises to strike a heavy blow at the heart of the bureaucratic regulatory state. It destroys the legitimacy of that state. It divides the party that has fostered and maintained that state. Its effects upon the state and local elections of 1996 are therefore likely to be profound, possibly decisive."[12]
Larry Arnn, memo to Joe Gelman, January 9, 1995.
The next section, "Opportunity and Danger," stated, "The opportunity is dual: first to make history by making affirmative action quota contracting illegal for California state and local governments (thereby profoundly affecting the private sector); second, consequently, to divide the Democratic Party."[13]
Ibid.
Under sections titled "Strategy" and "Timing" the document referred to the campaign's need to be inclusive. "The campaign must be open to all—Democrats and Republicans, whites and nonwhites, men and women—who support the measure. The presumed conservative Republican constituency greatly understates the base for this issue, especially if an inclusive approach is aggressively pursued."The memo explained why reaching out to Democrats was not at odds with the damage the initiative could do to Democrats. "A March campaign would suggest that the measure's supporters, in statesmanlike fashion, are trying to avoid a 'wedge' issue for November," the overview stated referring to the campaign's intentions to attempt to put the measure on the March 1996 primary ballot. Even if this were to occur, however, Republicans still won. "In fact," the overview continued, "this issue is inherently divisive for Democrats and its effects would be cataclysmic nationally throughout 1996. Clearly, a March election would have spin-offs in other states for the balance of 1996. … Given the importance of this issue to our country, it would be derelict not to consider March/1996 as a way of involving Democrats in our effort."[14]
Ibid.
Over the next ten months the campaign team made a lot of noise and occasionally scored a touchdown, but it spent much of its time running down the clock. Arnn, for example, liked his role as chairman because it offered him continued
political visibility—his first attempt at politics, a 1994 run for the Republican spot in the Forty-third Congressional District's race, had failed. But he wasn't cut out for the fund-raising his new position demanded. "I had never done fund-raising for a cause like this," he said. "It often happens that there is some interest group that has a lot at stake, but there isn't a natural interest group for this one. In the end, people give because they believe in it, and they have to feel that it is urgent."[15]
Larry Arnn, interview.
With affirmative action quickly becoming part of the national debate, few donors felt it was urgent to support a state measure that might duplicate federal efforts or be overtaken by the decisions of an increasingly conservative Supreme Court. Corporate sponsors, another likely source of initiative money, shied away from CCRI because a stand either way was likely to set them in opposition to at least some of their employees and customers. The absence of ready funding sources meant Arnn had to be all the more aggressive in pursuing the big donors he did know. But his reticence was apparent in his attitude toward Henry Salvatori, an Italian immigrant and oil magnate who had given generously to Claremont. "He's ninety-four, and I for one wasn't going to try and impose something new on him," he said. "I'm not a political fund-raiser to the extent that it is done by people who put pressure on people."[16]
Ibid.
The other team members lacked the connections even to try raising money. Gelman, even with all his energy, was too low in the state Republican Party hierarchy to get anyone's attention. He did, however, manage to keep the initiative in the news. Every affirmative action issue with an iota of controversy that came before the county civil service board Gelman blew up into a news story. Between January and June 1995, CCRI and affirmative action were mentioned dozens of times in the Los Angeles media. "We got little fires burning all over the city," Gelman recalled gleefully. "It was fairly well calculated to keep things going. Ultimately we created this aura of invincibility, that we had a lot of money and
a lot of supporters. Nothing could have been further from the truth."[17]
Joe Gelman, interview, January 29, 1996.
No one regretted the lack of funds more than Steinberg, who was anxious to make his first statewide initiative campaign a success. Steinberg drew up plan after plan to begin direct-mail and media campaigns, but instead of following through on any plan, he found the team moving from crisis to crisis. As the months wore on, he became increasingly frustrated and anxious about failing. "We never had nay seed money in place," Steinberg said later.[18]
Arnold Steinberg, interview, January 25, 1996.
"I wanted mailings to go out early, to do test mailings, but ready money was never there. Dollars spent properly early on can make a real difference later, but we didn't have it."The Republican National Committee kept abreast of the initiative's progress but provided no immediate financial support. The committee's field man, Scott Taylor, dropped by CCRI's small office in Berkeley in early 1995 to look at a poll Steinberg did. Taylor was impressed. "CCRI was popular with every subsection in their study," said Taylor, who at thirty-four had already logged more than a decade in politics. "I hadn't seen anything like the intensity of support since Proposition 13," he said, referring to the 1978 California antitax initiative. "I wasn't around for that, but from what I hear, this is as strong and there was no gender gap as far as we could see."[19]
Scott Taylor, interview.
A couple of weeks later, Taylor visited Washington. He was standing around the Republican National Committee's headquarters when one of House Speaker Newt Gingrich's aides approached him and asked if he would brief the Speaker on California. Taylor was ecstatic. He ended up meeting with Gingrich in a limousine—the Speaker was on his way from the Republican National Committee near Union Station to a fund-raiser at the Hay-Adams Hotel, near the White House. Taylor found him already "well-versed on the issue."[20]
Ibid.
According to Taylor, Gingrich promised to do anything he could to help. The Speaker was slow, however, to publicly support CCRI.Back in California, money was trickling in. Gelman said the team's lack of credibility with big California donors was apparent early on. In January 1995 at Pasadena's Ritz Carlton Hotel, the team pitched their case to Howard Ahmanson, the son of the founder of Home Savings of America; Ed Atsinger, the owner of more than a dozen Christian radio stations; and Ron Unz, the Silicon Valley businessman who won 34 percent of the vote in the 1994 Republican primary against Pete Wilson. Some of the donors had formed the Allied Business PAC, which spent $2.3 million—more than any other PAC—to support conservative candidates in California's 1994 legislative races. Ahmanson, a converted fundamentalist Christian, had been the PAC's largest contributor and a supporter of the Claremont Institute.
CCRI had hoped to raise $300,000 from the meeting, with a promise for $300,000 more,[21]
Arnn to Gelman, memorandum, January 1, 1995.
but Gelman sensed that the group wasn't going to bite. "They said they didn't have confidence in the organization," Gelman said.[22]Joe Gelman, interview, January 29, 1996.
Although the PAC members were familiar with Arnn—some had contributed to his 1994 campaign—they declined to support CCRI as a PAC. But because Ahmanson liked the issue, he wrote a check for $50,000—sufficient for CCRI to begin the painstaking process of building a donor list.Unz chipped in, too. When he ran against Governor Wilson in 1994, one of his most effective mailings had discussed the problems of affirmative action. Although Unz opposed Proposition 187, he felt that attempts to classify Californians by race were impossible in a state where interracial and interethnic marriages were increasingly common. "The entire anti-immigrant backlash in America, which extends far beyond illegal immigration, draws heavily from whites' fears of having their rights trampled by ever-increasing numbers of ethnic minorities," Unz wrote. "Either California's multiethnic society re-establishes the principle of equality of opportunity for all—whites included—or grim days lie ahead."[23]
Ron Unz, Los Angeles Times, March 12, 1995, p. 5.
Unz dropped by CCRI's Los Angeles office in mid-February 1995 and found it lacking in the most basic equipment. He took Gelman to Office Depot, and they loaded up their carts with nearly $4,000 in supplies. The Silicon Valley businessman left another $3,000 behind and said he wanted to stay in touch. But after giving another $16,000 in April, he lost interest. Ultimately, Steinberg said, Unz wanted more control than the CCRI team was willing to give. A few other big donors came through that spring—$10,000 from Theodore J. Forstman, an influential Republican fund-raiser from New York; $25,000 from Patricia Hume, the wife of conservative San Francisco businessman Jerry Hume; and $5,000 from the Lincoln Club, one of the largest PACs. These contributions helped keep CCRI afloat, but much of the money was going to salaries and legal and consulting fees, and CCRI still seemed like a long shot.
March Madness
Although the CCRI team itself may not have been ready for prime time in early 1995, affirmative action as an issue was. The state and national poll numbers clearly showed that voters wanted to ban "preferential treatment." Although some of the same polls showed voters actually favored "affirmative action," the public's disdain for "preferences" was overwhelming, and neither the Democratic Party leaders nor mainstream Republicans who had supported affirmative action bothered to make the nuanced distinction or to understand that if the battle could be waged on affirmative action, it might be won.[24]
A Gallup/CNN poll done in March 1995 showed 55% of those polled favoring affirmative action while 63% opposed quotas (USA Today, March 24, 1995, p. 3A).
They went with the rhetoric, and it indicated that the thirty-year-old legacy of the civil rights era could divide white, working-class voters from the Democratic Party as neatly as abortion, gun control, and immigration had in earlier elections. The strategists predicted that a Republican presidential candidate opposed to affirmative action would divide President Bill Clinton from the white, working-class voters he needed to return to the White House. This scenario was particularly threatening in
California, where angry white voters had recently been responsible for Wilson's reelection and Proposition 187's approval.
One politician who began to change his mind about affirmative action was the governor of California. As a state legislator, mayor of San Diego, and U.S. senator, Wilson had consistently supported affirmative action. As recently as September 1994, he had signed legislation to make it easier for minority-owned companies to qualify for state assistance. In addition to his longtime support of affirmative action, however, he had a record of occasionally exploiting it for political advantage. Early in the 1990 governor's race, the popular Dianne Feinstein pledged to appoint women and minorities in proportion to "their parity of the population." In a public exchange of faxes, Wilson urged Feinstein to recant her support of "quotas." Feinstein shot back that her program was not a fixed quota, but a goal that would be reached over time. Despite this explanation and Feinstein's record against fixed quotas, Wilson ran a commercial that played on voter's worst fears about affirmative action. "Dianne Feinstein promised as governor to fill state jobs on the basis of strict numerical quotas," a narrator charged. "Not experience. Not qualifications. But quotas. It's unfair, it's extreme, and it's wrong." Two weeks later, Wilson's lead jumped from two to eleven percentage points.[25]
Gerald C. Lubenow, ed., The 1990 Governor's Race. Berkeley, CA: Institute of Governmental Studies Press, 1991, p. 169.
Voters hated quotas, but would a stand against affirmative action provoke the same bile? By early January, Wilson was ready to find out. He gave a copy of his state-of-the-state address to George Gorton, the governor's key political strategist. The draft contained a passage that questioned the fairness of considering race as a criterion in admissions or employment. Gorton objected. "I didn't think he'd had enough time to think it through and I argued him out of it. I was opposed to doing anything on affirmative action," Gorton recalled.[26]
George Gorton, interview, 1995.
In his view, affirmative action still had too many supporters. Moreover, to him, the words continued to prompt a positive response. As of January, he was unconvinced that it would bewise for the governor to strike out directly against such an established notion. The governor left it out of his January 8 address and, instead of testing the waters himself, he carefully watched the public's reaction to Ward Connerly's moves on the University of California's Board of Regents.
During the summer of 1994, Wilson and Connerly discussed the Cook case, and, according to Connerly, Wilson promised to support the regent's decision to question U.C. administrators on their affirmative action programs.[27]
Ward Connerly, interview, 1995.
At the mid-January Board of Regents meeting, Connerly went even further and asked his fellow regents to consider the possibility that the affirmative action policies pursued by U.C. administrators might be unfair. "I tell you with every fiber of my being that what we're doing is inequitable to certain people," Connerly told the regents. "I want something in place that's fair."[28]Amy Wallace, Los Angeles Times, January 20, 1995, p. A1.
The impact of a successful black man publicly questioning affirmative action in the name of fairness was powerful. This was a regent who talked about the humiliation of drinking from a fountain labeled "Colored Only." The predominantly white board listened with rapt attention. Just as he had mesmerized the audience at the Richter hearings that summer, Connerly now captivated the regents. The policy of affirmative action was decades old, and few boards like to upset the status quo, but if a black regent had lost faith in affirmative action, how could others keep the faith? "You can't underestimate Ward's impact," said Ralph Carmona, a regent in favor of affirmative action. "He's a black man, he's articulate, and people became caught up in the polls and in what he was saying."[29]Ralph Carmona, interview.
Governor Wilson was no exception. He was looking at the polls and his aide, Gorton, was also meeting with the CCRI team. Gelman recalled that Gorton was enthusiastic about the initiative, but, according to an internal memo, Gorton was also concerned that the anti-Wilson activity would focus around the governor's position on CCRI.[30]
Steinberg to Arnn, memorandum, February 28, 1995.
By the time the state Republican Party held its semiannual convention at the end of February, Wilson had been reassured, and he was readyto abandon his previous support for affirmative action. As the television cameras rolled, he endorsed CCRI and asked all Californians "to once again send East from California a message about fairness. … I ask you to join me in changing the law to restore fairness, to make real again that American dream."[31]
Bill Stall, Los Angeles Times, February 26, 1995, p. A3.
Getting the party to endorse a resolution in support of CCRI was no problem at all—the governor was on board and Gelman was chair of the resolution's committee.Events in California, a must-win state for Clinton in 1996, and developments in Washington, where the Republicans now controlled Congress, began to shape the political beliefs of a number of other politically prominent men. President Clinton, for one, refrained from unequivocally supporting affirmative action and instead in February called for a review of all federal affirmative action programs. "In March of 1995 we thought that this was going to be the issue that was going to race through America," George Stephanopoulos recalled in October 1996 at a Beverly Hills fund-raiser. And in the spring of 1995 the Administration was unclear how to stop the issue from becoming critical to the president's reelection. Even if CCRI didn't sweep the country, holding its own in California could be enough to do Clinton in. "At the very beginning was I concerned about it?" asked Bill Wardlaw, who was responsible for Clinton's California campaign in 1992 and continued to be an advisor. "You bet." Wardlaw was keeping abreast of the initiative's progress through his friend Steinberg.
Meanwhile, Clinton was talking to different advisors, including legislators like the Democratic senator Joseph Lieberman from Connecticut. Lieberman chaired the Democratic Leadership Conference, which middle-of-the-road national Democrats like Clinton founded in 1985 to redefine the party's liberal agenda. The DLC had addressed the issue of affirmative action in its 1990 New Orleans Declaration, and it was less than enthusiastic about supporting it. Clinton, who was then chairman of the DLC and governor of Arkansas, signed that document, which outlined the DLC's agenda for the nineties: "We endorse
[Andrew] Jackson's credo of equal opportunity for all and special privileges for none. … We believe the promise of America is equal opportunity, not equal outcomes."[32]
The New Orleans Declaration: A Democratic Agenda for the 1990s, endorsed by the Democratic Leadership Council in New Orleans, Louisiana, March 22-24, 1990.
By 1995 Lieberman and others in the DLC wanted changes in affirmative action.Republican Majority Leader Bob Dole, Clinton's likely Republican challenger in 1996, was also having his ear bent on affirmative action. Dole and other Republican congressional leaders were meeting in early 1995 with a group of conservatives interested in writing legislation to end affirmative action. Among them was Clint Bolick, the vice president of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, and the author of the 1993 Wall Street Journal op-ed that dubbed Lani Guinier the "quota queen." Also present was Linda Chavez, a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under Bush and the president of her own lobbying group, the Center for Equal Opportunity. "Dole listened but we could never tell where he stood," recalled Chavez.[33]
Linda Chavez, interview, October 10, 1996.
That spring, even Clinton appeared ready to cast off old beliefs. In early March, President Clinton, not yet finished with his review of affirmative action, held a forty-five-minute press conference and suggested that it might make sense to base affirmative action on economic need rather than race.[34]
Paul Richter and Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times, March 4, 1995, p. A1.
This was a historic moment. For the first time in three decades, a Democratic president was suggesting that taking race and gender into account in hiring and employment was outdated. An outcry from women, blacks, and the Reverend Jesse Jackson put an end to Clinton's suggestion, but Dole could see just how vulnerable a political spot the president was in: influential moderates were advising Clinton to make substantial changes in affirmative action, while the liberal base of the Democrats threatened mutiny if he did.If Clinton would not placate the Reagan Democrats, Dole would. Ten years earlier, Dole had fought to retain goals and timetables in federal affirmative action programs. But by
mid-March of 1995, in a sharply worded speech on the Senate floor, he announced, "Race-preferential policies, no matter how well-intentioned, demean individual accomplishment. They ignore individual character. And they are absolutely poisonous to race relations in our great country."[35]
Congressional Record, March 15, 1995, p. S3929.
In the same week that Dole made his announcement, the Glass Ceiling Commission issued its report. A bipartisan group created at Dole's suggestion as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the commission ended its three-year study and issued the following statement: "Before one can even look at the glass ceiling, one must get through the front door and into the building. The fact is large numbers of minorities and women of all races and ethnicities are nowhere near the front door of Corporate America."[36]Frank Swoboda, Washington Post, March 16, 1995, p. A1.
No matter; affirmative action was on the block.From the vantage point of California, it looked as if the president and his chief challenger were running away from affirmative action as fast as they could. Wilson, too, was unable to resist the logic that said affirmative action might be his ticket to the White House. On March 23—five months after promising California voters that he would remain in California if reelected governor—Wilson announced he had "not just an opportunity, but a duty" to explore the possibility of running for president. From the outset, it was evident that affirmative action would be central to his campaign strategy. "Some things are right and some plainly are wrong," he said. "It is wrong to reward illegal immigrants for violating our borders. … It is wrong to engage in reverse discrimination, giving preferences … not on the basis of merit but because of race and gender.[37]
Dave Lesher and Bill Stall, Los Angeles Times, March 24, 1995, p. A1.
Custred and Wood, still pressed for money to run an expensive initiative campaign, were delighted by Wilson's support and Clinton's obvious unease with the issue. It looked to them like they might now have a bipartisan issue that would win big. In April, Wood met with the Democratic Leadership Conference's officials Al From and Will Marshall. "From seemed quite cynical about the Democrats' position on affirmative
action," Wood wrote to his colleagues.[38]
Wood to Steinberg, memorandum, April 12, 1995.
"We could probably get an endorsement from him. The whole interview however was monopolized by Will Marshall, who insists on the admissibility of racial and gender preferences in outreach in making up for past discrimination. Marshall is hopeless but From is ideologically already on our side."When the CCRI team called the California DLC president, Bill Podlich, the reception was also friendly. "We really thought they might go with us," Wood recalled.[39]
Tom Wood, interview, June 1995.
In fact, even the mainstream state Democratic Party appeared to be wavering. Duane Garrett, the Democratic strategist who ran Senator Dianne Feinstein's campaign,[40]Duanne Garrett committed suicide in July 1995.
surfaced to support the drive to end affirmative action and called CCRI "a very moderate proposal."[41]Mary Lynne Vellinga, Sacramento Bee, April 30, 1995, p. A1.
State Democratic Party leaders were curious enough about the initiative to invite the CCRI team to Palm Springs in early February 1995 for the party's executive committee meeting. Wood and Errol Smith, a black business executive from Southern California and a conservative former radio talk show host, represented CCRI in a debate on Saturday afternoon. They felt the response was cool. Wood recalled it as "civil."[42]
Tom Wood, interview, June 1995.
Nevertheless, he stayed overnight, and the following morning he had breakfast with Bill Press, the chair of the state Democratic Party. "I had the feeling he was checking me out," Wood said.[43]Ibid.
Custred, Wood, and Arnn began to suspect that even though the state Democratic Party might not endorse the initiative outright, it would support a strategy to avoid a confrontation in November 1996, when the state's fifty-four electoral votes were up for grabs. Accordingly, they sought the party's support for legislation to put the initiative on the March ballot. The appeal for CCRI's team was clear: the legislature also had the power to put initiatives on the ballot. It could pass a bill to amend the state's constitution and resident would vote on that bill in March. This development would save CCRI the expense of raising the $1 million it would
take to collect the nearly 700,000 signatures they needed to put CCRI on the ballot.[44]
The $1 million would pay for the direct-mail campaigns, signature gatherers, and office expenses.
Wood met in late March 1995 with state Senate President pro Tempore Bill Lockyer, a Democrat from Hayward. "It was Wood's contention that they really wanted it to be a nonpartisan and bipartisan effort," said Lockyer.[45]
Bill Lockyer, interview, February 6, 1996.
"They were getting these offers of help from Republicans who saw some partisan advantage of putting it on the November ballot, and Wood preferred the March ballot because it meant they were less dependent on Republican donors." Lockyer and his colleagues were ambivalent. "I told him I would be happy to discuss it with members of my caucus," Lockyer said. "But there was a lack of sufficient consensus to do anything."[46]Ibid.
Nevertheless, Lockyer enlisted the aid of political independent Quentin L. Kopp to draft a Senate bill to put the initiative on the March ballot. While Wood worked with Kopp to refine the initiative's language even further, Custred and Steinberg visited Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. Generally a political pragmatist, Brown had indicated in January 1995 that he might be willing to support a bill to put the initiative on the March 1996 primary ballot. That would mean that legislators up for reelection would not have to run against the measure. But by the time Custred and Steinberg dropped by that spring, Brown had changed his mind. "He looked me right in the eye and said you shouldn't abandon the core principles of affirmative action," Custred recalled later, shaking his head at Brown's formidable charm.[47]
Glynn Custred, interview, September 26, 1995.
"Then he launched into a tale about his childhood in Texas. When the meeting ended, he took my hand and said, 'I wish you all the ill luck in the world.'" Kopp's measure was killed at the end of March by a five-to-four vote along party lines in the Senate Governmental Organization Committee.After Kopp's bill failed, CCRI's only option was to raise the money to collect the signatures. Their start was a slow one. Two modest direct-mail efforts in the spring netted only 6,000 small donors. Frustrated, the CCRI team met in Los Angeles
in early June with the Republican National Committee's Taylor and with representatives from the state Republican Party and Wilson's campaign. "They kept promising help," said Gelman. "We wanted them to come through with it."[48]
Joe Gelman, interview, 1995.
Taylor had a different point of view. "They were out of money because they weren't raising any," he said. "They were more concerned with getting their names in the newspaper. They were like a welfare case."[49]Scott Taylor, interview.
Taylor and the others promised to come through with help by the end of the summer, but they warned CCRI to file the initiative with the state attorney general, fund-raise, and start collecting signatures.CCRI did get one boost in early summer. The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on affirmative action on June 12 calling "all racial classifications" by federal agencies "inherently suspect and presumptively invalid." The five-to-four decision in the case of Adarand Constructors v. Peña involved a federal highway program that awarded a road repair contract to a Latino firm in Colorado that had submitted a slightly higher bid than a white contractor. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the court, said that as a last resort a limited program of preferences could be justified to remedy a clear pattern of "prior discrimination" against minorities.[50]
Adarand Constructors v. Peña, 115 Sup. Ct. 2097, 2113 (1995).
"Any person, of whatever race, has the right to demand that any governmental actor subject to the Constitution justify any racial classification subjecting that person to unequal treatment under the strictest judicial scrutiny. The Fifth and 14th Amendments to the Constitution protect persons, not groups. It follows from that principle that all governmental action based on race … should be subjected to detailed judicial inquiry to ensure that the personal right to protection of the laws has not been infringed."[51]Ibid.
Wood, however, cautioned his colleagues against thinking that their work had been done. The Adarand decision applied the strict scrutiny test to federal affirmative action programs that the court had previously applied to state and local governments in Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co. In a July memo,
Wood warned: "Many (perhaps a majority) of preferential policies at the state and local level have survived Croson . We need to walk a thin line here between claiming that Adarand was a major ideological setback for the preferences lobby (which it was), while recognizing that much more needs to be done. Only two justices—Scalia and Thomas—went the whole distance of denying the legitimacy of any racial preferences, even to make up for past discrimination (against others). So only these two justices supported the position of CCRI."[52]
Thomas E. Wood, memo to Joe Gelman, July 26, 1995.
Meanwhile, the CCRI team kept pursuing Wilson and other Republican presidential hopefuls to sign fund-raising letters. Two Steinberg memos to Arnn referred to these efforts. "For Gramm," Steinberg wrote, referring to Phil Gramm, "I've received no word back despite repeated efforts. … For Dole, you and I must discuss how to proceed … with Gramm, Dole and with others. Rusher (William) is weary of pushing more with Dole at this point. We want at least Gramm, Dole and Wilson involved and to make them compete with each other for involvement."[53]
Arnold Steinberg, memo to Larry Arnn, May 13, 1995.
Later that month he updated his progress. "I am still trying Dole contacts. … Wilson has agreed to do a fundraising package for CCRI, and he is first in the mail due to the inaction of the Gramm and Dole people. However, they still have time to at least get parity on the issue here in California."[54]Arnold Steinberg, memo to Larry Arnn, May 24, 1995.
In July, however, it appeared that Wilson would prove the most useful.Political Theater
Just as Wilson had shown California that he was prepared to withhold benefits from illegal immigrants, he was now ready to show the country he could stand up to the blacks and Hispanics who benefited from affirmative action. George Gorton, who was now running Wilson's presidential campaign, still felt that affirmative action was a questionable target, but when the governor decided to make it an issue, it became a central part of his campaign. "You can't hide from it,"
Gorton said. "It's a big red flag and you can't put it behind you, so you might as well maximize it."[55]
George Gorton, interview.
That was exactly what Wilson did.From spring 1995 on, Wilson and U.C. Regent Connerly played the issue of affirmative action like a political relay team, keeping it on the front page of every California newspaper. First, Wilson would announce an end to a state affirmative action committee or position. Then, Connerly would grasp the baton and press the regents for more details of the university's admissions policies. Even when Wilson was sidelined for two months while he recovered from throat surgery, Connerly kept affirmative action in the news. "It's one of those things you could get a lot of publicity on," said Dick Dresner, Wilson's pollster. "It wasn't in the same category as illegal immigration, but it was strong."[56]
Dick Dressner, interview, January 5, 1996.
But not strong enough to overcome Wilson's other problems and push the governor ahead of the Republican pack. By June, Wilson was floundering in the polls. Aides blamed the candidate's failure to emerge as a front-runner on a combination of factors. They had overestimated the willingness of California voters to ignore Wilson's broken campaign promise to stay in the governor's office for a full term, and they had underestimated the impact that a poor showing in California polls would have on support elsewhere. Wilson's throat surgery and subsequent inability to talk for two months—to voters or contributors—broke his already modest momentum and created a sense that the presidential candidate was going nowhere.
Searching for effective issues, the Wilson campaign team decided that affirmative action was still Wilson's best bet. Other candidates could claim to oppose affirmative action in principle, but Wilson's position as governor and president of the Board of Regents meant that he could actually do something about ending it. In June, Connerly and Wilson conferred on the phone almost daily. In the first week of July, Connerly informed board chairman Burgener that at the July 20 meeting, he would
ask the regents to consider ending the use of race, religion, sex, color, or ethnicity in admissions and hiring. Connerly, who in January 1994 had chastised his colleagues for failing to listen to students and faculty, now paradoxically warned Burgener against being held hostage by students and advised him that it was unnecessary to consult with the faculty before making a decision on this sensitive issue.
The proposal to overturn the University of California's affirmative action policy was serious business. It was also a media sensation. No important newspaper or network could afford to miss the story, and in the weeks before the meeting was held, it became clear that the complicated and emotional policy questions that centered around affirmative action would be subsumed by a well-orchestrated political drama. No matter how sincere Connerly's opposition to affirmative action was, his proposal to end the program at the University of California in the midst of Wilson's run for the Republican presidential nomination turned the debate on affirmative action into a political spectacle.
Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson—threatening to enter the primaries against Clinton if the president failed to support affirmative action—announced he would appear at the meeting to challenge Wilson and Connerly's proposal. Wilson, who had not attended a regent meeting since 1992, when he voted for a 24 percent hike in student fees, promptly announced that he would be there as well. The showdown promised to be big news, and, within days, 250 to 300 reporters had booked rooms in San Francisco. Wilson's campaign staff was ecstatic. "These kinds of things are defining opportunities for Pete Wilson, which will get attention not just in the state, but across the country," said Craig Fuller, chairman of the governor's presidential campaign and George Bush's former chief of staff. "You don't get too many of those in campaigns."[57]
Amy Wallace and Dave Lesher, Los Angeles Times, July 20, 1994, p. 3.
The warm-up act began immediately. Still in Chicago, Jackson threatened to disrupt the meeting and Wilson took up his challenge. "If he seeks to disrupt the meeting … then I
think he will succeed in being detained," Wilson responded obligingly in an interview on the Sunday morning CBS news program Face the Nation. When Jackson arrived in town, Wilson's greeting was on the front page of the local newspaper. "We must not allow our country to be infected with the deadly virus of tribalism," the governor warned. Support for affirmative action, Wilson implied, would put the nation's health at peril. The Rev. Jesse Jackson fumed. What the governor planned to do, Jackson said on arriving in San Francisco, was "illegal." Wilson would have hell to pay. Jackson gathered his troops of black ministers, civil rights lawyers, and students. "Jesse, Jesse, Jesse," chanted more than a thousand protesters jammed into the pews of the Third Baptist Church on the evening before the regent meeting. "We plan to make a moral appeal, a rational appeal," Jackson began, and then made it clear that if these didn't work, he was ready to go further. "We are willing to offer our bodies and offer our lives to save our children." The crowd roared. Emotions were raw. Extra security was called in for the next day's meeting.
For Wilson, a candidate who wanted to identify himself with the interests of white voters, Jackson was an ideal opponent. Republican candidates had long tainted challengers by linking them with Jackson, an icon of black, radical liberalism. In 1988 George Bush's campaign manager, Lee Atwater, boosted Dukakis's negative ratings by sending prospective voters literature that included photographs of George Bush standing next to Ronald Reagan and one of Jackson next to Michael Dukakis. "If Dukakis is elected to the White House, Jesse Jackson is sure to be swept into power on his coattails," the literature read.[58]
Thomas Edsall, Washington Post, October 2, 1988, p. C1.
Democrats running for national office considered it wise to maintain distance from Jackson. Clinton had managed to do that in 1992 by publicly attacking Sister Souljah, a black rap singer, at a rally of Jackson's National Rainbow Coalition. Clinton could now have made a further separation by supporting the abolishment of affirmative action. Instead, two
days before the regents met, Clinton concluded his five-month review and endorsed the civil rights program. The country needed to "mend it," he said, not "end it." When Jackson arrived in San Francisco, he told reporters that Clinton's speech was a step in the right direction. To others, it looked like Clinton's "mend-it-don't-end-it" vernacular pandered to Jackson, making the candidate and the black reverend soul mates. Now it was Wilson, the moderate, pro-choice governor of California, and the black, moderate Connerly against Clinton and the radical Jackson.
From the moment Wilson's sedan rolled through the iron gates to the University of California's Laurel Heights campus in San Francisco on July 20, it was clear that the governor would control the day. Wilson entered the building without a hitch. No one was there to jeer, throw eggs, or block the driveway. The reverend was trapped in a recording studio, and his student troops had yet to materialize in any significant numbers. The extra guards relaxed.
The chancellors of all nine U.C. campuses opposed Connerly's proposals, and in memos, statements, and press releases, they tried to explain why. The regents had been reminded that the university's enrollment still fell far short of reflecting the numbers of Hispanics and blacks who graduated from California high schools. Affirmative action ensured at least a modicum of diversity. "If we are going to continue preparing leaders for California's increasingly diverse society, we must be able to take race, ethnicity, and in some circumstances gender into account as one factor among many in our programs," Jack W. Peltason, president of the university, told the regents.
The university's affirmative action program, fine-tuned over nearly two decades, met the demands of the state's 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education and the 1978 Bakke decision. The plan directs the nine campuses to draw their freshmen from the top 12.5 percent of the state's high school graduating seniors. All but 5 percent of U.C.'s students in the mid-1990s came from
this group, and any student who made the cutoff would be admitted to one of the system's eight campuses with undergraduate programs. Some, however, failed to get their first-choice campus, and one of the reasons was the university's goal of greater diversity.[59]
Overview of the Policies and Procedures Governing Undergraduate Admissions, Attachment B, Fig. 7.
Since many more whites and Asians graduate in the top 12.5 percent—and in the upper percentile of the cutoff—an admissions system pegged solely to test scores and grades would mean that top campuses like Berkeley and UCLA would be predominantly white and Asian. To ensure diversity, university officials argued, blacks and Hispanics in the top 12.5 percent had to be distributed among the campuses.
To do this, each campus admitted 40 to 60 percent of its entering freshmen by test scores and grades alone. For the remaining group (still from the top 12.5 percent), the university took into account a number of factors, including race, geography, and family income. This meant that a black or Latino student with lower grades was often admitted to his or her first-choice campus ahead of an Asian or white student with higher grades. Even with race being a factor, the freshman class still represented a rarefied group of students—the mean grade point average on a 4-point scale was 3.4 for blacks, 3.7 for Hispanics, 3.8 for whites, and 3.9 for Asians.[60]
Ibid.
The university reached below the top 12.5 percent of graduating seniors for only 5 percent of its freshman class. For these students, the university took into account such factors as special athletic talent, music ability, and race. In 1994, 1,374 students were so-called special admits; 19 percent of these admits were black, 39 percent were Latino, 11 percent were Asian, and 28 percent were white.[61]These numbers do not add up to 100 percent because 1.8 percent were listed as unknown and 1.5 percent as Filipino American. In addition, the U.C. administrators break Latino into two categories: Chicanos, who comprised 28.8 percent of the total, and Latinos, who accounted for 8.1 percent of the total.
The arguments for considering race remained similar to those made in 1975, when the regents first approved affirmative action. The decision to consider race as a factor in admissions recognized that the quality of public schools varied dramatically. The children of wealthier parents lived in the better school districts, and, even in 1994, income disparities
fell along racial lines: the mean parental income of Latino and black applicants in 1994 was half that of the white and Asian applicants. The regents decided in 1975 to try leveling the playing field in two ways: through admissions and through special tutoring programs aimed at preparing black and Latino students better. The tutoring programs worked, but reached only 9 percent of all black and Latino high school students.[62]
Ibid.
The complications of graduation rates, eligibility rates, and income disparities were ignored by Wilson at the July regents meeting. Doing so might have been a political decision, but it had been made easier by the very administrators who opposed him. Those officials had lost some credibility. Since March, the regents had been demanding information about the admissions process, and U.C. administrators had divulged it slowly. Less than two weeks before the meeting, for example, U.C. President Peltason wrote the regents a letter informing them that he would be making a few changes in the admissions policies at Berkeley, UCLA, Davis, and Irvine. He had found that at Berkeley and UCLA, admissions officers reviewed all the applications but some more than others. All white and Asian applicants with comparatively low academic records and no other distinguishing features were rejected without further review. In contrast all nonwhite applicants were reviewed very closely. Moreover, Peltason said, Davis and Irvine automatically admitted all academically eligible minority applicants. These practices, he promised, would be stopped, but that they had been going on at all failed to help his case. In fact, they demonstrated to many that Connerly had been right—that to some, the University of California was technically in violation of the Supreme Court's 1978 Bakke decision. That decision said that race could be a plus, but not the only factor in admissions.[63]
The U.S. Office for Civil Rights concluded in March 1996 that the University of California, Berkeley, was in "compliance with Title VI with regard to the undergraduate admission policies and procedures for the College of Letters and Sciences."
Peltason's statements made it easier for Wilson to turn the conference room where the regents met into a stage for presidential politics. On such a stage, Wilson didn't need to argue
the fine points of affirmative action. He needed to sear a new image into the voter's mind, an image of himself as a white governor who wanted to "reward and honor people who work hard, pay their taxes and obey the law."[64]
Dave Lesher and Bill Stall, Los Angeles Times, March 24, 1995, p. 1.
The photos would tell voters that Wilson stood in opposition to Jackson, a black man, dressed in black, who defined his constituency as "the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised."[65]Jackson often described his constituency with these words. Chicago Tribune, April 12, 1994.
Wilson defined the debate in racial terms—the programs that helped blacks and Hispanics were unfair to whites and Asians. "We cannot tolerate university policies or practices that violate fundamental fairness, trampling individual rights to create and give preference to group rights," the governor told the regents. "The people who work hard to pay those taxes and who play by the rules deserve a guarantee that their children will get an equal opportunity to compete for admission to this university—regardless of their race or gender."
Regent Roy Brophy, a Sacramento real estate developer who had known and supported the governor for years, could see that the regents were not going to have time for a real debate on affirmative action. He wanted to buy U.C. administrators and the regents some time. The board, he believed, would never recover from the unspoken awareness that the governor was pushing so hard that a few members would feel compelled to vote against their true feelings. Brophy thought he could save the board from this fate. With every U.C. chancellor in opposition to Wilson, many regents wanted a compromise that would let everyone win. Brophy tried to devise one.
While the regents listened to testimony from a list of speakers, Brophy met privately with the governor. A stocky man who studied law but ended up making millions in construction, Brophy made his case slowly. He had been a regent since 1986. He liked Wilson—he had worked on the governor's first campaign—but he did not want to see Wilson use the board to play politics. Brophy argued that the regents should support Connerly's proposals to ban affirmative action, but give the
administrators a year to study affirmative action and then revisit Connerly's proposals a few months before they went into effect. By that time, he argued, the regents would know if CCRI had succeeded. The regents would also have a better idea of whether it would be feasible to create a diverse university without regard to race.
Wilson listened to Brophy for thirty minutes and then, according to Brophy, said flatly: "I don't want a compromise."[66]
Roy Brophy, interview, September 29, 1995.
"That was it," said Brophy. He would get no help from the governor. "It was a hot political issue so it had to be done right away," Brophy noted.[67]Ibid.
"Normally you'd have several meetings, some rhetorical arm wrestling, but this was a completely uncompromised proposal."Brophy and Wilson returned to the meeting room and waited through the list of more than forty speakers. Reverend Jackson's name was called near the end, and it was clear that his was the name everyone had been waiting for. The regents pulled their seats forward. Reporters who had been chatting in the overflow room turned to their laptop computers to take notes. Wilson looked at Connerly as Jackson walked to the podium.
"Let us stand together and join hands and have prayer," the reverend said. The appeal caught the regents off guard. Some shifted in their seats. Few wanted to rise and pray, but no one wanted to be disrespectful to Jackson publicly. "Let us stand and have prayer," the reverend continued, as everyone looked at the person seated nearby for direction. The governor remained seated. "Let us stand together and have prayer if you will," the reverend demanded for the third time. Slowly, everyone stood. Everyone except Wilson.
"Our Father and our God," Jackson began. Wilson allowed Jackson to go on for forty-five minutes—thirty minutes longer than any other speaker. When Jackson finished his speech—a mixture of prayer, politics, and parable—he strode over to Wilson to shake his hand. The handshake appeared the following day on the front pages of newspapers across the country.
But as soon as the photo was snapped, Wilson was ready for a vote.
He was not alone. The sheer length of the meeting was beginning to wear on people. The television lights had made the room unbearably hot, and the regents were getting testy. "This is becoming hell," muttered Frank Clark, the only remaining regent who had been appointed by former governor Jerry Brown. Then, providentially, someone called in a bomb threat and the building had to be cleared. Outdoors, Wilson and Connerly continued lobbying other regents, making sure that no one had changed their mind. Hoping to win Clark to his side, Connerly scribbled an amendment on a piece of paper that restated the regents' commitment to diversity.
When they returned, the regents voted fifteen to ten to end affirmative action in hiring and promotion. Brophy was one of only two white men appointed to the board who voted against the resolution. The other was William Bagley, a San Francisco attorney and a former Republican state assemblyman. The other "no" votes from appointees came from Ed Gomez, a Latino student regent; Alice Gonzales, a Latina and former state employee; and Tom Sayles, a black executive appointed by Wilson in 1994. The remaining "no" votes came from U.C. President Jack Peltason and the four Democrats who held their seats on the board by virtue of their elected positions. Next, the regents would vote on ending affirmative action in admissions.
As Brophy offered his compromise on admissions, the affirmative action supporters in the audience looked frantically to Jackson for leadership. Jackson just stared at the regents. Then a young man in the audience got up and stood on his chair. Others followed. Unsure at first how to respond, Jackson finally joined the protesters. Wilson and the regents rose and left the room as security officers formed a line between the protesters and the empty table. The protesters were left to sing to themselves.
A contingency room had been set up for precisely this kind of eventuality and the regents now took their seats in the new
room. Reverend Jackson followed and pleaded with the governor and regents to return to the main room. Wilson doubted the room could be secured. "Governor Wilson, can we go downstairs and make an appeal for order?" the reverend pleaded. "No," said Wilson, "we need to get on with business." Even when the security officer assured the regents that it was safe to return, the governor refused. "Let me point out it's not simply a question of security," Wilson explained. "I don't think people here are concerned particularly with their security. What we are tired of is being unable to complete the business of a duly noticed meeting."
In the contingency room, the regents barely listened to a final appeal by UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young. They wanted to get on with the vote. Regent Judith Willick Levin, the president of the Alumni Association, was stunned. "I'd like to make a statement, although I don't think it matters," she said, clearly baffled and frustrated by the day's events. "I'm still terribly concerned about the fact that for a long time we have heard from the chancellors, the administration, the office of the president, the academic senates, and the students that this policy is a policy that works well. I don't know why we are sitting here and saying, 'It's not working. Let's change it completely."
By now, however, the meeting was more about power and presidential politics than affirmative action. The governor, a presidential candidate, wanted to be the man to end affirmative action and most of the regents were there to support him. "The chancellors?" one regent observed much later, when asked why the opposition of the nine chancellors had failed to sway any of the regents.[68]
Interview, 1995.
"Who knows what a chancellor is? We were appointed by a governor and everyone knows who the governor is." The vote proceeded and when Wilson concluded the roll call with a raspy "Aye," the University of California became the first major university to reject the Supreme Court's guidelines on affirmative action. Henceforth, the university was ordered to ban the consideration of race asa factor in admitting students. The vote had been fourteen to ten.[69]
The regents' votes remained the same, except for Bagley, who abstained, and Velma Montoya, a Latino and a Wilson appointee, who voted against ending the consideration of race in admissions. Montoya had voted for ending the consideration of race in employment and contracting.
Fifteen Minutes of Fame and a Fifteen-Month-Long Shadow
Suddenly, Wilson's ratings, which had been lagging in the national polls, went up five points and he enjoyed his biggest fund-raiser yet—a $1,000-a-plate dinner in Orange County that nearly four hundred people attended. On the same day that Wilson banked nearly $400,000, Senator Bob Dole stopped dragging his feet and introduced path-breaking legislation in the Senate to end affirmative action. Dole called the affirmative action programs he had supported for more than two decades a "Band-Aid" that failed to help minorities and women and "a corruption of the principles of individual liberty and equal opportunity upon which our country was founded."[70]
David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times, July 28, 1995, p. 20.
The flurry of activity in August made it seem as if the March madness that had even President Clinton questioning the value of race-based affirmative action had not been a fluke; mainstream politicians now viewed affirmative action as outdated and unfair. Custred and Wood felt redeemed. Fresh financing was within their reach, so, for the second time since they met in 1991, they filed CCRI with the state attorney general. This time around, however, Gelman was careful to meet with Chief Deputy Attorney General David Stirling to ensure that no mistakes were made. The CCRI campaign considered Custred and Wood's first filing in 1993 problematic because the attorney general's office returned a title and summary that said the impact on state and local government would be the "elimination of affirmative action programs … elimination of voluntary school desegregation programs."[71]
Attorney General Daniel E. Lungren and initiative coordinator Kathleen F. DaRosa, Initiative Title and Summary, December 8, 1993.
CCRI's campaign team wanted the words affirmative action excluded from the title and summary because some polls showed that voters supported affirmative action by a slim margin.Despite an earlier meeting between CCRI supporters and Attorney General Dan Lungren at the Republican state covention and Lungren's support of the initiative, Steinberg distrusted the attorney general's office to get the title and summary right. He advised Gelman in May to talk to Stirling. "Please allow enough time in Sacramento to see David Stirling. … We seek no special treatment. … We want to maintain a cordial relationship with the AG's office, but we are conscious of (1) the error made in title-summary on the school choice (changed by the AG from 'parental choice' to the pejorative 'voucher'); the error made in title and summary on the last Wood-Custred submission; (3) that Stirling did not even know the AG had previously titled CCRI."[72]
Arnold Steinberg, memo to Joe Gelman, May 16, 1995.
Gelman followed Steinberg's advice. "We wanted to make sure that they didn't screw up," Gelman recalled, adding that they didn't want the term affirmative action "highlighted" and they didn't want "politically stupid things that would come back and bite us in the butt."[73]Joe Gelman, interview, January 3, 1997.
Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee's field man in California, Scott Taylor, had finally been able to get Haley Barbour, the chairman of the Republican Party, to lean on a few donors. One was Darrell E. Issa, the founder and president of Directed Electronics, Inc., which manufactures and markets a top-selling car alarm and is based in California. He wrote a check for $50,000. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who had made critical statements about the anti-affirmative action efforts in late March, appeared ready to send out a fund-raising letter.
By the end of August, New Hampshire voters were watching television commercials boasting that Pete Wilson was "the first to outlaw affirmative action quotas in state hiring and end preferences for college admissions. … The Power of Ideas … The Courage to Make Them Happen." Wilson's pollster Dick Dresner tested the commercials in six markets including Maine, South Carolina, and Arizona. In every market, Wilson's ratings jumped from the
single digits into the teens or low twenties, according to Dresner.[74]
Dick Dressner, interview, January 5, 1996.
Alas, for Wilson, all of this excitement about CCRI and affirmative action as a powerful presidential issue was short-lived. Too many of the governor's financial backers wanted him in California. He had promised them as much when they filled his reelection coffers in 1994, and now they refused to ante up more for a presidential race. By the end of September, Wilson dropped out of the race. CCRI's popularity held steady in the polls, but no one wrote about it much. Instead, reporters had become interested in General Colin Powell. He was to prove Custred and Wood's worst nightmare: Powell was black, a war hero, and as popular as a rock star. What's more, he favored affirmative action.
Powellmania was more than any potential candidate or campaign manager could have been prepared for.[75]
In September 1995 a Gallup poll showed Powell with a favorable rating of 64 percent, compared to 55 percent for Clinton and 42 percent for Dole.
No one even knew in the summer of 1995 if the retired general, the first black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was a Republican or a Democrat; they knew only that they wanted him to run for president. With polls showing him more popular than Dole and even with Clinton, Powell embarked in September on a nationwide book tour.[76]Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, September 1995.
Although the public knew little about his stand on the issues, the general soon made clear his attitude toward affirmative action—it was a civil rights program from which he had directly benefited. "Let's not deceive ourselves into thinking the playing field is equal," he said. "We should not deceive ourselves that we are a color-blind society."[77]R. W. Apple, Jr., New York Times, September 4, 1995, p. A1.
When asked about preferences, he replied that the United States "is a nation full of preferences."[78]Robert Shogan, Los Angeles Times, September 17, 1995, p. A1.
People in Washington, he added, "who scream about quotas and preferences go right back on Capitol Hill to vote preferences which give corporations some things in the way of specific benefits that they don't deserve. And it's paid for by the middle class."In the same month that Powell began his tour—flanked by fans and reporters wherever he went—the state attorney general
returned CCRI's registration as a ballot initiative.[79]
The attorney general returns a title and summary for every initiative filed. In the summary, the legislative analyst assesses the financial impact of the initiative. Both the title and the summary must appear on the petitions that voters are asked to sign.
Gelman's work with the attorney general's office had paid off. The title and summary mentioned neither affirmative action nor any impact on voluntary desegregation programs. By state law, however, the clock began running. CCRI had 150 days—until February 21, 1996—to collect 693,230 signatures.[80]Initiatives to change the state constitution require a number of signatures equaling 8 percent of the last gubernatorial vote, and an initiative statute requires a number of signatures equaling 5 percent of the last gubernatorial vote. Blueprint for Our Future: Increasing Voter Participation and Reforming the Initiative Process. Senate Office of Research, Sacramento, January 1991.
If CCRI succeeded, the initiative would appear on the November 1996 ballot and, for the first time in history, Americans would vote on a major civil rights program.Money to collect those signatures was still a problem. The prospect of a Powell candidacy had dampened the enthusiasm of many of CCRI's potential donors. Steinberg had been unsuccessful in persuading Powell to support the measure. He wrote the general in August and reminded him of their talk about CCRI at a reception at the Library of Congress. "The issue need not be unduly politicized if people of good will can work together," Steinberg wrote and included a text and short explanation of CCRI.[81]
Arnold Steinberg, letter to General Colin Powell, August 3, 1995.
Powell wrote back a short handwritten note: "Thanks for the note. I understand the CRI [sic], but I still believe there are broader issues involved."[82]Colin L. Powell, note to Arnold Steinberg, August 5, 1995.
He signed the note, "best of luck." By mid-October, Wood was concerned about a Powell candidacy. "Would it pay one of us to call Kristol (William) and sound him out about Republican thinking about Powell. … How much support could we expect from the RNC or even the CRP with Powell as the standard-bearer for the party? My guess is: absolutely none," Wood wrote in a memo to Steinberg.[83]Thomas E. Wood, memo to Arnold Steinberg, October 17, 1995.
The drive to get signatures had problems other than Powell. The initiative process had started as a populist ideal decades ealier, but by the 1970s signatures were collected not by volunteers but by paid signature gatherers.[84]
For more information on initiatives, see Daniel H. Lowenstein, "California Initiatives and the Single Subject Rule," UCLA Law Review, Vol. 30, No. 5, June 1993; Eugene C. Lee, "Representative Government and the Initiative Process," in California Policy Choices. Vol. 6, edited by John Kirlin and Donald Winkler. Los Angeles: University of Southern California, 1990 and Jim Shultz, The Initiative Cookbook, San Francisco, Democracy Center Advocacy Institute West, 1996.
A volunteer-driven campaign to collect these signatures would have been particularly difficult in CCRI's case. Polls showed that as many as 70 percent of the voters favored the initiative, but they weren't organized. Unlike the anti-immigration initiative, Proposition 187, which had drawn on a network of organizations that hadlong been working to curb immigration, few groups had been working against affirmative action. Ironically, the California Association of Scholars, Wood's employer and the one organization explicitly opposed to affirmative action in education, had decided against supporting the measure because it went beyond the scope of education. "CAS is an academically oriented institution, and there is enough on our plate to concern ourselves with," said John Bunzel, the former president of San Jose State University and a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. "This was not a moral issue, but a political issue and I felt it was inappropriate to get involved with something on the ballot."[85]
John Bunzel, interview, January 22, 1996.
In the end, the board's debate became so acrimonious that Bunzel and others resigned. Without CAS or any national organization to provide a base of volunteers, CCRI had to start building one from scratch. And Wood and Custred were not pound-the-pavement types.At the fall San Francisco Gun Show, CCRI did manage to set up a booth. It looked, however, like a wallflower lost among twenty-five tables selling everything from Ruger Mini-14 rifles to beef jerky and Nazi paraphernalia. The CCRI booth, staffed by volunteers such as San Francisco firefighter Patrick Skain, had two small folding tables, no overhead banner, and no pizazz. "We're still looking for the right way to present the initiative to people," reported Skain despondently. "With 187 we could stop people by saying, 'Do you want to put a stop to welfare benefits for illegal aliens?' People connected with that immediately, but we haven't found the poetry to use with affirmative action." In addition, many ordinary citizen volunteers were nonplussed by the CCRI organization. "They're a bunch of intellectuals," Skain said.
Even the paid petition drive was having trouble. Although the initiative's campaign team staged a dramatic kickoff to their campaign in Los Angeles, the signature campaign was anything but robust. "It was all smoke and mirrors," said Gelman. The $50,000 Issa check enabled them to give Mike Arno's American Petition Consultants a $45,000 deposit to
help generate signatures, but Arno needed more—much more. He subcontracted his work out to a handful of smaller companies that hire the men and women who stand with petitions in front of grocery stores and outside sporting events. Their enthusiasm—the willingness to get out of bed on a rainy day or stay in front of a market for several hours to solicit support—depends on how much they earn per signature. "More money," said Arno, "is always the elixir for more petitions."[86]
Michael Arno, interview, January 18, 1996.
In the early months of the campaign, Arno's contract paid him 70 cents per signature; subcontractors were paying as little as 35 cents a signature on the street. At that price, the least bit of discomfort—weather or harassment—sends petition gatherers home. There were other deterrents, too. The workers who collect signatures usually come from the ranks of the unemployed, many of whom are black or Latino. "We usually do well in Los Angeles, but we're finding women and ethnic minorities who refuse to work," Arno said early in the campaign, referring to the unwillingness of women and minorities to collect signatures for a measure that ran against their own interests. "And then there's a group that could take it or leave it, and they'll leave it if they get hassled."[87]Ibid.
By the end of October, however, Arno's drive had built from collecting 15,000 signatures a week to a respectable 54,000 a week. At that rate, he would comfortably reach his goal of collecting nearly 700,000 valid signatures by the February 21 deadline. Then, a couple of days before Halloween, Steinberg called with some news: "He said they didn't have any more money and they didn't know where they were going to get it," Arno recalled.[88]
Ibid.
Arno immediately called the petitioners off the street. Gelman went public with the news that CCRI was broke and said that if it was to be saved, the people who "talked the talk would also have to walk the walk." The state Republican Party's offices started getting hundreds of phone calls. So did Governor Wilson.Republicans to the Rescue
At this point, CCRI could have died. But because Wilson had staked his reputation on a promise to end affirmative action, even though his presidential hopes for 1996 had been dashed, neither he nor the Republican Party dared let such a potent political issue go by the boards. Within days, the campaign got a powerful second wind—and financial support. "If people thought it was political [his newfound position on affirmative action], he would have to prove to them that it was not," George Gorton, his campaign manager, said later in trying to explain why Wilson chose to save the CCRI campaign.[89]
George Gorton, interview, September 19, 1996.
Others came through, as well. After months of being pursued, Gingrich finally endorsed CCRI. His letter—to a small mailing list controlled by the Speaker's staff—went out at the end of October. Arnn, well aware that the campaign needed a leader with more financial clout than himself, had been talking to Connerly. Wood had approached the black regent in early 1995 about heading the campaign, but at that time Connerly was busy ending affirmative action at the University of California. "I could tell that he was tempted," Wood said of Connerly, recalling their initial meeting, "but he said he had a responsibility as a regent. He didn't say 'no' and we stayed in touch."[90]
Tom Wood, interview, 1995.
After the meeting in July 1995 at which the regents voted to end affirmative action at the University of California, Wood said, they "started a full-court press" to get Connerly.The U.C. regent would later tell reporters that he decided to chair the initiative campaign because he feared the regents' decision would be rescinded. This is exactly the argument Wood had used with Connerly in an October 22 memo. "I enclose an article from the San Francisco Chronicle by Edward Epstein about the U.C. Academic Senate, which voted 124 to 2 on Tuesday to call on the regents to rescind their votes to abolish race and gender preferences at U.C. This action has provided me with some additional reasons why both you and the Governor should get heavily involved—even in a highly
public and visible way—with the initiative. … Right now the opposition has two things to attack, but without CCRI looming ahead of them, you and the regents would face the full brunt of their wrath. Consequently, you and the others who voted for your resolutions have, I am afraid, much to fear if the vote on July 20 is not ratified by the voters in November 1996. A clear victory for CCRI at the polls is the only thing that will silence the opposition."[91]
Thomas Wood, memo to Ward Connerly, October 22, 1995.
At the end of October 1995, Wood reported to the campaign his telephone conversation with Connerly. "Ward just returned my phone call. He did not say whether he would take an official position with CCRI and I did not raise the question myself. Since he will not take the Chairmanship without assurances from Wilson that the initiative will succeed, his acceptance would have clinched our success. However, I am pretty much convinced that the fact that he did not decline is good news. … He has spoken to the Governor within the last couple of days. He told him that "they" (the Wilson crowd) would have to fish or cut bait or the initiative will fail. According to Connerly, this message has gotten through loud and clear."[92]
Thomas Wood, memo to Arnold Steinberg with copies to Larry Arnn, Glynn Custred, Joe Gelman, and Darrell Issa, October 31, 1995.
By the end of November, Connerly was on board.In Connerly, the campaign not only got a close friend of the governor—one who they believed wouldn't have taken the job without assurances from Wilson that money to fund the campaign would be forthcoming—but a successful African American. "To be blunt the fact that he was black was very important," said Gelman.[93]
Joe Gelman, interview, January 5, 1997.
"It's like using affirmative action to defeat affirmative action. It's slightly unprincipled, but the fact was he brought some positive things like the full weight of the governor's office."Connerly's arrival represented the ascendence of the politicians over the intellectuals at CCRI. Gelman, who was considered too unpredictable, was asked to leave. Wood and Custred, who had already been sidelined by Gelman and Arnn, were even more out of the loop. Neither complained as they watched Connerly in action. Earlier CCRI had difficulty
getting to Wilson—Connerly now could speed-dial the governor's office. Wilson offered his mailing list of small donors, asked state legislators to have their staffs collect signatures, and even called on donors himself. "I'll give him things I had been trying to do forever, and they're done in a day," said Steinberg referring to Connerly.[94]
Arnold Steinberg, interview, January 1996.
For the first time, money was not a problem for CCRI's organizers. Less than a month after Connerly took over, Wilson raised more than $500,000, including $464,859 from the state Republican Party.[95]
Ballot Measure Committee Campaign Disclosure Statement—Long Form, Registrar of Voters, 1996.
The going rate for signatures mushroomed to more than $1 a signature. Suddenly, paid workers were happy to stay out longer. CCRI's speaker's bureau, which had been dormant through the summer and fall, became a one-man show. Connerly spoke on dozens of radio programs between December 1 and the February 21 deadline. Every time he spoke, the telephone lines in the Los Angeles CCRI office lit up, and more volunteers signed on.By the time the Republicans met at their state convention in mid-February in Burlingame, few doubted CCRI would be on the ballot and some believed that it would be a big Republican issue in the November elections. Wood and Custred, dressed in light-colored suits, sat in the Hyatt Regency's atrium like two middle-aged men on a park bench enjoying their triumph but left out of the parade. Their earlier dream of making the initiative nonpartisan no longer held any promise for them. Custred remained an independent, but he acknowledged the Republicans' claim to the issue and sounded just slightly regretful that he and Wood had little to do that weekend. Had he met with Connerly? "Oh yeah, yeah, I saw Connerly. We had a brief meeting in the hall," Custred later said without a trace of bitterness.[96]
Glynn Custred, interview.
Connerly was too busy for much more than a handshake. Reporters shadowed the new CCRI chairman's every move; party leaders squired him as if he were visiting royalty. He was one of only a handful of blacks among eight hundred convention-goers and the only black to address the gathering.
"We're going to do this in California so the people of this state can say once and for all, 'We favor equal opportunity for all and preferences for none,'" he said to applause. He asked for his listeners' help with the confidence of a man who didn't need it.
At the big Saturday night dinner, more than a dozen of California's political leaders were introduced as they took their seats at the head table. Connerly was the only one to receive a standing ovation. Some wondered what would happen when Jack Kemp, the keynote speaker, began to talk. Earlier that year, he had irritated other Republicans when he said he wouldn't participate in the 1996 campaign if race were an issue. Furthermore, Kemp appeared to support affirmative action and said flatly in July 1995, "I think race is a legitimate factor to take into consideration."[97]
The Hotline, July 24, 1995.
Why, some California Republicans wondered, had Kemp been invited to give a keynote speech with Ward Connerly at the head table? They got their answer less than ten minutes into his speech. The popular Republican politician talked about what a great country, what a great state, and what a great party Republicans shared. Then he paused and turned toward the head table and toward the businessman from Sacramento. Mr. Connerly, he said, was "destined to be a hero in his own time."In the end, more than a million signatures were collected by the February 21 deadline. Connerly worked hard, but it didn't hurt him to have friends in high places. If his enthusiasm inspired others, it didn't ignite a groundswell of volunteer signature gatherers. Ultimately, Wilson and the state Republican Party could take the credit for putting CCRI on the ballot. It was they who pumped nearly $500,000 into the campaign and paid the signature gatherers to stay on the street.