Connerly Leads New Assault on Preferences

SACRAMENTO — A national campaign to end affirmative action was born amid controversy Wednesday as the sponsors of California’s Proposition 209 chose to launch their expanded effort on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.

The timing reignited a flash point of the campaign last year to end government affirmative action programs. Two Democratic legislators immediately blasted the announcement as a “shameful” or “despicable” distortion of the civil rights movement.

But in a combative stance of his own, Ward Connerly, former chairman of the Proposition 209 campaign, insisted that he has a right to his own interpretation of the movement’s goal.

And he argued that King’s vision of a colorblind society is the one Proposition 209 sought by ending preferences for women and minorities in hiring, contracting and university admissions.

“I will not run from the right to use Dr. King’s words as I would use Lincoln or Washington or Jefferson or Kennedy,” Connerly said. “[Opponents] hide behind the notion that they are the good people and they alone want the right thing for America. They haven’t cornered the market on goodness. And they need to be challenged . . . in every church and every synagogue and every village and hamlet in his nation because we think our cause is right.”

Connerly, a University of California regent who was recruited to run the ballot campaign by Gov. Pete Wilson, said his national organization will be called the American Civil Rights Institute.

It is a nonprofit group intended to spread the message of Proposition 209 through speeches and research to other states and the federal government.

It will also have a companion organization--the American Civil Rights Coalition--that is created under a different set of tax laws that allow it to be an active player in political campaigns.

Connerly said organizers in Florida, Oregon, Colorado and Washington have already asked for help in promoting the issue.

At the same time, Connerly promised that his effort would be aggressive in Washington, where it seeks federal legislation that reflects the goals of Proposition 209.

Former Senate Majority Leader and presidential candidate Bob Dole introduced such legislation in 1995. Connerly, however, blamed political “timidity” for the lack of attention that caused the legislation to fail.

Connerly, joined at the podium in the state Capitol by Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco), was in a combative mood Wednesday and took on several institutional players in the affirmative action debate.

He declared that a federal judge’s recent decision against the ballot measure is ridiculous. He also said the fund-raising effort for his institute will have to overcome the corporate neutrality on the issue in California.

“They had spines of Jello in the 209 campaign and I don’t think that has changed,” he said.

But Connerly saved most of his criticism for opponents of the measure, calling them “arrogant” for claiming exclusive right to King’s legacy. “If we don’t contest their point of view, they have the ability to destroy this democracy,” he said.

The strong language reignited the hottest confrontation of the 1996 initiative campaign.

The debate was triggered by the state Republican Party’s decision to spend $2 million broadcasting a commercial excerpting King’s famous “I have a Dream Speech.”

In the excerpted quote, King described his dream of a world “where [people] will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Coretta Scott King, wife of the slain civil rights leader, as well as other family members and associates, criticized the commercial for implying that King would have supported Proposition 209.

In fact, they said, he spoke at length about the need for affirmative action programs to correct inequities in hiring and university admissions decisions.

On Wednesday, some leading opponents of the ballot measure as well as the operators of King’s estate said Connerly was misinterpreting their complaint.

They said Connerly was accurately depicting King’s goal. But they said he parted with the traditional civil rights movement about the means to achieve it.

“It is dangerous to indulge a fantasy of colorblindness when race is central to everything in this country,” said Connie Rice, western regional counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Phillip Jones, chairman of the firm managing King’s estate in Atlanta, added: “They are not wrong to point to Dr. King because he represents the ideal, which is a colorblind society. But we disagree on the methodology. Dr. King himself supported affirmative action methodologically.”