← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Recluse
Thread ID: 11432 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2003-12-10
2003-12-10 14:47 | User Profile
So, Whites in Michigan should pass up a chance to get some protection against racist AA programs because it might - and the political wisdom of this strategy is certainly debatable - help Jorge get re-elected. Why, so they have the privelege of competing against 50 affirmative action eligible amnestied Mexicans for every job or university spot that opens up in the future? Such a deal!
[url]http://www.freep.com/news/metro/dicker5_20031205.htm[/url]
Neither party wants vote on preferences
December 5, 2003
BY BRIAN DICKERSON FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
In this season of partisan discord, there's at least one thing the leaders of Michigan's Democratic and Republican parties agree on:
Neither party's poo-bahs want to see the anti-affirmative action initiative championed by California businessman and regent Ward Connerly come within a million miles of Michigan's November 2004 ballot.
Democratic leaders fear losing an up-or-down vote on affirmative action. Republican leaders, who have sent mixed signals on racial and gender preferences, worry that a ballot question would energize minority voters hostile to Republican candidates.
U.S. Supreme Court justices narrowly upheld the University of Michigan's right to consider applicants' race and gender in a landmark ruling last summer. But a Free Press poll suggests that as many as two-thirds of Michigan residents favor a constitutional amendment that would essentially negate the high court's ruling by barring preferential treatment of women and minorities.
What's at risk Both major parties have been working hard to make sure voters don't have an opportunity to express those sentiments in next year's election.
On the Republican side, key strategists such as White House political adviser Karl Rove and state GOP chair Betsy DeVos are quietly warning would-be donors that any financial support for the Connerly initiative would be detrimental to President George W. Bush's re-election.
On the Democratic side, former state Rep. Maxine Berman, the No. 2 aide in Gov. Jennifer Granholm's southeast Michigan office, has joined a working group that includes representatives from Detroit Renaissance, the UAW, the NAACP and others opposed to Connerly's initiative.
Michael J. Rice, the retired brigadier general who serves as director of the group, Citizens for a United Michigan, says the group's immediate mission is to discourage voters from signing petitions the initiative's backers plan to begin circulating next month. If the petitioners succeed in placing the issue before voters, Rice's group will lead the counter-campaign to preserve affirmative action.
Backer sees challenges State Rep. Leon Drolet, the Macomb Township Republican who is the local point-man for the Connerly initiative, notes that 21 Republican state legislators have enlisted in his anti-preferences crusade.
"Even though Betsy DeVos and other top Republicans have gotten their marching orders, it's unfathomable to most Republicans that the party leadership is absent on this core issue," Drolet said Thursday. But he concedes that many would-be Michigan donors have been scared off.
Drolet says his steering committee has collected only $30,000 so far. He says collecting the 320,000 signatures needed to place the anti-affirmative action measure before voters will cost $500,000, and that he expects to raise half that sum outside Michigan.
Establishment opposition has also hampered the initiative's efforts to find legal counsel. Most of the lawyers who specialize in state constitutional law work for firms affiliated with one of the two parties, and law firms who work for the University of Michigan have been put on notice that assisting Connerly's campaign could jeopardize their firm's business relationships with U-M.
"The effort to stop this from going on the ballot will be unprecedented," Drolet predicts grimly. "There isn't a step along the way that won't be challenged."