Ward Connerly's faux Civil Right$ initiative rejected again: Utah Legislature Rejects Bid to Put Anti-Equal Opportunity Measure on 2010 Ballot

Reposted from The Leadership Conference

Last Thursday, the Utah House of Representatives adjourned for the year without voting on HJR 24, a resolution to place an anti-equal opportunity measure on the state's 2010 ballot.

The resolution, introduced in February, called for a state constitutional amendment banning equal opportunity initiatives in state public higher education, employment, and contracting.

Equal opportunity initiatives ensure equal access to educational and professional opportunities for qualified minorities, women, and members of other underrepresented communities. Equal opportunity opponent Ward Connerly, a California businessman and millionaire, has sought to enact similar bans on equal opportunity through state ballot referendums all over the country for more than a decade.

The loss in Utah is the second defeat that Connerly and his allies have been dealt by equal opportunity supporters in recent weeks. In Missouri, Connerly allies filed to withdraw their proposed measure from the ballot rather than face an ACLU lawsuit challenging its language.

To date, Connerly-sponsored measures have passed in California, Washington, Michigan, and, most recently, in Nebraska. Nebraska was one of five states Connerly targeted in 2008. Local and national equal opportunity supporters were successful in exposing his deceptive practices and tactics, which kept his measure off the ballot in three states: Arizona, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Voters in the fifth state, Colorado, became the first to reject a Connerly anti-equal opportunity measure.

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Ward Connerly and Tim Asher withdraw their latest challenge to Equal Opportunity in Missouri in the face of an ACLU Lawsuit

Proposed Ballot Initiative Withdrawn In Face Of ACLU Lawsuit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

JEFFERSON CITY, MO – Faced with an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, a political operative who has failed twice before to place an anti-affirmative action initiative on the Missouri ballot has abandoned his latest attempt to rewrite the state constitution to ban equal opportunity programs.

Timothy Asher, head of the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative, which has led two unsuccessful efforts in the past two years to place before state voters an unconstitutional ballot initiative that would have rolled back an array of affirmative action programs, officially requested last week to withdraw his third attempt to qualify his initiative for the ballot. The ACLU, the ACLU of Eastern Missouri and the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri filed a lawsuit in August charging that Asher's latest proposed initiative sought to trick and defraud Missouri voters.

"This is a huge victory that will protect programs intended to ensure that women and racial and ethnic minorities are given an equal opportunity to compete," said Reginald T. Shuford, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program. "Essential programs, including data collection requirements that help the government identify racial, ethnic and gender discrimination, will now remain in place."

All of Asher's proposed initiatives would have changed the Missouri Constitution by effectively decimating many equal opportunity programs, leading to the erosion of the participation of women and racial and ethnic minorities in public education, state contracting and employment.

"The state of Missouri has a constitutional obligation to ensure that no one is denied opportunity because of unfair and unjust discrimination," said Stephen Douglas Bonney, legal director for the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri. "America is the land of equal opportunity and these proposed initiatives flew in the face of some of our most cherished ideals."

Missouri was one of three states – along with Arizona and Oklahoma – in which efforts to qualify anti-equal opportunity initiatives for the ballot during the 2008 election cycle failed. A similar measure made it on the ballot in Colorado but was rejected by voters. Asher spearheaded the effort in Missouri, working as part of a largely unsuccessful national campaign targeting several states led by millionaire Californian Ward Connerly.

Asher submitted a second proposed initiative at the end of 2008, and the ACLU responded by filing a lawsuit charging that it was unconstitutional and fraudulent. In June 2009, a Missouri circuit court judge struck down the initiative, ruling that it didn't comply with state law.

After Asher submitted his third proposed ballot initiative in July 2009, the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging it, charging that the initiative would confuse voters by unconstitutionally forcing them to vote on multiple issues in a single proposition and that the ballot summary certified by the secretary of state contained language that was unfair and misleading, in violation of Missouri law. The ACLU lawsuit also charged that Missouri's auditor failed to adequately assess the proposed initiative's fiscal impact.

Other attorneys on the case include Anthony E. Rothert of the ACLU of Eastern Missouri and ACLU cooperating attorney Arlene Zarembka of St. Louis.

• A copy of Asher's letter seeking withdrawal of his proposed initiative, and Secretary of State Robin Carnahan's approval, is available online at: www.aclu.org/racial-justice/jones-et-al-v-carnahan-et-al-asher-letter-requesting-withdrawal
• A copy of the ACLU's most recent lawsuit is available online at: www.aclu.org/racial-justice/jones-et-al-v-carnahan-et-al-petition-declaratory-judgment-and-permanent-injunction
• Additional information about equal opportunity is available online at: www.aclu.org/racialjustice/aa
• Additional information about the ACLU of Eastern Missouri is available online at: www.aclu-em.org
• Additional information about the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri is available at: www.aclukswmo.org

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Ward Connerly watch: Ward Connerly's anti-Affirmative Action initiative will be back on the ballot in Arizona

Well it appears our old friend Ward Connerly is at it again. Connerly's effort to outlaw affirmative action programs and any special programs or preferences for women and minorities will be back on the ballot in Arizona next year.

On a 17-11 vote the Arizona State Senate gave final approval to a proposed constitutional amendment which purports to prohibit preferential treatment or discrimination by government on the basis of race, sex or ethnic origin. The measure, which already has been approved by the House, will now be placed on the 2010 ballot.

A similar initiative drive in 2008 failed when backers failed to gather enough signatures.

Federal courts have long-since outlawed numerical quotas that spell out that a certain percentage of school admissions, jobs or contracts must go to minorities or women. But judges have upheld various "affirmative action' programs designed to help those whose groups have been underrepresented. And the courts also have allowed certain bid preferences if the government can show that minority or women are not getting a share of contracts.

But Ward Connerly hopes to end all that. His deceptively simple language would formally prohibit any outreach efforts to women and minority owned businesses. It would also prohibit informational forums, such as "how to do business with the City" type forums if they were at all targeted towards providing information to under-represented groups. In short, it would prohibit any official efforts to address under-representation or disproportionalities in public employment, contracting, or education.

So if 99.3% of City contracting dollars were spent with firms headed by white males (as once was the case here in Wichita) that would be fair in the eyes of Connerly. But if that same City were to host informational forums designed to encourage more Women and Minority owned firms to bid on City contracts, that would be an offense to Connerly's sense of justice, hence the need for his tireless efforts to protect the strong and connected from the tyranny of the weak or disadvantaged.

Connerly talks mo' shit than a little bit about fairness and the elimination of preferences and unfair advantage, but make no mistake, Connerly is no 'King'... Ward Connerly is the President and CEO of Connerly & Associates, a California based lobbying firm. Connerly & Associates clients have included the Roofing Contractors Association of California, California Building Officials, the California Vendors Policy Committee, the Roofing Contractors Association of Southern California, and the Associated Roofing Contractors of Northern California. C&A also originates home repair loans, does housing rehabilitation consulting and administers community development block grants.

His efforts are funded by individuals such as:

John Moores: a San Diego-based software millionaire, developer and owner of the San Diego Padres, and chairman of JMI Realty. Moores contributed $400,000 to Connerly’s losing 2003 Prop 54 campaign in California, the so-called Racial Privacy Initiative, which sought to forbid the state from collecting statistics on race and gender. Moores worked with Connerly on the University of California board of trustees, and was censured by the board for releasing his own study criticizing UC admissions policies as favoring minorities. He resigned in November 2007.

Harlan Crow: Considered by Connerly “one of the most important” of his “major allies.” Crow, son of Dallas real estate tycoon Trammell Crow, owns Crow Realty Investors and is president of Crow Holdings, a real estate company.

Thomas L. Rhodes: Co-founder and director of Connerly’s organizations, who along with Zamrzla played a key role in Connerly’s decision to launch the “Super Tuesday” campaign. Rhodes has been vice chairman since 1998 (and a board member since 1996), of the Clearwater, Florida-based American Land Lease, which is engaged in the ownership, development and financing of residential land lease communities. Rhodes sits on the board of directors of the Bradley Foundation, which has contributed millions of dollars to Connerly’s ACRI.

John Uhlmann: Chairman of the Kansas City-based Jabez Territories LLC, which provides construction, general contracting and development services, and is another major backer of Connerly’s initiatives.

John Zamrzla: President and chief executive officer of the Western Pacific Roofing Corporation and a former president of the Chicago-based National Roofing Contractors Association. Zamrzla serves as Connerly’s American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI) board chair. He has also been identified by Connerly as one of “the directors of the American Civil Rights Coalition.”

To be clear, Ward Connerly is no friend of Civil Rights, level playing fields, or fundamental fairness. He is simply a professional lobbyist, funded by Contractors, Developers, and Real Estate Executives, ALL of whom stand to benefit if Connerly can eliminate the competition by re-writing state constitutions and rolling back civil rights programs that help level the playing field for qualified minorities and women.

It is particularly telling that Connerly who publicly affects a moral opposition to preferences, never actually seeks to eliminate all preferences... His efforts in education have never addressed legacy preferences, specific geographic preferences, or preferences awarded to the alumnus of certain pre-determined 'Top" schools, all of which overwhelmingly accrue to the majority. All of which have escaped his scrutiny and his outrage in each and every campaign he's launched.

While he purports to be a man opposed to discrimination in contracting and employment, it is also peculiar that neither Connerly nor his "Civil Right$" institute have ever offered a bill, policy, or proposition to address the underlying institutional discrimination and/or disproportionalities that affirmative action plans were intended to counteract.

While appropriating the language and cloaking his agenda under the mantle of Civil Rights, Ward Connerly is merely continuing his antithetical, multi-state, highly funded, deceptive and disingenuous defense of the status-quo.

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Ward Connely Watch: The California Appellate Court upholds Berkeley student-assignment plan - rejects bid from Connerly

Ward Connerly, the California businessman who launched successful anti-affirmative-action campaigns in nearly 10 states, was unsuccessful in his latest attempt to thwart a Berkeley, Calif., student-assignment plan to promote diversity in its schools.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), along with a coalition of civil rights groups including the ACLU of Northern California, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and the ACLU of Southern California, successfully represented a group of parents who intervened to protect the student assignment plan in Berkeley, California against the challenge from Ward Connerly's American Civil Rights Foundation. Berkeley's plan seeks to promote diversity in its schools by taking account of the demographics of the neighborhoods where students live, including parental education level; family income; and race and/or ethnicity."

The California Appellate Court ruled that Berkeley's new plan to weigh demographics of neighborhoods where students live, parental education levels, family income and race to further diversify its schools does not violate Proposition 209--the Connerly-authored constitutional provision that makes it illegal to grant privilege or preference based on race. The court's decision appropriately recognized the importance of school district efforts to bring students together across lines of race and class and to provide access and opportunities to students who live in areas of concentrated disadvantage. In 2007, the United States Supreme Court similarly recognized the importance of efforts to promote diversity and avoid racial isolation in schools in Seattle and Louisville, and the ability of school districts to take account of neighborhood demographics, including race, as part of those efforts.

"The constitutional provision prohibits unequal treatment of particular person and groups of persons; it does not prohibit the collection and consideration of community-wide demographic factors," said Justice Patricia Sepulveda, writing for the majority in the California Court of Appeals.

This is an important victory for those who understand the importance of a diverse learning environment and believe that opportunity should be equally afforded to all," said John Payton, NAACP Legal and Educational Defense Fund president and director-counsel.

Connerly's lawsuit challenged the most recent efforts of the Berkeley school district to integrate its schools; indeed Berkeley has been at the national forefront of such efforts for decades. In 1954, on the heels of Brown v. Board of Education, a citizens' commission was formed which concluded that Berkeley suffered from severe housing segregation that led to racial isolation in the schools. In 1968, the school district became one of the first in the nation to integrate its schools voluntarily. Over time and in light of the continued residential segregation in Berkeley, the school district continued to adopt and revise its student assignment plans to preserve integration in its schools, leading up to the 2004 plan successfully defended today.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has worked to dismantle racial segregation and ensure equal educational opportunity in our nation's schools for over six decades, representing African-American students in Brown v. Board of Education and numerous subsequent landmark school desegregation cases. Information about LDF's school diversity work can be accessed on this site, including a manual for parents, educators and advocates entitled Still Looking to the Future: Voluntary K-12 School Integration. 

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Round 2: Ward Connerly gears up for another anti-affirmative action effort in Missouri

It was just last month that the millionaire lobbyist Ward Connerly planned his anti-Affirmative Action "Super Tuesday". He'd hoped that through his privately funded ballot initiatives, he would persuade residents of the states of Arizona, Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado, and Oklahoma to amend their State constitutions permanently banning affirmative action programs and any other current or future program designed to remediate the effects of racial or gender discrimination. His efforts on that super Tuesday were largely unsuccessful. He failed to collect enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot in Arizona, Oklahoma, or Missouri, and the ballot initiative was defeated in Colorado.

Now it seems Ward Connerly and his faux 'Civil Right$' troupe are gearing up for a second try in the State of Missouri. Connerly blamed the failure in Missouri this year in part on getting a late start in gathering signatures. So now, in his second attempt, he is starting early... On December 11th, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan approved a new petition for a ballot initiative which they hope to put before Missouri voters in 2010.

Tim Asher, executive director of the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative, is once again heading up the effort.

Anita Russell, Mary Ratliff, Clyde, Rev. Ford, Brother Crumpton, Ken Hughlon... It's time to get busy! And now, our moment of Zen...

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Ward Connerly Had Major Losses in His 2008 Effort to Abolish Race-Sensitive Admissions at Public Universities in Five States

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A year ago Ward Connerly of the American Civil Rights Institute had planned a "Super Tuesday" this November when he boasted that five states would vote to abolish the consideration of race in admissions to state universities. Connerly had previously met with success in offering similar public referenda in California, Washington State, and Michigan.

But efforts to get initiatives on the ballots in Oklahoma, Arizona, and Missouri came up short. Connerly was able to get the issue before the voters in Colorado and Nebraska.

In Nebraska, 58 percent of the voters approved the anti-affirmative action measure by a 58 percent to 42 percent margin. But in Colorado, Amendment 46 to the state constitution was narrowly defeated. In Colorado, a slim 50.6 percent majority rejected the proposal to ban affirmative action.

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Equal Opportunity: Colorado’s In For the Fight of Her Life but Governor Ritter’s on Her Side

Guest posted by Colorado Springs NAACP President Rosemary Harris Lytle

Colorado’s ballot for November is crowded and full of proposals that seem to defy logic. But none of them is as dangerous and deceptive as Amendment 46 – the anti-affirmative action proposal that would set the state back 40 years.

Supported by California millionaire Wardell Connerly, Amendment 46 is all about fooling voters and playing on their insecurities and confusion about buzz words like civil rights, affirmative action, quotas and preferential treatment. And Connerly, an African American who was himself an affirmative action baby, couldn’t be prouder. His goal is to make unconstitutional everywhere equal opportunity and affirmative action programs in state hiring, contracts and education – no matter how it must be done.

The Colorado Springs Branch NAACP is one of more than 40 organizations that comprise Colorado Unity, the equal opportunity coalition that has worked for 12 years to keep affirmative action as the law of the land in Colorado State government. With nearly 500 members, the Branch is the largest in the NAACP’s Colorado, Montana, Wyoming State Conference headed by President Beatrice Madison and has been, perhaps, the most active of the Units in Region IV (directed by Rev. Gill Ford of the National Office) when it comes to protecting equal opportunity.

But it hasn’t been easy. First, in 1996, Ed Jones, a Black, Republican, former State Legislator from Colorado Springs, tried to end affirmative action in state education -- and the voters turned him back with a vengeance. Then, those who make it their business to do business without folks of color around the table, dropped Jones (he lost his next election ) and got a bigger gun – Wardell Connerly.

Read the Ms Magazine article by editor Kate Spillar to see who he really is: http://www.msmagazine.com/winter2008/WardConnerlyPart1.asp

When it comes to ending affirmative action, as he did in California, Washington and Michigan, Connerly modes operandi is always the same: trick voters by calling his proposals “civil rights initiatives” and get them to sign your petitions by telling them outright lies such as “The NAACP supports it. Why shouldn’t you?” When it comes to duping voters, Connerly is, without parallel, Public Enemy No. 1.

This time around, a group of those who signed the petitions came to Colorado Unity and the NAACP, asking how they could take those signatures back. They said they had been tricked by the Connerly petition carriers. Colorado Unity and the NAACP maintained that they represented a sample of all the petition signers, compelling enough to cast into doubt how all the other signatures were secured.

But, in short order, the Secretary of State’s office verified the Connerly signatures (even though one petition was signed by “Jesus Christ”) and after months of legal haggling, though, last week a judge threw out their suit.

Amendment 46 proceeds to voters Nov. 4.

Amendment 46 would make it unconstitutional for government agencies in Colorado to consider race and gender in most hiring, contracting or school admissions, effectively ending affirmative action-type programs dating back to the 1960s. We know, however, that racism and sexism are still real and though there has been progress, we have not yet achieved King’s dream. In order to get there, there must be a mandate with legal teeth; state equal opportunity programs and other efforts like those that support a level playing field, pay equity for women and people of color and greater diversity in higher education in a state where the largest public university has an African American student population of less than 2 percent.

If Colorado is to be all that she can be, everyone must have the opportunity to be at the table, everyone must have access to information that otherwise might only exist in a private board room or on an exclusive golf course, and everyone must have the ability to compete on a playing field that has been leveled.

If Colorado is to be great, she must protect existing affirmative action programs – and make them stronger even – so that equal opportunity is one day the real law of the land.

This just in … During a press conference on the Capitol Steps, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter will publicly voice his opposition to Amendment 46; a beautiful thing for the State of Colorado and validation of the work of Colorado Unity and the Colorado Springs Branch NAACP.

Rosemary Harris Lytle -- Communications Director for 9to5, National Association of Working Women -- is President of the Colorado Springs Branch NAACP and Co-Chair of the Speakers Bureau of Colorado Unity, the statewide equal opportunity coalition.


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From the Rocky Mountain News, Sept. 2008:

What Amendment 46 would do
Prohibit the state from granting preferential treatment to anyone on the basis of race, sex or ethnicity in hiring, education and contracts, effectively eliminating race- and gender-based affirmative action programs.

* Who is for it: The Colorado "Civil Rights" Initiative Committee
* The money behind it: $360,010 raised through Sept. 2.  ($346,870, or 96 percent of the total, comes from organizations run by California entrepreneur Ward Connerly.)
* Who is against it: Coloradans for Equal Opportunity
* The money against it: $281,050 raised through Sept. 2.  ($247,655, or 88 percent of the total, comes from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in Washington, D.C.)

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New Advertisements in Colorado and Nebraska expose the financial and ideological underpinnings of Ward Connerly's faux "civil rights" initiative

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3 down, 2 to go... Ward Connerly's faux "Civil Rights" initiative suffers a third consecutive defeat in Arizona

from the NAACP LDF
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On Thursday, California businessman Ward Connerly was handed his third consecutive defeat in this year's five-state campaign designed to erect new barriers to equal opportunity in public education, public employment and public contracting. Connerly has been unable to get the ballot initiatives certified in the majority of the states where he and his associates have sponsored and funded efforts this year; identical measures in Oklahoma and Missouri similarly failed to qualify for the ballot.

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"Today is another important victory in the fight to preserve equal access to opportunity. As was the case in Oklahoma and Missouri, Ward Connerly's misguided and divisive effort has again fallen short, this time in Arizona. In light of the staggering disqualification rate that the Secretary of State found in its review of the signatures, the curtain has been pulled back on Connerlys attempts to abuse the democratic process," said John Payton, NAACP Legal Defense Fund President and Director-Counsel.

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Arizona's Secretary of State decertified the so-called "Arizona Civil Rights Initiative" because it did not gain sufficient public support to place it on the ballot this November. The initiative, if passed, would have amended the Arizona constitution to ban programs designed to provide equal access to women and minorities in the areas of public education, public employment and public contracting. The petitions were rife with phony or invalid signatures, fake addresses and other disqualifying factors. For example, one notarized petition included the names and "signatures" of American presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. It also listed Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi with Saudi Arabia listed as his street address and Tibet as his city of residence.

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The campaigns in Arizona and several other states have been widely accused of employing deceptive and improper practices in the signature gathering process.

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The NAACP LDF has been intimately involved in challenging these targeted campaigns to roll back civil rights nationwide. The NAACP LDF worked closely with Protect Arizona's Freedom, a grass-roots volunteer coalition of Arizona citizens who monitored the state's examination of the petitions to ensure that the ballot initiative process was not manipulated. Thursday's victory was yet another sign that Connerly's efforts are being met with close scrutiny and resistance nationwide, and that the people reject his campaign to erect barriers to equal opportunity in public education, public employment and public contracting.

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