Ward Connerly is working to end affirmative action programs in five states, but opponents are fighting back.
There are no massive crowds at his rallies and no news media entourages documenting his every word and move. Still, Ward Connerly, champion of the nation’s “antipreference” movement, is busy revving up his “Super Tuesday Equal Rights Campaign,” hoping for another knockout punch to the nation’s affirmative action programs for minorities and women.
Connerly has been campaigning in five states — Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma — seeking to get sufficient voter support to get his proposed constitutional amendment on their respective state’s November election day ballot. If he succeeds, voters would be asked this fall to decide whether their state’s constitution should include language prohibiting so-called “preferential treatment” for racial minorities and women in the admissions policies of state-controlled colleges and universities and in the awarding of contracts by state and local government bodies.
“Once we get on the ballot, I think we’ve won,” says Connerly, a California businessman who has succeeded in persuading voters in California, Michigan and Washington state to approve constitutional language similar to what he is promoting this year. “When people read the language, they are apt to vote for it,” Connerly says confidently in a telephone interview with Diverse.
Connerly’s string of successes has mobilized traditional civil rights advocates and others who support affirmative action in these states. They too are organizing, hoping to blunt his momentum and persuade voters to keep intact programs they say help level the playing field for minorities and women.
“When I learned Ward Connerly was coming to Arizona to destroy the system we have, that really bothered me,” says Kyrsten Sinema, coordinator of Protect Arizona Freedom, the umbrella organization of groups closing ranks to oppose Connerly. Sinema, a Democratic state legislator representing central Phoenix, says the impact of Connerly’s ballot initiative passing would be “colossal.”
