Clinton’s Visit a Windfall for Connerly

SACRAMENTO — Ward Connerly should be chipping in to help pay for President Clinton’s trip to California this weekend. No matter what the president says Saturday in his ballyhooed UC San Diego commencement address about race relations, it’s bound to benefit Connerly and his expanding, nationwide assault on government affirmative action.

It already has. Connerly has been hitching a ride on Clinton’s trip.

He has been invited to assess the president’s speech on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. Today in San Diego, he will participate in a three-hour “town hall” discussion on racial preferences to be carried live on the Roger Hedgecock radio show.

On Monday, Connerly called a press conference to piggyback on Clinton--and to warn the president not to tie California’s Proposition 209 to racism. If the president “expresses his displeasure in any way with what the voters have said, it is almost an insult,” declared Connerly, a black businessman who headed the 209 campaign.

But later he added: “Candidly, any time the president speaks on this topic it cannot help but heighten the interest in our message. It gives us a level of national attention we otherwise would not enjoy. Unwittingly the president is benefiting us.”

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Proposition 209--banning racial and gender preferences in government hiring, contracting and university admissions--passed last November by a comfortable margin of nine percentage points. It since has been tied up in federal courts, with Clinton’s Justice Department siding with 209’s opponents.

Connerly now has formed a small organization--two staffers, a tiny office--and is helping anti-affirmative action campaigns across the country: In Washington state, Houston, Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Arizona . . .

This week, he is running a radio ad pegged to Clinton’s speech. The spot features Connerly conversing with a young girl.

“Does it matter what color someone is?” the girl asks. “I say no,” Connerly replies, “but President Clinton needs to answer that question. Racial discrimination was always wrong. It still is. Even if it’s called affirmative action . . . I hope President Clinton will announce a new policy on race . . . stop using race to decide who gets a job or who gets into school.”

The ads are running in four cities: Washington, D.C., to catch establishment ears; San Diego, to dovetail with speech hype; Houston, to aid an initiative drive, and Oklahoma City, where Connerly is trying to persuade black GOP Rep. J.C. Watts to join his cause. “We’ll probably spend $100,000 on this,” Connerly says.

But Clinton’s visit also is likely to attract new donors to Connerly’s coffers.

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Clinton no doubt chose California for his speech because of the state’s racial diversity: an estimated 52% white, 30% Latino, 10% Asian, 7% black, 1% Native American. Another possible factor: maintaining solid political ties to California for Vice President Al Gore’s benefit in 2000.

Clearly, the president is thinking long-term about his legacy. But he’s also trying to shore up support among liberals, whom he angered while campaigning for reelection by signing the welfare reform bill. That measure especially hurts California by cutting off benefits for legal immigrants.

All Connerly knows is that Clinton’s “playing on our field” at UC, where he is a regent. And on Saturday, he’ll be on the dais with the president.

Connerly says he really doesn’t expect Clinton to change his racial policies, “but that doesn’t mean we should roll over and play dead and let him tap dance on the issue . . .

“If he addresses it in his classic fashion of trying to be all things to all people, he will fail. . . . If he talks about hate crimes and how we have to address racism, amen. I applaud that. If he tries to buttress the whole notion of ‘mend it, don’t end it,’ then he’ll have failed . . .

“He will probably take the easy way out, buy himself some time and say, ‘Let’s discuss this.’ Then he’ll stack a blue ribbon commission, get some ‘great minds’ to think about it. But the greatest minds he could get are Joe and Jane Six-Pack, the everyday people who make the decisions about race.”

He adds:

“The dynamics of race that existed back in the ‘60s no longer exist. . . . I don’t say for a moment that if you are black with kinky hair that you have the same chance as a blue-eyed blond in America. But I am saying that when we create separate systems for people based on their skin color, you are playing into the hands of racists.

“And racism is not something whites have the copyright on.”

Connerly isn’t letting up. He’s acquiring followers and irritating enemies. But on balance, he’s doing quite well and is very appreciative of all the president’s help.