Backers say race data ban has qualified

Initiative would bar state from taking information

Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer

University of California Regent Ward Connerly plans to submit nearly a million voter signatures today for a ballot measure that would bar state and local governments, including schools, from collecting race-based information. Connerly, the conservative icon and author of the 1996 initiative that dismantled affirmative action, said his Racial Privacy Initiative would prevent the collection of information on race or ethnic heritage.

"I certainly think it will resonate," Connerly said. "The government ought not to be profiling us. The government ought to be treating us as individuals." Kevin Nguyen, executive director of the American Civil Rights Coalition, the official sponsor of the initiative, says his group plans to submit "close to a million" signatures today. If state officials determine by June 24 that 670,000 of those signatures are valid, the measure will be placed on the ballot in November, when Californians will also elect their governor.

If the signatures are not verified in time, voters will see the measure on the March 2004 ballot. But even if it is not on the ballot in November, Connerly's measure poses problems for both Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon and Democratic incumbent Gov. Gray Davis. San Francisco's Greenlining Institute, which represents minority business and housing interests, plans to press Davis not only to vigorously oppose the measure but to raise millions to fight it. "It's not enough to say he's against it," said Robert Gnaizda, Greenlining's general counsel.

"He has to act aggressively." GETTING READY TO FIGHT Gnaizda says a number of leading ministers, civil rights leaders and political activists are already gearing up for a major fight. "The effect would be to destroy equal opportunity in this state," he said. Many Republicans say the measure creates an unwelcome dilemma for them as well. "Nobody wants this in the Republican Party right now," said a leading state GOP adviser.

"It's lumped under affirmative action, and so it's defined as a wedge issue." According to the GOP insider, many Republicans are hoping it ends up on the March 2004 ballot, because it would allow organizers a better chance to put together financial and political backing. "The turnout will be small and tilted toward Republicans," he said, because of an expected contested GOP primary in the race to unseat Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. But Art Torres, who chairs the state Democratic Party, says Republicans will pay a price whenever the measure appears on the ballot.

"Ward Connerly's going to embarrass them all again, and bring back the old Pete Wilson days," he said, referring to the former governor's support of the controversial anti-illegal immigration measure, Proposition 187, which political analysts say cost the GOP millions of Latino votes. UNBOTHERED BY CRITICS Connerly says such criticism doesn't bother him. "I'm a Republican," he said. "I'm not willing to roll over and play dead because of what Republicans perceive is, wrongly, in the best interest of the nation. I honestly couldn't care less if it plays one way or the other."

Connerly, a strong Simon backer, says he doesn't see the issue as directly related to the governor's race. However, "if I were Bill Simon, I would say there's something about us as an American people that binds us together," Connerly said. "We're a family, an American family. Our private lives we can celebrate . . . but our government ought not to profiling us." For Simon, there's an added dilemma: The initiative's successful signature drive comes a week before a visit by President Bush -- who opposed Proposition 209, the state's ban on affirmative action, and Proposition 187, the initiative intended to deprive immigrants of a range of benefits.

The Greenlining Institute says it will press Bush to speak out against Connerly's latest venture as well. "You'll have a situation where you have a cacophony of people on the right, and the president being embarrassed," Torres said.

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Carl Gutiérrez-Jones,
Department of English
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
E-mail: carlgj@english.ucsb.edu