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Dueling civil rights amendments may vie for votes

One opposed by national group, 2nd aims for ballot

By Kevin Flynn, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published August 8, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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A leading national civil rights organization is providing the campaign against the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, the proposed Amendment 46.

And if that sounds confusing, hang on as this year's edition of dueling amendments takes voters into a world of political spin and wordsmithing meant to entice support for both sides.

The proposed amendment, which has made the November ballot, would prohibit the state from granting preferential treatment to anyone on the basis of race, sex or ethnicity in hiring, education and contracts.

So does Initiative 82, for which petitions have been submitted and a decision is pending on whether it will make the ballot.

But the proposed amendment would prohibit preferential treatment by effectively abolishing affirmative action and diversity programs.

Initiative 82 would more narrowly define prohibited "preferential treatment" as racial or gender quotas or point systems - which already are illegal - but would permit affirmative action programs aimed at remedying past discrimination to continue.

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a broad-based coalition of religious, labor, ethnic and other groups, has donated $165,720 so far to the backers of Initiative 82, Coloradans for Equal Opportunity. That is the bulk of the issue committee's $192,515 collected through last week's disclosure reports.

The Leadership Conference was founded in 1950 by A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the NAACP; and Arnold Aronson, a leader of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council.

Its president is Wade Henderson, formerly Washington director of the NAACP and associate director of American Civil Liberties Union.

Melissa Hart, an associate professor of law at the University of Colorado, heads Coloradans for Equal Opportunity.

She said she began networking with civil rights and equal opportunity advocates in Colorado to organize against the proposed amendment, and contacted the Leadership Conference for support.

"We felt it was just crazy to let this misleading initiative come into Colorado without getting people to focus on what it does," Hart said. "It throws the baby out with the bath water."

The major financial backer of proposed Amendment 46 is California-based American Civil Rights Institute, headed by black entrepreneur Ward Connerly, who opposes affirmative action programs based on race or gender preferences.

The model initiative Connerly pushes has been passed in California, Washington and Michigan. This year, his group looked at getting it on the ballot in up to five states. It made the ballot in Arizona and Nebraska as well as Colorado. Connerly calls this year's round Super Tuesday for Equal Rights.

Jessica Peck Corry of the Golden-based Independence Institute free-market think tank is heading the the proposed amendment campaign. Connerly's group through last week donated $339,770 of the campaign's $352,010 in contributions.

"It's disingenuous to say their initiative provides clarity to ours because it actually guts ours," Corry said.

"If voters want to maintain the current system of racial preferences, they should vote for the other initiative, but if they want to end them, they should vote for ours."

Comments

  • August 8, 2008

    8:46 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Jocko writes:

    Right on Ward Connerly! Let us hear it for fair and totally EQUAL rights! Enough of this special rights for some and not for others. Today's generation needs to learn to stand on their own accomplishments, abilities, hard work and self discipline. Too many of them do not want to do without anything in the present to build for the future. If there was some injustice in the past to their forefathers, then get over it and take advantage of the opportunities today. I have seen situations where people were not able to get a professional job and they were highly qualified for the job, the job had been open for over a year, the hiring manager wanted the person, but the policy was that it had to be filled by someone from a special group. Then the company paid the government fees and imported an immigrant with less experience. America has gone amok in silliness and a total loss of common sense.