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.
