State: Anti-preference activists ready

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Anti-preference activists ready

Supporters soon will start gathering signatures in their effort to amend the state Constitution.

By PETER WALLSTEN

TALLAHASSEE -- California businessman Ward Connerly is ready to take his anti-affirmative action crusade to the mailboxes and shopping centers of Florida.

His Florida Civil Rights Initiative committee will begin gathering signatures in west-central Florida later this month to put up to four proposed amendments to the state Constitution on the November 2000 ballot.

Connerly and his followers settled on the exact language on the amendments late last month and are confident they have crafted it carefully enough to withstand strict scrutiny by the state Supreme Court.

The amendments would bar the state from treating people "differently based on race, color, ethnicity, or national origin" in public education, contracts or employment.

"It's clear that we're going to have something on the ballot in the year 2000," Connerly said Tuesday in a telephone interview from his Sacramento, Calif., office.

The state Division of Elections has given its perfunctory approval to the group to gather signatures, and organizers have hired a California firm to do the job.

Connerly's group plans to target three congressional districts in west Central Florida to gather at least 45,000 signatures -- enough to send the amendments to the state Supreme Court for review. If the court approves at least one or even all of the amendments, organizers need to get about 450,000 signatures from registered voters to place each proposal on the ballot.

Connerly, a member of the California Board of Regents who is black, already has guided successful anti-affirmative action drives in California and Washington state.

In Florida, though, he has encountered stiff resistance.

State Republican Party Chairman Al Cardenas said Tuesday he is meeting with traditional GOP advocacy groups and donors and asking them not to help Connerly. Previously, GOP Gov. Jeb Bush called Connerly's effort "divisive" and has asked Connerly to stay away.

Cardenas worries that Florida's Republican Party might be damaged politically by the fight, just as California's GOP was hurt by Connerly's effort in 1996.

"Not only did the entire state suffer socially, but the Republican Party took a nosedive," Cardenas said of California's experience. "It will take Republicans in California years to catch up."

Meanwhile, a coalition of groups representing blacks, women, Hispanics and Asians, called Floridians Representing Equality and Equity, plans to meet in Tampa next week to discuss Connerly's effort.

"It's as serious a fight, I think, as the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s," said Leon Russell, state chairman of the NAACP.

Russell said the coalition might try to get its own constitutional amendment on the 2000 ballot to protect affirmative action.

Connerly estimates a campaign could cost up to $10-million, depending on the level of opposition.

Already, the Florida Civil Rights Initiative has collected about $60,000 in donations, mainly from white contractors who believe preferences keep them from getting state business, said Herb Harmon, the Tallahassee-based consultant who is Connerly's point man in Florida.

Allen Douglas, who heads the state chapter of the Associated General Contractors, is listed as the treasurer of the group.

Knowing that the Florida Constitution places strict requirements on ballot initiatives -- namely that they each must encompass only a single subject -- lawyers for the Florida Civil Rights Initiative worked for months to carefully craft language that would pass muster.

Harmon admits that the language that passed in other states -- prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, ethnicity, gender or national origin in the areas of public employment, contracts and education -- would likely be considered to cover more than one subject and would not pass muster.

So, in addition to the omnibus amendment, Connerly's troops are sending three additional proposals that do not refer to gender. One prohibits discrimination in public education, another bars discrimination in public contracts, and another in public employment.

However, the court has a history of interpreting the single-subject rule strictly, and even Connerly says it is frustrating and "cumbersome."

"It is certainly rolling a lot into one thing to present to the public," said Dexter Douglass, a former general counsel to Gov. Lawton Chiles who headed the state Constitution Revision Commission.

The amendments would cover state and local governments in Florida, but would not affect private industry.

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