Affirmative Action Issue: Another 187?

SACRAMENTO —  The escalating assault on affirmative action programs, in the candid assessment of state Democratic Chairman Bill Press, “is another Proposition 187 or worse, and I don’t want another 187. I was mugged once. I don’t want to be mugged again.”

State Sen. Quentin Kopp (I-San Francisco) uses a more common analogy: “This is a freight train. The Democrats were run over by one train. I don’t think they want to be run over again. If I were the party, I’d try to change it in some face-saving way.”

Kopp is part of the train crew as an advisory board member of the California Civil Rights Initiative. The organization, created by two San Francisco Bay Area academicians, plans to sponsor a 1996 ballot initiative that could wreak havoc with Democratic candidates. It would forbid state and local governments and state universities from giving preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity or gender in hiring, contracting or admitting students.

The initiative sponsors, in a fund-raising brochure, call the present system “affirmative discrimination--or reverse discrimination.” It says Americans now are “divided into two camps”--those entitled to preferential treatment and those who can “lawfully be discriminated against.” It wants to outlaw all racial and gender discrimination, including against white males.

Backers hope to use California as a springboard for a national crusade. And polling indicates the public may be ready. A nationwide Los Angeles Times poll recently found that 64% of the people favor federal legislation to make it illegal for any employer to give hiring preferences based on race, color or gender.

Press and other Democratic pros vividly remember wandering along a similar track last year. They stood seemingly paralyzed as the anti-illegal immigration initiative raced at them, generating a high Republican turnout and a popular cause for GOP candidates.

This time, these Democrats hope to reshape and divert the train--even if they can’t derail it.

*

Press, a Los Angeles radio-TV commentator, says that affirmative action was “needed to open the doors to people who couldn’t get in. But if it’s broken--and let’s accept the notion that it is--we have to fix it. And I think we fix it in the Legislature.”

Democrats want to avoid fixing it at the ballot box. But if that’s impossible, they desperately hope to keep the initiative off the November, 1996, ballot when the two parties will be competing. Their ballot preference would be the March presidential primary. And their aim is to help shape a measure the party could accept.

There is growing sentiment in the Legislature--among Democrats and also GOP sponsors--that an acceptable compromise might be to substitute socioeconomic preferences for race and gender. Applicants for entry-level government jobs and university admissions, for example, would get a special break if they came from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, regardless of race or gender.

“There are two ways to advance equality,” says Senate leader Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward). “You can pull up people. Or you can pull down people. Minorities and businesswomen see affirmative action as a pulling up. White males view it as a pulling down. People’s perceptions are a reality even if they’re not entirely accurate. Maybe there can be a broad consensus for lifting up people from a lower socioeconomic status.”

“Absolutely. Absolutely no problem,” says Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), one of the nation’s most influential black politicians. “What I’m advocating on affirmative action is the same thing I advocated years ago on busing. I said black politicians ought to stop defending busing because their careers were being destroyed. They ought to get smarter and figure out some other way to achieve the same goal.”

But Brown is skeptical of Republican motives. “I’m telling you,” he says, “the folk who are doing this want to do a 187. That’s my fear. If so, you’re not going to get rational dialogue.”

*

Ironically, the lead legislative sponsor of anti-affirmative action measures is Assemblyman Bernie Richter of Chico, the renegade Republican whom Brown was willing to make Speaker. To secure the backing of all Assembly Democrats, Richter agreed to drop his lead authorship. But no other Republican would support his speakership bid, so Richter again is pushing the “colorblind” legislation.

Richter says he’ll deal with Democrats. He’ll accept socioeconomic preferences, except in contracting. And he has a basic message: “This is going to happen. Wouldn’t you like to be part of it? Help shape it? Rather than hung out to dry in ’96 as my side uses it as a wedge issue?”

The answer’s easy. The compromising may not be.