Spokane guardrail builder Tom Stewart says he's been passed over for government road projects even when he was the low bidder.
Stewart is white - a victim, he contends, of affirmative action.
Mel Carter says his Spokane heating business has been ignored for years by contractors who'll only hire him if required to by law.
Carter is black - an example, he maintains, of why affirmative action is necessary.
Activists statewide are rallying around stories like these as Washington faces a movement to end some types of affirmative action.
The effort comes in the form of Initiative 200 - titled the "Washington State Civil Rights Initiative."
Sponsors say it would end the preferential treatment women and minorities now get in hiring, contracting and school enrollment in state and local government.
Led by a Puget Sound talk radio host, the campaign has been endorsed by the state Republican and Libertarian parties. Supporters have spent nearly $200,000 just to circulate petitions.
But opponents - choreographed by a Washington Association of Churches lobbyist - argue the initiative is based on myth, encourages continued discrimination, and would end outreach programs that level an uneven playing field.
That group is backed by the son of Martin Luther King Jr. and a host of statewide associations.
Those who run affirmative action programs in some of the state's 2,700 governing bodies remain perplexed about what, exactly, would change if the initiative becomes law.
And while the two campaigns already have engaged in heated confrontations - almost entirely on the West Side - the real fight has barely begun.
Initiative co-organizer Scott Smith, a Republican state representative from Bellevue, claimed Wednesday to have well over 170,000 signatures in hand and thousands more left to tally.
If supporters got the necessary 179,248 signatures by today, the measure will go before the Legislature.
Lawmakers then must approve it, or put it alone or with an alternative version on the November ballot. The governor, who opposes it, can't veto it.
And even if signatures aren't there this time, both sides expect the battle to resurface later. Feelings run too deep.
"If we haven't ended discrimination to date, what's going to make us do it if affirmative action laws are lifted?" Carter asked.
Stewart said, "The government, with its programs, creates and promulgates this (racial) divisiveness that they're trying to abate."
I-200 is modeled after a proposition approved by California voters in 1996 by a 54 percent majority.
In fact, they were engineered by the same man - anti-affirmative action guru Ward Connerly.
Connerly's Sacramento-based think tank, the American Civil Rights Institute, helped write Washington's initiative, and even brought together its co-organizers, Smith and Seattle businessman Tim Eyman.
The institute has contributed more than $30,000, and has helped enlist financial aid from political powerhouses like billionaire presidential contender Steve Forbes and family values activist William J. Bennett.
It's part of a national campaign for Connerly, who is involved in similar drives in 12 other states.
But none are as far along as Washington.
"Washington is critical," said Ann Gonzalez-Kramer, a spokeswoman for the institute's lobbying arm. "It would be only the second state to pass such an initiative. It would send a message that the tide has turned."
Opponents, who call themselves David to Connerly's Goliath, have collected only $20,000 - the biggest contribution coming from a state employees union.
But they have a platoon of guerrilla volunteers, who at a moment's notice have been dispatched to petition sites to encourage voters not to sign.
"We believe we've done an enormous amount of educating about this," said No! 200 campaign manager Kathleen Russell. "We have successfully slowed down their signature-gathering efforts."
The essence of this battle boils down to the meaning of the initiative's first sentence:
"The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting."
Translations of that sentence vary with the translator.
"This ends the setting aside of jobs, contracts and school admission slots based on race," said I-200's campaign chairman, Seattle radio host John Carlson. "There will no longer be different rules for different races."
Gita Hatcher, who oversees affirmative action for the city of Spokane, maintains the city does not set aside jobs at all.
The city sets goals for employing minorities and women based on a complex formula. Departments are encouraged, but not required, to hire minorities off a supplemental list only if they meet the job's qualifications.
Of the city's 126 hires in 1996, only six were from among such lists. Three were white women.
"At no time is someone given a position because they happen to be female or a minority," Hatcher said.
In California, the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco continue to use race as a factor in hiring while maintaining they are complying with that state's initiative. Opponents are threatening a legal challenge.
Jim Medina, who runs Washington's Office of Minority and Women's Business Enterprises, believes I-200 might overhaul state contracting procedures.
Currently, in purchasing and construction, general contractors are asked to meet a goal of awarding a percentage of their subcontracts to minority- and women-owned businesses. Low bidders who don't meet those goals are usually awarded the contract - unless someone who does meet them is also within 5 percent of the low bid.
"What does 'preferential treatment' mean, exactly?" Medina said. "It's not a phrase that's defined anywhere. If it passes, does that mean we can still recruit minorities? I don't know."
Race also would be outlawed as a factor in college admissions.
State universities already have begun to dismantle their race-based admissions policies. Some now use race merely as one of many factors.
But administrators fear I-200 will do to Washington what it did to California - send minority enrollment plummeting.
And that's only a portion of the battle over I-200's language.
Like its California counterpart, I-200 never uses the terms "affirmative action." Both have "civil rights" in the title.
Supporters admit that's by design.
"It marks a return to the moral principle that fueled the civil rights movement of the '50s and '60s," Carlson said.
Opponents point to polls that suggest California voters would have shot down their measure if they'd known it would abolish affirmative action programs.
They also point out that a similar ballot measure failed in Houston, after the City Council there changed the initiative's title.
"Not all voters know what they're signing," said opponent Russell.
That enrages Carlson.
"Our opponents are trying to argue that this ends affirmative action while at the same time arguing that affirmative action doesn't allow setasides," he said. "That's all the initiative does."
If he has collected enough signatures, lawmakers will likely pass the initiative to voters, said state Sen. Jim West, R-Spokane.
It's a "political hot potato" during a short legislative session and voters should be allowed to make their own call, he said.
If there aren't enough signatures, supporters are expected to immediately refile and try again.
