Affirmative Action Foes Turn In Million Signatures

Gov. Pete Wilson and backers of an anti-affirmative action initiative turned in nearly 1.1 million voter signatures Wednesday - potentially more than enough to qualify the hot-button measure for California’s November ballot.

“Now the campaign begins,” said Ward Connerly, chairman of the drive to repeal race and gender preferences in state programs, as he and Wilson submitted a stack of 46,574 signatures to the Sacramento County registrar.

Signatures were submitted at other county offices throughout California on Wednesday, a constitutional deadline to turn in the names.

In Los Angeles, meanwhile, hundreds of students marched through the UCLA campus and occupied a building Wednesday to protest Wilson’s efforts to eliminate affirmative action. The protest ended hours later after students met with UCLA Chancellor Charles Young.

The initiative requires about 700,000 valid signatures of registered voters to qualify. County and state elections officials say it will take more than a month to verify the signatures.

Connerly, a member of the University of California board of regents, played a pivotal role in the board’s decision last summer to eliminate affirmative action in university admissions, hiring and contracting.

He said the November initiative, dubbed by its supporters the California Civil Rights Initiative, would establish a similar prohibition in all state government programs.

“We will not be victims of racial or gender preferences,” said Connerly, who is black. “We will not be victims of racial or gender discrimination.”

Wilson, a Republican who made opposition to affirmative action a key element of his failed presidential campaign last year, said such programs were based on racial discrimination. Eliminating affirmative action, he said, requires “the moral guts to right a terrible wrong.”

“It has had the clear effect of dividing us,” said Wilson, who as late as 1994 publicly supported affirmative action. “There is no need for artificial racial preferences.”

The ballot initiative had been in danger of floundering last year, but Connerly said he and Wilson made extensive efforts to solicit funds to keep the drive going.

The donations included major contributions from corporations, Connerly said, but he wouldn’t identify them, referring reporters to his campaign’s financial disclosure documents on file with the state.