Proponents of AA gear up to fight Ward Connerly

Politics: As supporters seem to be resigned that AA programs are going to take beating in the polls.

Opponents of higher education affirmative action programs are gearing up to launch their largest attack in recent years. The planned assault comes in the wake of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that severely limited the use of race in K-12 integration plans. “I believe that we are now poised for a coup de grâce to say that race preferences in the eyes of the public should not be used,” says Ward Connerly, the chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, a conservative organization based in Sacramento, Calif., that opposes racial and gender preferences. It was Connerly who orchestrated Proposition 209, a California ballot initiative that outlawed race and gender preferences in state hiring and university admissions. A similar bill passed in Michigan last year. Now, he is leading a national effort aimed at placing similar anti-affirmative action initiatives on the November 2008 presidential ballot in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. “This is going to be Super Tuesday for equal rights,” Connerly says. “I think it’s very clear that we are witnessing an end to an era.”