2020 Proposition 16: A Return to Affirmative Action
A dozen proposals will be on the November statewide ballot. This week and next I’ll endeavor to give readers a glimpse at the basic issues involved, along with links allowing for further study. Later on in the season I’ll post more materials on the higher profile measures under consideration.
As has been true with elections since 2012, I'll endeavor to research and post about as many propositions and local elections as I can. I have no schedule, other than to say it will be done when it's done.
One thing we can know for sure, tons of money will be spent to support or oppose the various propositions. Where that money comes from is, to me, more important than what the messages being pushed are. I'll get around to more specifics on funding as the election approaches.
Already covered:
Proposition 14, which asks Californians to continue to support stem cell research funding via bond sales.
Proposition 15, an attempt to mend Proposition 13 so that big business can't take advantage of Californians.
An amendment to the Constitution of the State, repealing Section 31 of Article I relating to government preferences.
For: Opportunity for All Coalition
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Endorsements | Text of Measure
Against: At this point there is no organized opposition. State Senators Melissa Melendez & Ling Ling Chang, along with former U.S. Rep. Tom Campbell have all voiced opposition to the idea.
Why: 24 years ago California voters considered whether race, ethnicity and gender should be considered in awarding government contracts and admission to the state’s colleges and universities. They said no, even though many were in favor of affirmative action.
Supporters of the measure fought in court to make sure the words “affirmative action” did not appear on the ballot argument. Instead of those words, the word “quota” was used because it had a more negative connotation.
Pollster Louis Harris offered up voters language pointing out that the measure would ban affirmative action, and approval dropped to 31%. In the real world, and lacking that argument, 55.5% of voters approved the measure at the ballot box.
Times have changed. ACA 5, the legislation putting Prop 16 on the ballot, was authored by Assemblymembers Weber, Gipson and Santiago, and co-authored by Assemblymembers Burke, Cooper, Gonzalez, Holden, Jones-Sawyer, Kamlager, Kalra, McCarty, Stone, Wicks, and Senators Bradford, Mitchell, Hueso, and Skinner.
This nine words long ballot measure would simply repeal Proposition 209, allowing the practice often described as affirmative action to again be used in the state. It was added to the ballot by the Legislature last month, setting up a discussion about systemic racism and inequities at the same time as a national reckoning on these topics.
How: Supporters have raised a whopping $114,000. The debate over this measure will occur mostly on op-ed pages.
They have brought in an all star political crew to drum up support, according to Politico:
...led by strategic adviser Addisu Demissie, currently senior advisor to the Joe Biden presidential campaign and the former campaign manager for Sen. Cory Booker’s White House run and Gavin Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign. Demissie will be joined by a consultant team that includes Dan Newman, adviser to Newsom and Kamala Harris; Brain Brokaw, a Newsom adviser and campaign manager for the successful Prop. 64 drive to legalize cannabis in California; and rising star Amelia Matier, campaign manager for Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks and an insider with the recent Pete Buttigieg presidential campaign.
The rest of the story.
From Education Dive:
California's ban on affirmative action was once the center of a heated political drama that spilled into the national landscape. Two academics, Glynn Custred and Tom Wood, disgruntled by the state's shifting demographics in the early 1990s, wrote up a constitutional amendment forbidding public entities from considering race and ethnicity in employment and public education. The concept became popular with the state's Republican party and its GOP governor, Pete Wilson, who latched onto it as a way to "ride the issue" to the Republican presidential nomination, the Los Angeles Times reported at the time.
Wilson's bid for the nomination failed, but the state still became the first in the country to reject race-conscious practices. The University of California (UC) System, whose governing board recently endorsed ending Proposition 209, saw a steep drop in the number of underrepresented students on its nine campuses — from 20% of admitted students in 1995 to 15% by 1998. UC refers to underserved students as American Indian, Black and Hispanic/Latino.
White supremacists are on the march, Black people are being shot, Latino immigrants are demonized on a daily basis, COVID-19 is ravaging Native communities, and hate crimes against Asian Americans are on the rise.
Now is the time to reinstate equal opportunity in California; to chart a path forward to a stronger economic future for women and communities of color, and to a California where Black lives matter and our systems are just.
This is a no-brainer. Let’s do the right thing and right a wrong from our State’s not-so-distant past.
Voter Guide - You've Voted for President, what's next?
I'll be writing about many ballot measures and candidates between now and the end of September. That work will be condensed into an handy-dandy voter guide just in time for your mail-in ballots to arrive. I'm the guy who coordinated San Diego Free Press's Voter Guides over the past decade, so this won't be my first effort. Stay tuned.
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Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com
Lead image courtesy of the Opportunity for All Coalition