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Is Ward Connerly Practicing the Art of Deception in Colorado?
Compiled by the DiversityInc staff
April 03, 2008
Ward Connerly and his anti-affirmative-action supporters are under fire for deceptive practices in Colorado. They're being accused of targeting elderly Blacks to sign anti-affirmative-action petitions under the ruse that they're actually signing a measure against discrimination.
One 78-year-old Black woman in Colorado, Freddie Whitney, told The New York Times she was approached by men asking her to sign a ballot in support of ending discrimination in the state. She did so, only to be shocked later when discovering she signed Connerly's "Colorado Civil Rights Initiative," which would end affirmative-action efforts in the state. Colorado, along with Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma, are the states Connerly has set his sights on in his ongoing effort to dismantle affirmative-action initiatives across the country.
This isn't the first time Connerly's group has been accused of deception. In 2006, a federal judge in Michigan criticized supporters for using tactics similar to those that have come under fire in Colorado, according to the Times. Connerly told the Times he has no problem with the tactics his representatives are employing.
"It is not fraudulent when a person says they believe an initiative will achieve certain results and the opponents happen to disagree," Connerly told the Times. "Affirmative action is an amorphous term. It means different things to different people."
Connerly, a businessman and former regent of the University of California, has spent the last decade waging national and state campaigns to ban affirmative action. He's succeeded in three states so far: California, Washington state and Michigan.
Depending on population, anti-affirmative-action representatives need to get from 76,000 to 230,000 signatures on petitions in each state by May 3 to get the proposals on the ballots. The Times reports Connerly has gathered 128,044 signatures in Colorado, far more than what's needed in that state. But while Secretary of State Mike Coffman says enough of the signatures are valid, complaints of deceptive soliciting have been referred to a judge.
Several dozen people from Colorado have protested that their signatures were obtained under false pretenses and have complained to Colorado Unity, a coalition of civil-rights groups that are battling Connerly. Martin Vandenberg, a co-chairman of Colorado Unity, strongly criticized the petition-signing effort.
"People were told that this would end discrimination, in some cases that it would actually support affirmative action," Vandenberg told the Times. "If this is how Ward Connerly and his supporters go about getting initiatives on the ballot, what does it say about their integrity?"
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