Affirmative Reaction
REES, MATTHEW
Affirmative Reaction by Matthew Rees When Senate majority leader Robert Dole announced last July 27 that he wanted to ban set-asides for women and minorities in federal contracting and hiring, he...
...For the Democrats, that's cause for cheer...
...Similarly, Rep...
...In the Senate, the mood is more subdued...
...His chief adviser on the issue, Dennis Shea, is now on Dole's campaign payroll...
...Jack Kingston, a conservative Republican from Georgia, told me the GOP's work on affirmative action could be counterproductive: "Why put kerosene on our fire, because that's all we'd be doing" by trying to repeal affirmative action...
...The backdrop for this reluctance to tackle affirmative action is political...
...On February 27, Gingrich attended a press conference where the task force's proposals were unveiled...
...Kemp told reporters in July, "If '96 is run on dividing the races, I will not participate...
...Understandably: As Clint Bolick of the Washington-based Institute for Justice puts it, "The liberal civil rights establishment will go into a paroxysm over the Dole/Canady bill...
...Watts also says the GOP's race-related rhetoric has "reinforced some of the myths about the Republican party...
...He says, "We have not had the national debate on affirmative action that's needed...
...Talent told me he has done nothing to stop Dole/Canady but doesn't want it "linked" to the empowerment package...
...Last year, against the advice of aides, he signed a fund-raising letter for the California Civil Rights Initiative, the measure on November's ballot that would bar the use of race and gender preferences by that state...
...Dole's repeal of set-asides is not receiving wholehearted support from either House or Senate Republicans, many of whom believe the party is better off sticking with a less confrontational "empowerment" agenda...
...in his office, is not as hardline as some of his colleagues...
...We need to keep affirmative action policies in place to ensure equality of opportunity," he told me...
...Another damper is that at least one of the two senior Republicans on the Labor and Human Resources Committee, Nancy Kassebaum and Jim Jeffords, could easily oppose the bill, preventing it from getting to the floor...
...Kingston, who helped kill last summer's Franks amendment ending federal set-asides, also believes it's premature for Republicans to pass the Dole/Canady legislation...
...Creeping Kempism has infected the party brass...
...Moreover, Republicans acknowledge that the bill is unlikely to get through Congress and would certainly be vetoed by the president...
...These sentiments are not mere anomalies...
...Complicating matters is uncertainty about where the House speaker stands...
...Some say President Clinton's inevitable opposition to the initiative could cost him California in November, which would make it exceedingly difficult for him to be reelected...
...Thus, the California Civil Rights Initiative is expected to mobilize many of the voters who helped Proposition 187 and Pete Wilson win landslide victories in 1994...
...they're trying to push Dole/Canady off this year's agenda, arguing it undermines the empowerment program...
...Another Los Angeles Times poll last year found 78 percent of whites opposed to race-based preferences in hiring and college admissions...
...The chief advocates of empowerment in the House are task force co-chairmen J.C...
...As long as Dole is on the campaign trail, his legislation is unlikely to bubble up...
...In July, he helped scuttle a Franks amendment seeking to eliminate minority set-asides in federal contracting, and shortly thereafter he said on the Today show that Republicans should "spend four times as much effort reaching out to the black community to ensure that they know they will not be discriminated against, as compared to the amount of effort we've put into saying we're against quotas and set-asides...
...Watts has been more outspoken in trying to persuade colleagues that moving too quickly on affirmative action would be a mistake...
...Republicans are not comfortable talking about race," says Linda Chavez, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity in Washington and an informal Dole adviser...
...Canady calls this "silly," adding, "Anyone who has that idea might want to read the newspapers...
...He published an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled "A New Civil Rights Agenda" and held a press conference in the Capitol...
...Representative Gary Franks, a black Republican from Connecticut, told the Boston Globe in August that Republicans "love to get political mileage out of [affirmative action], but when it comes time to vote, they don't want to do it...
...How has opposition to race-based preferences-a no-brainer for most Republicans-become too hot to handle...
...The speakers included prominent black conservatives like Armstrong Williams and Robert Woodson...
...Watts, a black Republican from Oklahoma, and Jim Talent, a white Republican from Missouri...
...But in the intervening seven months, Dole has hardly made a peep about affirmative action, and two of the presidential candidates who did-Phil Gramm and Pete Wilson-have dropped from the race...
...Indeed, many congressional Republicans see an attempt to pass Dole's legislation (sponsored in the House by Charles Canady of Florida) as a bloody battle they are not prepared to fight...
...On the other hand, Gingrich, who keeps a portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr...
...The march, he said, "ought to be a wake-up call for all of America...
...To this end, the speaker appointed a Minority Issues Task Force in the spring of 1995, which has been studying Kemp-style empowerment policies: enterprise zones, school choice and vouchers, tenant management of public housing, and deregulation of social services...
...And maybe, in a grand wonderful irony typical of American history, all of us owe Louis Farrakhan a thank-you for having told all of us if the pain level is great enough for him to be a leader, then we all have a lot bigger challenge to lead...
...The distilled Gingrich view is that Republicans should work to eliminate affirmative action, but they should also have something to put in its place...
...Dole said that for too many Americans, "our country is no longer the land of opportunity but a pie chart, where jobs and other benefits are often awarded not because of hard work or merit, but because of someone's biology...
...Affirmative Reaction by Matthew Rees When Senate majority leader Robert Dole announced last July 27 that he wanted to ban set-asides for women and minorities in federal contracting and hiring, he didn't do it quietly...
...The message was unmistakable: Repealing affirmative action would be a major GOP campaign theme and a priority for congressional Republicans...
...But don't count on this happening anytime soon...
...Chris Cox, a California Republican and leader of a House task force on affirmative action, says there is an "abundance of caution, introspection, and circumspection on this issue" among his colleagues...
...Sure, the fight would present exactly the kind of ideological confrontation that many congressional conservatives seek...
...With Colin Powell identifying himself as a Republican, and with black enthusiasm for the Democratic party waning (a Los Angeles Times poll shows just 58 percent of blacks identifying themselves as Democrats, down from 74 percent in 1992), an aggressive empowerment agenda could help the GOP with black voters...
...Already tagged as "extremists" over the budget, they are in no mood for a high-profile effort to curtail programs benefiting women and minorities...
...Unless someone comes to us with a compelling campaign reason for why [Dole/Canady] needs to be moved," says a senior House Republican leadership aide, "the natural tendency will be to say no...
...Before a conservative audience in Washington on the evening of the Million Man March, Gingrich delivered an impassioned speech on race and poverty...
...Yet the political arithmetic is stark: Much greater potential gains are to be had from an assault on affirmative action, which would alienate only a marginal number of black votes, while attracting many white ones...
...On the one hand, Newt Gingrich has been a vocal critic of race-specific government programs...
...With a highly compressed congressional schedule in 1996, Dole/Canady faces a lot of competition for floor time...
...Both say they are foes of race- and gender-based preferences, but their views are slightly more nuanced than those of other congressional conservatives, and neither is among the 96 cosponsors of Dole/Canady...
...Aides working for Talent and Watts are even more adamant...
Vol. 1 • March 1996 • No. 25
