"One Florida"-Many Problems

...A black pilot who fought in World War II— one of the fabled Tuskegee Airmen—raised the specter of Florida being resegregated, saying, "When I was in Florida I couldn't go to the beach...

...Indeed, it's unlikely he would have been double-crossed had Jones not been steamrollered by the state's three black members of Congress: Carrie Meek, Corrine Brown, and Alcee Hastings...

...Having tried to please Connerly and black liberals, Bush is now at loggerheads with both...

...Jones, still trying to atone for his sins, has told black audiences that he now opposes One Florida because "our people fought and died for affirmative action...

...But there was another reason for their opposition...

...The massive resistance to One Florida has, predictably, carried over into the courtroom...

...From the moment One Florida was released, these three unapologetic liberals condemned it as insensitive and deeply flawed...

...It's also perverse, resting on the idea that blacks just can't compete without preferences...

...And he aggressively courted black voters...

...Harmon points out that the legislative package accompanying One Florida was quite modest, calling for procedural reforms rather than wholesale changes in contracting and university admissions...

...Most important, One Florida enjoyed the backing of Daryl Jones, a respected state senator who chaired Florida's caucus of black state legislators...

...Jesse Jackson was on hand to say, "This is not about black and white, it's about wrong and right...

...Given the assurances of support he'd received from Jones and others, it's easy to see how he got this impression...

...And shortly after his inauguration, in January 1999,he met in Tallahassee with Connerly, who said he intended to mount an anti-preferences campaign in Florida, and that he wanted it to be on the ballot in November 2000.Bush replied that while he found such an approach "divisive," he shared Connerly's concerns about the legality of having the state make admissions and contracting decisions on the basis of race, ethnicity, or gender...

...Bush's executive order has begun to end an anachronistic racial and ethnic spoils system, while shifting Florida's race debate in a colorblind direction...

...The NAACP has won an injunction against the Talented 20 program, thus preventing its implementation, and denying hundreds of the program's students entry to the state university system...

...Ever since the sit-in, he has stopped talking about all the legal problems with set-asides, and started talking more about enhancing opportunity and beefing up anti-discrimination laws...

...His admirable response was that "It's time to strive for a society where there's equality of opportunity, not equality of results...

...And we are taking advantage of it...

...Working with the Urban League, he founded, and taught at, a charter school in the heavily black Liberty City section of Miami...

...Facts," concludes Bush, "are a lot less relevant than emotional diatribes...

...The strategy worked, particularly when the hearings descended into Jerry Springer-style chaos...

...Bush eventually took action because, he says, granting set-asides to women and minorities was "constitutionally suspect...

...The last two weeks I have carried around a heavy heart," to which the crowd responded with catcalls and jeers...

...one speaker warned, "I'm willing to die over this issue...

...Within days, however, Miller, Jones, and just about every black elected official in Florida had turned against Bush...

...The sit-in, which was punctuated by Meek and Hill eating Churchs fried chicken and singing "We Shall Overcome," ended with a compromise: Three public hearings would be held to discuss the plan...

...Bush also proposed overhauling the process of procurement and business certification, which, he said, would change the fact that less than one percent of available state contracting was being done with minority-owned businesses...

...Ward Connerly, who spearheaded a successful 1996 initiative in California to repeal the same kind of set-asides, preferences, and quotas, gave it a cautious endorsement, but so did representatives of minority groups and nearly all of the state's major papers (as well as the New York Times...

...The objective behind the sit-in and the hearings was to draw media coverage...

...The hosannas didn't last long...

...tion by saying: probably nothing...

...The sit-in and the hearings, it turned out, were just warm-up acts for the main event: an anti-One Florida demonstration in Tallahassee...

...Gayle Andrews, an adviser to Florida's black caucus, noted One Florida "gave African Americans a cause, something to rally around that they didn't have...

...On the day the initiative was unveiled, Les Miller, who's both black and the House Democratic leader, issued a statement praising Bush for "taking a positive step toward protecting racial and gender inclusiveness in Florida's universities and contracting practices...

...This helped him win endorsements from a number of black legislators, and double his share of the black vote, albeit to a modest 14 percent...

...But the only part of the answer that got picked up was what he said next: "So I'm going to answer your quesMatthew Rees is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...This—ending affirmative action—is a political battle...

...In fairness to Bush, the legislature's Republicans had made it clear they wouldn't support anything more...

...Anthony Hill, one of two state legislators in the sit-in, says that "just like in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, the executive order would make minorities invisible...

...However damaging One Florida becomes to the state of Florida, it's been the best shot in the arm for the Democratic party and the caucus," said black state representative Addie Greene in March...

...They conveyed their support for One Florida, and Jones even agreed to chair a One Florida task force on educational equity...

...The effort was aborted only when Jones, who had recently called Bush a "sincere" supporter of diversity and opportunity, promptly turned against One Florida, belittling it as an effort to "award contracts to people who made campaign donations...

...Last summer, a black Democratic state representative named Chris Smith took Bush on a tour of his Fort Lauderdale district...

...Under his Talented 20 program, for example, the top 20 percent of every graduating high school class in Florida would be guaranteed admission to the state university system (this meant diminished emphasis on the SAT, a test many blacks charge is culturally biased...

...I walked him down the main black boulevard," recalls Smith, "and people were spontaneously coming out and shaking hands with him...

...During his 1998 campaign for governor, Bush made clear that while he favored equality of opportunity, he opposed policies that explicitly favor one group over another...

...Thus, Bush set out to craft reforms that would eliminate set-asides, but also increase diversity and opportunity in contracting and university admissions...

...And Carrie Meek, from Miami, regularly invokes her experience of having to leave the state in 1947 to get a post-graduate degree because Florida's schools didn't admit blacks...

...Governor Bush has received little help from the legislature's Republicans, who continue to back One Florida but do so quietly...

...But One Florida has hardly been a failure...

...Sadly, that's pretty much what many blacks have been led to believe...

...Today, Smith has no plans to do so...

...This exhaustive review found race, ethnicity, and gender were being used to make decisions about state contracting and university admissions...

...Another motivating factor was the prospect of Connerly's initiative being on the ballot in November 2000, which Bush feared would bring more heat than light to the issue...

...That, like countless other predictions made by One Florida's left-wing opponents, probably won't come true...

...Without racial preferences, Bush's critics are saying, blacks will be shut out of Florida's universities...

...Asked about the fevered response to One Florida, Bush says "you would think I've declared thermonuclear war on a group of people...

...Indeed, says Smith, "if I were to even appear on a podium with Bush, I'd be a dead man in my district...

...As Bush was cobbling together his package of reforms, he had extensive consultations with Daryl Jones, the black caucus chair, and a number of other black legislators...

...Bush was so warmly received that Smith had a number of photos taken with him and was thinking of using them in his reelection campaign...

...As for Bush, he was cast as a sympathizer of Jim Crow, George Wallace, and Adolf Hitler...

...I don't want to be bushwhacked into those days...

...The emotions will overwhelm the reality of whatever the plan is, but that's temporary," he said a few months ago...

...And in January, two black state legislators, Meek and Anthony Hill, occupied the office of Bush's lieutenant governor, Frank Brogan, for 25 hours to protest One Florida, saying they wouldn't leave until Bush rescinded the executive order...

...Opponents of One Florida routinely shouted down anyone who dared to voice support for the plan...

...He says that if his initiative, which is much more sweeping than One Florida, doesn't get on the ballot this November—and it probably won't for various legal reasons—it will be there in November 2002...

...That," she continued, "is what this is all about: the November election...

...The speeches made clear that opponents were prepared to frame the controversy in the most apocalyptic terms...

...The announcement, part of a larger package of reforms he called "One Florida," was greeted with widespread acclaim...

...Bush says he viewed Jones's defection as "the ultimate betrayal," and even the left-leaning editorial writers at the Miami Herald said the move "speaks more to election-year politics than it does to the merits of the Bush plan...

...As for Connerly, he recently zinged One Florida as "a shell game...

...Over the past six months, One Florida has run into a buzz saw of criticism, from the right and the left, and been pulled into the crosscurrents of racial, sexual, and presidential politics...

...This happens to be wrong—the number of minorities admitted to Florida State University increased 18 percent this year after the school ended its race-based preferences...

...During his campaign, he proposed a "Front Porch Florida" initiative to revitalize urban communities...

...The comment was widely publicized by Democrats, and it might have lost him the election...

...In the long run, I think people will reward me for sticking with my guns...

...Still, his efforts are a cautionary tale of what awaits any politician who treads into the political minefield of race and gender...

...And there's only one reason for that: One Florida...

...Similarly, Corrine Brown, the black congresswoman from Jacksonville, asked a group of protesters at an anti-One Florida rally, "Could you imagine waking up on November 8 and opening the paper to see that George W. Bush is president of the United States...

...This puts Jeb Bush in the unenviable position of negotiating with legislators who will say, and do, nearly anything to stir up resentment...

...The effect, says Herb Harmon, a skilled Republican consultant who's handling the state organizing effort for Connerly, has been a change in Bush's rhetoric...

...Chastened, he spent much of the next four years trying to prove that he would do "something" for blacks if elected governor...

...Polls show strong support for the colorblind principles embedded in One Florida and indicate that voters would like to see an even more aggressive effort to repeal set-asides...

...And Anthony Hill, the state representative who participated in the sit-in, is predicting a "long, hot summer," to be followed by an "election this November that will be like no other in Florida history...

...BY MATTHEW REES Tallahassee, Florida Early last November, Jeb Bush, the Republican governor of Florida, did something no other governor has done: He issued an executive order to end "racial or gender set-asides, preferences or quotas" in state contracts and university admissions...

...He could have added that a Florida State University study published in December 1995 concluded that government set-aside programs should be eliminated after finding no history of discrimination against women- and minority-owned business in the awarding of state contracts...

...More important, Bush earned an element of trust, and goodwill, that few white Republicans get from black elected officials...

...That politicians would play politics is hardly a surprise, but the candor of One Florida's opponents on this point is breathtaking...

...This has been a difficult time for me," he acknowledged at one hearing...

...With a nudge from Connerly, Bush directed his staff to review state policies on affirmative action...

...If Bush made a mistake, it was in ignoring the national picture, in which his brother was emerging as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination...

...During his first campaign for governor, in 1994, Bush appeared at a televised town meeting and was asked by a black newspaper reporter what he would do for blacks...

...Days after the program was announced, emotions were running so high that Kendrick Meek, a Florida state senator and the son of congresswoman Carrie Meek, began plotting to bring down Jones as chairman of the black caucus...

...When he was supposed to have lunch with the black caucus in March, most of them canceled at the last minute, saying the meeting needed to be conducted over dinner...

...Coinciding with the opening day of the legislature, when Bush was giving his State of the State address, the rally attracted between 5,000 and 50,000 people, depending on whose estimate you believe (the local school superintendent helped inflate the number by closing the schools for the day...

...A number of Supreme Court rulings over the past decade support his conclusion...

...He believed he could take sweeping action on race without becoming a lightning rod for controversy...

...But Bush, who doesn't face the voters again until 2002, has indicated he's not too worried about the political implications of what he's doing...