Last week, Forbes published a love letter to Ward Connerly, the anti-affirmative action activist behind Colorado’s Amendment 46. The so-called Colorado Civil Rights Initiative seeks to end discrimination and preferential treatment for minorities in public education, contracting and hiring and would effectively dismantle affirmative-action programs across the state.
The article paints an altruistic vision of Connerly, who asserts that affirmative action hurts minorities on university campuses by placing less-qualified people into rigorous programs where they are destined to fail. What the article doesn’t mention, however, is that Connerly has paid himself millions from the two non-profits he set up to push anti-affirmative measures around the country.
And though the California businessman has faced criticism for that and other activities, he told Forbes that he is sure that Amendment 46 will pass. And he sketched out plans to ensure that the measure is enforced:
“Will the measures in Colorado and Nebraska win? Comfortably, Connerly insists,” reads the article. “Whenever bans on racial preferences are permitted to go before the voters, they win. And then? Two things will happen. The American Civil Rights Institute, an organization Connerly founded, will join the Pacific Legal Foundation and others in making certain that Colorado and Nebraska comply with the new law promptly and fully. ‘We’ll be right on them,’ Connerly says. And Connerly will start the protracted process of getting initiatives on state ballots all over again. ‘Not long after the election,’ he says, ‘[I] expect to announce campaigns in new states.””
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