Connerly Initiatives
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The Kirwan Institute worked together with national and state organizations to defeat the 2008 Ward Connerly initiatives designed to eliminate affirmative action, and has recently released a report on this effort. The same ballot initiative had already been passed in three states (California, Washington, and Michigan), amending the state constitutions and eliminating affirmative action, with devastating consequences. In 2008, Connerly and his supporters targeted five states where they attempted to pass the constitutional amendment as a ballot initiative. It reached the ballot in only two states - Colorado and Nebraska. In Colorado the initiative was defeated for the first time, in a meaningful victory for affirmative action advocates. In Nebraska the initiative was approved, but litigation is still pending that could prevent the amendment from going into effect.
Connerly and his supporters also initially targeted Arizona, Oklahoma and Missouri. In Arizona, the Connerly initiative’s submitted petitions did not contain a sufficient number of valid signatures, and the Secretary of State disqualified the initiative in late August 2008. The state coalition in Arizona also filed a lawsuit challenging the validity of additional signatures. In Oklahoma, the Connerly-backed effort collected and submitted signatures to the Oklahoma Secretary of State. After the Secretary found an unprecedented number of duplicate signatures and irregularities, and the ACLU and NAACP filed a challenge to the signature count and protest to the petition, Connerly and his supporters withdrew their initiative from consideration in April 2008. In Missouri, Connerly’s supporters had trouble gathering the required number of signatures to place the initiative on the ballot, due in large part to the efforts of a grassroots coalition conducting a decline to sign campaign. Connerly’s initiative failed to submit signatures before the May 2008 deadline, keeping the initiative from being placed on the ballot. The successful efforts in all three states are significant victories for supporters of affirmative action!
These web pages provide information on each state’s campaign to defeat the Connerly initiative, as well as information on the initiatives generally.
