WE WON! WE WON!! WE WON!!!:  I’m sorry to have been AWOL for the last week, but as of last Thursday, we won the battle against California’s Assembly Constitutional Amendment 7 (ACA7) at least for this year and possibly for much longer.  A few weeks ago, I predicted that ACA7 would fail to pass the Cal Senate before the deadline for the November ballot, but now it’s official. Since last Thursday, I’ve been partly on the road and partly frantically trying to meet an unrelated writing deadline, so I’m only now getting around to announcing the win here.

If you’re a loyal Instapundit reader, you probably know what I’m talking about.  But if not, I can tell you that ACA7 was/is an effort to nullify the following words in the California Constitution:  “The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting.”

ACA7 was/is a bit tricky.  Instead of a straight repeal of those words (which had been put in the state constitution in 1996 by Proposition 209), it purported to “merely” give the governor the power to grant EXCEPTIONS.  But the exceptions would almost certainly have swallowed the rule.  Indeed, that was the whole idea.  California progressives have been gunning for Proposition 209 since the day after Election Day 1996.  ACA7 was/is just the latest effort.

I had a certain amount of personal interest in defeating ACA7, because (1) I had co-chaired the Proposition 209 campaign in 1996; and (2) I had co-chaired the campaign to defeat the repeal effort–No on Proposition 16 in 2020–which we won overwhelmingly (57.22%) despite being outspent by more than 14 to 1.  I was therefore willing to chair the “No on ACA7” campaign.   That has meant spending what seemed like 95% of my waking hours for the last eight months trying to stop ACA7 (and preparing for a full-scale campaign in case I failed).

But I didn’t fail.  I won.  ACA7 had passed the Cal Assembly back in the autumn, but it needed to pass the Cal Senate.  The deadline for inclusion on the November ballot was June 27, and ACA7’s chief sponsor has now let it be known that the Senate was not going to pass it and that it is dead at least for this year.  Like any legislation, it can always be brought up later, but the next scheduled election isn’t till 2026, so we have a long time.

Thanks to everyone who helped kill this nasty bill—Brita, Cia, Dan, Frank, Eva, Jason, Maimon, Rachelle, Saga, Steve, Tony, Wenyuan, and many others.  Thanks also to the Wall Street Journal, the Orange County Register, the Epoch Times, the City Journal, the Federalist, the California Globe, Power Line, and the National Review.

When we did the “NO on Proposition 16” back in 2020, we had a devil of a time raising money.  All the big-money donors thought we would lose, so they figured giving us money would be a waste. If ACA7 had been on the ballot, we’d have done much better with big donors than we did with Proposition 16.  And a couple of non-profits would have been able to conduct substantial voter education projects.  Thank you, Leonard, Mark, Michael, and Norm for being willing to provide funding.