“THE FAILED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CAMPAIGN THAT SHOOK DEMOCRATS“: G*d help me, I know that pride is a sin, but there has never been a New York Times story that pleased me more:
The 2020 campaign to restore race-conscious affirmative action in California was close to gospel within the Democratic Party. It drew support from the governor, senators, state legislative leaders and a who’s who of business, nonprofit and labor elites, Black, Latino, white and Asian.
The Golden State Warriors, San Francisco Giants and 49ers and Oakland Athletics urged voters to support the referendum, Proposition 16, and remove “systemic barriers.” A commercial noted that Kamala Harris, then a U.S. senator, had endorsed the campaign, and the ad also suggested that to oppose it was to side with white supremacy. Supporters raised many millions of dollars for the referendum and outspent opponents by 19 to 1.
“Vote for racial justice!” urged the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
None of these efforts persuaded Jimmie Romero, a 63-year-old barber who grew up in the working-class Latino neighborhood of Wilmington in Los Angeles. Homelessness, illegal dumping, spiraling rents: He sat in his shop and listed so many problems.
Affirmative action was not one of those.
“I was upset that they tried to push that,” Mr. Romero recalled in a recent interview. “It was not what matters.”
Mr. Romero was one of millions of California voters, including about half who are Hispanic and a majority who are Asian American, who voted against Proposition 16, which would have restored race-conscious admissions at public universities, and in government hiring and contracting.
The breadth of that rejection shook supporters. California is a liberal bastion and one of the most diverse states in the country. That year, President Biden swamped Donald Trump by 29 percentage points in California, but Proposition 16 went down, with 57 percent of voters opposing it.
On behalf of all the wonderful people who worked with me on defeating Prop 16, I am reliving that cock-a-hoop feeling I got in November of 2020 after co-chairing the campaign. I’ll get back to worrying about all the ways universities cheat on Proposition 209 (which Prop 16 was intended to repeal) tomorrow.