Word: propped
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...retrospect, however, the fit between Bob Dole and the anti-affirmative-action cause was not a natural one. Prop. 209 came from outside the normal political channels--and those are the channels where Dole has spent his whole career. Prop. 209 is really a by-product of the political-correctness wars in universities. These spawned an anti-p.c. organization called the National Association of Scholars, through which two academics, Glynn Custred and Thomas Wood, met. Custred and Wood had separately got the idea of an abolish-affirmative-action ballot initiative, and in 1991 they joined forces and began actively...
Meanwhile, however, the initiative's backers were having trouble gathering enough petitions to get it on the ballot; California initiatives have become a business, and no initiative since Prop. 13 has succeeded without the help of an expensive signature-gathering firm. Republican powers in Sacramento and Washington came in at the last minute with the money to hire professionals and save the initiative. Their motive was practical: the initiative looked as if it might be popular enough to pull Republican candidates (including the presidential one) to victory...
...drew no primary opposition, which gave him the strategic opportunity to move as far to the center as possible. Since the "mend it, don't end it" speech, he has said nothing audible about affirmative action, and the Democratic Party financial apparatus has not directed funds to the anti-Prop. 209 forces who, by the way, are quietly furious at the Siberian treatment they are getting...
...looks as if Prop. 209 will be a stand-alone issue. Although its lead in the polls appeared to be softening slightly over the summer, the opposition to it has been plagued by financial troubles and internal divisions (it recently split into two organizations, Stop Prop. 209 and Campaign to Defeat 209). Pro-209 radio ads have been running for a month, with TV ads probably to follow this month; the anti-proposition campaign hasn't broadcast any ads yet, though it plans to start a radio campaign this week. If Prop. 209 passes, the question remains: Will it have...
...original name for Prop. 209 was the California Civil Rights Initiative--a moniker that expresses Custred and Wood's central strategic insight, which was to present the initiative as a direct descendent of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The wording of the proposition is adapted from the 1964 Civil Rights Act. None of the advocates of the proposition who appears regularly before the public is a white male. Its advertising slogan is "Bring us together." The idea the pro-proposition forces are selling is that affirmative action has introduced obsessive color consciousness into what otherwise would...