Daily Archive
Stories Posted on July 31, 2008
No Power to the People
Category: Blocking · State: · Source: National Review
Ward Connerly, Jennifer Gratz, and the state leaders in Colorado, Arizona, and Nebraska have collected enough signatures to put civil-rights ballot initiatives before the voters there this November. These initiatives will ban preferences based on race, ethnicity, and sex — a.k.a., affirmative action — in public contracting, education, and employment. It wasn’t easy. Similar measures have passed overwhelmingly now in blue states like California, Washington, and Michigan, so the defenders of such discrimination are increasingly desperate to keep these initiatives away from the voters.
Hot summer for Colorado initiatives
Category: Affirmative Action · State: Colorado · Source: The Hill
California’s crown as the king of the initiative is about to be snatched by Colorado. The Colorado secretary of State’s office is besieged by truckload after truckload of baled petitions being submitted by various groups seeking a spot on November’s ballot. It’s a crowded house these days. Seven initiatives have already been certified for the ballot (or their petitions await certification). Another eight to 10 measures are widely expected to submit petitions in coming days. And four referred measures are already on the statewide ballot. At the least, there will be 15 significant ballot measures before voters when they look at their ballots in a few months. What do I mean by significant? For starters, many of these initiatives are seriously moneyed measures. Several of the proposals will inspire campaigns that spend more on TV and other electioneering than either candidate for the U.S. Senate — Republican Bob Schaffer or Democrat Mark Udall — can possibly bring to his top-tier contest. Some initiative campaigns have already pre-paid for their entire multimillion-dollar TV budgets before their petitions are even certified. So much will be spent on these measures that it is feared that if you don’t buy your TV now, you’ll be frozen out at the end. There won’t be a minute of broadcast time available for initiative advertisers. But it’s more than money that makes this year special in Colorado.