Via The Corner, conservative opponents of Ward Connerly’s Racial Privacy Initiative raise an issue that I aired as early as last September: that, if passed, it would hobble efforts to expose racial preference programs that produce the kind of massive disparities (with preferred groups having many, many times better chances of admission) that were on display in the Michigan cases. Also, Kevin Drum has news that the initiative might get pushed up to this November to be on the ballot with the recall election.
Politically, I suspect that this will greatly hurt the chances of a Republican succeeding Gray Davis, by bringing out larger African-American turnout (Mickey Kaus also thinks those voters will help Davis, but I’m not so sure). But there’s also a flip side: by taking Connerly’s initiative off the March ballot, you (a) improve its chances of passing (March will be Democratic presidential primary time) but possibly (b) depress turnout for the presidential primary (I’m not sure how that cuts, but fewer African-American and Latino voters is probably good news for Howard Dean, whose supporters are decidedly upscale and white).