Bushism in One Florida

National Review, March 6, 2000 by Cristopher Rapp

Gov. Jeb tries to split the middle

Tallahassee, Fla.

EIGHT hundred people have assembled here, and they are in a foul mood. The event is a public forum on Florida governor Jeb Bush's "One Florida" proposal, which bans race preferences in university admissions and state contracting. The crowd is more than slightly unhappy with the proposal.

For four hours, one person after another comes up to the microphone to bestow on Bush epithets such as "dictator," "white supremacist," and the like. One young man gets a standing ovation when he compares Bush to George Wallace. Another speaker, clad in a black satin jacket bearing the insignia of the farm-workers union, characterizes Bush's attitude this way: "He's saying, `We don't care about your children ... [they] are going to stay in poverty to pick the food that the governor eats!'" The crowd cheers. Outside the building, a protester--one of hundreds--brandishes a sign that reads "JEB CROW" (an allusion, of course, to Jim Crow).

Back in November, when Bush first unveiled One Florida, the reception in many quarters was cautious but positive. The New York Times called it "a reasoned basis for the coming debate," and liberal columnist Clarence Page described it as a "sane, sensible way out of the nation's most vexing and volatile racial dilemma."

But it didn't take long for the affirmative-action dogmatists to mount a crackdown for orthodoxy. On January 18, state senator Kendrick Meek of Miami and state representative Tony Hill of Jacksonville began a sit-in in the lieutenant governor's office; they remained there for 25 hours--until Bush agreed to hold public hearings around the state on the One Florida proposal.

Subsequently, 2,000 students from Florida A&M University occupied three floors of the capitol building to protest the policy, singing (inevitably) "We Shall Overcome" and (incredibly) "We Are the World." In Miami, an overflow crowd of 4,000 jammed into the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts, and spent seven hours ranting against the plan and its architect.

The prize for hyperbole, however, went to Sharon Russ, a member of the National Organization for Women who spoke at a town-hall meeting in Tampa. After saying that One Florida reminded her of "the days of slavery," she went even further, demanding of the governor, "Get your feet off of my neck! Get your feet off of my neck!"

The irony is that Bush had proposed One Florida precisely in order to avoid this kind of mess. In January 1999, just after he took office, he was approached by Ward Connerly, the University of California regent who had led successful ballot-initiative campaigns that ended race and gender preferences in California and Washington state. Connerly had plans for a similar amendment in Florida, and wanted Bush's support. In their private meeting, Bush declined, explaining that a battle over affirmative action would be "divisive," and jeopardize the goodwill he had built up during his moderate 1998 campaign.

Connerly says he left the meeting "shattered." Later the same day, Bush came out publicly against Connerly's initiative. "He wants a war," Bush told reporters. "I'm a lover."

For a while at least, Bush's strategy seemed to pay off. He enjoyed a remarkably successful first year in office--probably, in fact, the best of any of the heralded Republican governors--highlighted by the passage of his groundbreaking school-choice plan. Then, on November 8, came a Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times poll showing that despite the governor's opposition, the Connerly initiative enjoyed better than 2-to-1 support among likely voters. The following day, in hopes of deflating the initiative's momentum, Bush issued the executive order known as One Florida.

The proposal is strikingly moderate--too much so, in fact, for many conservatives. While universities will no longer be allowed to use race as a criterion for admission, the top 20 percent of each high school's graduating class--the "Talented Twenty"--will receive guaranteed admission to one of the state's ten public universities, regardless of their grade-point average or test scores. In addition, the plan provides for affirmative action based on economics rather than race--colleges will factor in a student's family income, zip code, and whether his parents went to college. Need-based financial aid will be increased by 43 percent, and race-based scholarships will still be allowed. The state also will pay to have every high-school sophomore take the PSAT for free, and to increase the number of advanced-placement courses in low-performing schools. The effect of all of this, according to a study commissioned by the state Board of Regents, is likely to be an increase in minority admissions.

Similarly, the state-contracting component of the plan combines a ban on racial set-asides with provisions of which even the New York Times would approve. The state's procurement officers will now be directly accountable to the governor's office, hired or fired according to their ability to "internalize our commitment to diversity." Race-neutral efforts to help businesses in poor areas are coupled with special financial assistance for minority firms.