Barack Obama Comes Out Against Ward Connerly's Latest Campaigns

The Chronicle of Higher Education
June 11, 2008

Ward Connerly—the former University of California regent, prominent affirmative action critic, and Republican activist—announced back in February that he had donated $500 to Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign. In a subsequent Washington Post article, he said he had given Mr. Obama the money to honor him “for trying to take race out of the body politic.” He said the campaigns of Mr. Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton show that there is no longer a need for affirmative-action preferences “to compensate for, quote, institutional racism and institutional sexism.”
Senator Obama, however, had already showed that he disagreed with Mr. Connerly on affirmative action, having appeared in a 2006 radio advertisement opposing Proposal 2, the Michigan ballot measure banning the use of racial, ethnic, and gender preferences by public colleges and other state and local agencies. (The measure passed overwhelmingly that fall.)
An article published in USA Today this week suggests that neither Mr. Connerly’s praise and donation nor the passage of time have done much to change Mr. Obama’s views. A spokeswoman for his campaign told DeWayne Wickham, a columnist for the newspaper, that Mr. Obama opposes Mr. Connerly’s efforts to get measures similar to Proposal 2 passed in Arizona, Colorado, and Nebraska this fall.
The spokeswoman, Candice Tolliver, is quoted as saying: “Sen. Obama believes in a country in which opportunity is available to all Americans, regardless of their race, gender or economic status. That’s why he opposes these ballot initiatives, which would roll back opportunity for millions of Americans and cripple efforts to break down historic barriers to the progress of qualified women and minorities.” http://chronicle.com/blogs/election/2186/barack-obama-comes-out-against-ward-connerlys-latest-campaigns