You wouldn't know it from the media, but on Election Day following the lead two years ago of California, voters in Washington approved the elimination of race and sex preferences by their state government. Initiative 200 was modeled on California's Prop. 209 and passed with 58 percent of the vote, despite a heavily funded and hyperactive opposition.
The "No! 200" campaign was backed by a Who's Who of corporate sponsors -- Microsoft, Boeing, Eddie Bauer, Nordstrom, and Starbucks. The Seattle Times doled out free advertising space. Gov. Gary Locke did television advertisements supporting preferences and opposing the ballot measure. In the end, I-200 opponents outspent supports by a margin of at least 3 to 1. Such margins would usually spell death for any initiative. Not this time.
The American Civil Rights Institute, founded by California businessman and Prop. 209 veteran Ward Connerly, led the fight to pass the Washington initiative. "This is an important victory for people who want to go against the establishment," says ACRI's Jennifer Nelson. "Voters saw through the rhetoric, and they knew what they were voting for."
Opponents of the initiative argued that the language of the proposition would confuse voters, but the text could not have been more straightforward: "The state shall not discriminate against -- or grant preferential treatment to -- any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting." A Seattle Times poll showed that voters understood the issue, and two-thirds of them knew from the beginning of the campaign how they would vote.
Coverage of the unlikely uphill triumph of the civil-rights initiative -- or the paucity thereof -- has been interesting, to say the least. After a short round-up in its election section, the New York Times waited nearly a week to discuss the news in its pages -- and when a story finally did appear, it was buried on page 25. When a similar initiative was narrowly defeated in Houston last year, the news was sitting pretty on Page One, two days after the election. Other national media have also proved remarkably reticent about this striking result.