WARD CONNERLY IS MY HERO Posted 2:32:00 PM by petit bourgeois (link)

I love the Sacrmento Bee. It's the best newspaper in California. I give a close second to the San Diego Union Trubune. These are the two papers one can find the least amount of bias and a fair amount of objectivity in reporting.

I mean, who else would print an entire article written by Ward Connerly? I am going to reprint the whole thing here, to give the man the last word on his tenure. Enjoy:

Odyssey of a regent

Ward Connerly, likely best known for his opposition to affirmative action, looks back on his 12-year term on the UC Board of Regents.

By Ward Connerly -- Special To The Bee
Published 2:15 am PST Sunday, February 27, 2005

Tuesday, I will end what I have affectionately called a 12-year "sentence" on the Board of Regents of the University of California. For the better part of that period, I was the target for many political snipers who viewed me as an enemy of the people, a despicable Uncle Tom and an agent of America's political right-wing.

And, yet, there are those who have described me as a public figure who has had more influence on public policy affecting race in California than any other elected or appointed individual of the past two generations. For whatever they are worth, my own insights might be of some value.

Although the UC Board of Regents is one of the most prestigious appointments that any governor can make, I did not seek nor did I particularly want to serve as a regent. How I came to become one is an interesting story.

It was a crisp day toward the end of January 1993, and I was attending a fund-raiser to retire the campaign deficit of then-Assemblyman B.T. Collins. The event was at the Hyatt, across the street from the Capitol, and I was literally holding B.T.'s coat so that he could show off his prosthetic arm and introduce all in attendance to his guest of honor, Rush Limbaugh. The tap on my shoulder midway through the event was that of Tom Hayes, Gov. Pete Wilson's finance director. Tom advised me that the governor wanted to see me in his office as soon as possible. At this, B.T. interrupted with some irreverent comment about that "candyass" governor thinking he was God to be able to summon individuals to his office even when they didn't work for him, as was the case with me. In truth, B.T. had profound respect for Wilson, and this was his way of expressing it.

After a few chuckles, I said goodbye to Limbaugh and told B.T. that I would return soon.

On the walk across Capitol Park, Hayes told me that the governor wanted my advice about some "innocuous redevelopment bill" that was pending.

When I arrived, sure enough, the governor asked for my opinion about this bill that related to the California Redevelopment Law. But it didn't make sense to me that he would have sent for me on a Saturday to discuss such a bill. I knew he had my home telephone number and that he never hesitated to call me. Moreover, as chairman of the California Governor's Foundation, I was certainly accessible at all hours to get someone to fix the plumbing or perform any number of other tasks to keep the governor's "mansion" in running condition. So, I was baffled by this meeting and stood to leave.

Pete then said in a rather offhand way, "By the way, I want to appoint you to the Board of Regents."

"What do they do?" was my reply. And, "How much time will this take?"

Pete assured me that the time demand would be rather modest. At the end of the conversation, I told Pete I would like a little time to think about it. My reluctance stemmed from the fact I had just spent a year away from my business serving on the Council on California Competitiveness and was of the strong opinion that I could ill afford another venture into public service that would be such a time hog.

The following Tuesday, I received a call from Julie Justus, the governor's appointments secretary, who wanted to read the press release announcing my appointment as a UC Regent. Although I remained unconvinced that this was an appointment I should accept, I nonetheless did so.

This background of how I became a regent is important to dispel any notion that I became a regent with a fixed agenda or accepted the assignment to do Wilson's bidding. If there was any hidden agenda, no one ever disclosed it to me.

My first board meeting was a harbinger of things to come. Throughout the meeting, a group of students were protesting a proposed fee increase, and I didn't understand whether they wanted no increase at all or whether they were arguing for a slower rate of increase. Rather abruptly, in my opinion, the chairman of the committee, Roy Brophy, adjourned the meeting and directed all regents to convene in the regents' lounge.

Instead, I joined the student regent, and we walked outside to meet with the demonstrators to determine the basis of their grievance. After a few minutes with the students, I returned to join my colleagues in the regents' lounge, whereupon I was chastised by Brophy. "When I adjourn a meeting and tell you to convene in the regents' lounge, that is what I expect you to do," he said. I informed him that I didn't take orders from him or any other regent. That exchange overshadowed my relationship with Roy as well as many in his inner circle for the duration of his term.

Shortly after that experience, three other distinguished regents - Brophy, John Davies and Howard Leach - invited me to breakfast at a prestigious private club on Nob Hill. This event was intended to be a softer way of whipping me into shape than the more meat-ax effort previously attempted. The message from this breakfast was that a great future awaited me as a regent, provided that I slowed down a bit and played by the rules of the team. In short, "be a team player." I had enormous respect for Davies and Leach. While the meeting did not alter my substantive views, it did give me pause about some of my tactics. I had concluded that the Board of Regents was a stodgy environment that relied too much on the view that rookie regents were expected to be seen but never heard. Therefore, I concluded it to be prudent to operate more deliberately, seeking the counsel of others instead of rushing ahead as if I were the Lone Ranger with no Tonto.

On one view my attitude never changed: Regents give far too much deference to the Office of the President, especially the president. Within the first year of my board service, I drafted and distributed an open letter to my colleagues describing what I considered the major governance problem we faced. Twelve years later, the date on that letter could be changed, but the content would be equally relevant.

Individual regents do not have a staff. Although we have an excellent office of the secretary, that staff is spread very thinly and its primary focus is on logistics and coordinating regents' events.

Regents must rely on the Office of the President to provide background information and issues recommendations. So, the president sets the agenda, essentially decides what information will be given to the regents and recommends the positions the regents should adopt.

Public testimony is confined to generally no more than three minutes per individual, and the testimony is divorced from the consideration of the items on the agenda. Moreover, the regents are not in a position to invite those from the public to expand upon their comments during the "Public Comment" period.

All of this ensures, by design or unwittingly, that the only voice heard by most regents on any given issue is that of the president or someone from the Office of the President. Given such a scenario, it is foolish to presume that the Office of the President is always benevolent and has no agenda of its own.

On more occasions than I care to recall, the president was essentially a traffic cop settling disputes between the competing interests concerned with what happens at UC. Should the Latino Caucus get its way about greater access for those of Mexican descent, regardless of UC's academic requirements? Should fees be raised to provide the necessary funding to attract and retain the faculty "stars"?

Which faction of the UC family should prevail on this issue or that issue is a never-ending political problem for the UC president. Most regents value the appearance of public collegiality more than any other attribute and can be quite unforgiving of any regent who betrays that trait. This characteristic, along with the well-nurtured instinct to protect the university from outside criticism, causes many within the UC family to look the other way when evidence can be found that UC is vulnerable to criticism or, worse, to "spin" its way out of identified problems.

This should not have come as a surprise, because few organizations like to admit when they screw up.

UC is no exception. However, the stakes are so high at UC that screw-ups can have devastating effects on individual lives. Student admissions is an obvious area where this concern applies. Personally, I am convinced that race and ethnicity have, once again, surfaced in the UC admissions process at one or two of our more selective institutions. And I am not sure that we can ever achieve a system that is 100 percent inoculated from the consideration of race. But we are very close to achieving that objective on most UC campuses.

One of the things I have learned as a regent, is how anxious those of us in the public arena are to invoke and apply ideological labels - "liberal" and "conservative" - to those with whom we disagree.

Admittedly, I lean to the right on most political issues. But, when I became a regent, I left my ideological label at the door. There is nothing uniquely "conservative" about wanting all students to be treated equally when they apply to UC. There is nothing conservative about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which guarantees equal treatment before the law "without regard to race, color or creed."

How conservative can I be by wanting same-sex domestic partners to receive equal health and medical benefits as other employees? Is it a measurement of my conservatism that I oppose raising student fees when our students and their families can least afford such increases? Am I conservative because I want UC's 200,000 employees to have a voice at the governance table alongside the regents, faculty, alumni, students and others who comprise the UC family? In short, these ideological labels are merely a tool for demonizing those with whom we disagree on specific issues and using those labels, once applied, to rally others to oppose our enemies.

Before I became a member of the Board of Regents, I never heard the term "black conservative" applied to me. Now, it is rare that such a label is not applied. And, once the label is applied, we close the door to further communication with individuals merely because they now belong to an ideological set to which we have assigned them.

I enjoyed a good relationship with state Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-Santa Clara, prior to my effort to end race preferences. That all ended the day that the regents voted to support my resolution, SP-1. The following day I received a letter from John accusing me of selling out to Pete Wilson and other right-wingers. Nearly a decade passed before he would even speak to me.

If any of us entertain any hope of being effective advocates in the public policy arena, it is critical that we have solidly formed views and that we pursue those views with enthusiasm and strong conviction. It is equally important, however, that we not become so heavily invested in our views that we terminate communication with others and deny ourselves the opportunity of considering alternative perspectives.

About the writer:

• Ward Connerly is the author of "Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences" and chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute.