Out of State Uncle Tom Pays for Republican Effort to End Affirmative Action in Michigan

The group aiming to ban the use of race and gender preferences in Michigan received contributions from hundreds of people in Michigan and around the country, too, but still relied mostly on support from California businessman and activist Ward Connerly to collect petition signatures, according to campaign finance reports filed this week. The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative received $545,693 from a committee headed and largely funded by Connerly, according to the reports. MCRI raised more than $700,000 last year, most of the remainder coming from small individual donors. Most of the money was used to pay a Southfield company that specializes in collecting petition signatures for ballot proposals. The MCRI petition drive, launched after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of the University of Michigan to consider race in admissions decisions, is aimed at amending the state constitution to ban the use of race and gender in public hiring and contracting, and university admissions. MCRI spokesman Chetly Zarko said the campaign overall had received more than 1,400 individual donations, and that more than half were from Michiganders. "We relied on Ward for a lot of help," Zarko said. "But hundreds of people from Michigan also had the courage to contribute. Our opposition consistently says there are no grassroots in this campaign. We've laid that to rest." The committee also received donations from several Republican state House lawmakers and their political action committees, including $10,000 from a PAC associated with House Speaker Craig DeRoche, R-Novi. MCRI submitted more than 500,000 petition signatures last month. If 317,000 are certified as registered voters the issue will be placed on the November 2006 ballot. The measure is opposed by a coalition of civic, business, labor and religious organizations and by Gov. Jennifer Granholm.[more] and  [more

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