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After being warned by a key black advisor that removing the two husky members of the Legislature by force would be a public relations disaster, Bush was forced to compromise, instantly transforming Meek and Hill into heroes in the black community. Bush agreed to appoint a select legislative committee and schedule public hearings on the One Florida Initiative in Tampa, Miami and Tallahassee. It was a decision he has probably come to regret.

The Tampa hearing drew 600 angry people, the vast majority of whom wanted the One Florida Initiative scrapped. That was only a prelude to Miami.

There, an overwhelmingly black crowd of more 4,000 rotated in and out of the downtown Gusman Center (capacity: 1,711). With the governor present, the crowd cheered wildly as speaker after speaker blasted Bush and his plan. One compared the rollback of affirmative action to Ku Klux Klan violence after Reconstruction: "Now they don't wear robes and hoods, they wear $2,500 suits." The room erupted.

While blacks have found new unity in opposing the One Florida Initiative, Hispanics are divided on the issue, often along party lines. Critics include Rep. Anne Betancourt, D-Miami, and Mayor of Miami-Dade County Alex Penelas, a powerful and charismatic Democrat (Miami-Dade County is the greater metropolitan entity that includes the city of Miami and other Dade County cities). Republicans, including Rep. Luis Rojas, R-Miami, are lined up solidly behind the governor's plan. Rojas contends that, with voter sentiment running more than 80 percent in favor of ending race and gender preferences, the One Florida Initiative offers the best hope of averting passage of a constitutional amendment that would have a devastating impact. Supporters fail to mention another possible motive behind Bush's effort to blunt the Connerly initiative: avoiding a large black turnout in the November elections, which would hurt the Republican presidential candidate.

In fact, however, Connerly has not ceased in his effort to place a constitutional amendment banning affirmative action on the Florida ballot. Thus a heated referendum battle may still take place; Gov. Bush may have brought a lot of grief upon himself for nothing.

And the fun may have just begun for Jeb Bush. Speaking before a predominantly black crowd at a church in Tallahassee on Saturday, Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil rights leader, called the One Florida Initiative "the Bush whack." In campaign swings through the Sunshine State this week, both Bill Bradley and Al Gore blasted the One Florida Initiative, indirectly taking shots at George W. Bush. On Tuesday, 2,000 students marched on the state Capitol and managed to extract some modest concessions from the governor.

The hearing scheduled for Thursday will be held in a larger facility than originally planned. A coalition of groups opposed to the governor's plan is planning a massive march in Tallahassee on March 7 -- just in time to steal the thunder from the Bush's State of the State speech which opens the year's legislative session.

The One Florida Initiative debacle has set back Republican efforts to capture a larger slice of the minority vote in Florida and, to a lesser extent, the nation. Although many people who vehemently oppose the proposal are unlikely to have read it, the closed-door way Jeb Bush developed the One Florida Initiative is widely seen as paternalistic and politically inept. While a poll taken after the Tampa hearing showed Bush's high approval rating had only dropped slightly, subsequent events have no doubt taken an additional political toll.

The controversy that is now hurting Jeb Bush will not help George W. either, should he be the GOP presidential nominee. "We'll remember in November" was a frequently voiced refrain at the Miami hearing. One speaker was more personal: "In November, we're gonna get your brother."
salon.com | Feb. 10, 2000

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