California’s Civil Rights Initiative, whose progress was often chronicled on this page, looks like another one of those cases where California led the nation. An initiative patterned on CCRI, which would outlaw race and sex discrimination in public employment, contracting, and education, is being promoted now in Washington state. Its chief advocates — the Ward Connerlys of the Granola Belt — are Scott Smith, a state representative, and Tim Eyman, the owner of a small business. They are hopeful for the initiative’s success in 1998, noting that polls show 71 percent support for the idea across the state, and a “surprising” 62 percent in “liberal Seattle.”
And in Wisconsin, in the April 1 elections reported on two weeks ago by Craig Gilbert, Supreme Court justice Jon Wilcox, who is expected to uphold the constitutionality of that state’s experiments in school choice, prevailed over challenger Walt Kelly, who was backed by the teachers’ unions, by a 63- 37 margin. In the race for state Superintendent of Education, the anti-choice incumbent John Benson held his job, 55-45, against insurgent schoolteacher Linda Cross, who supports parental choice. On the whole, good news for school- choice supporters — whom we soon expect to be denounced as “right-wing extremists” by Clinton-Gore spokesmen.
