Jeb Bush Is Very Proud Of Ending Affirmative Action in Florida. He Shouldn’t Be.
Mother Jones
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As he courts conservatives skeptical of his right-wing bona fides, Jeb Bush, an all-but-announced GOP presidential candidate, has cited one of his most controversial moves as Florida’s governor to illustrate his record of standing firm on principle in the face of widespread opposition: His decision to unilaterally end affirmative action in Florida. “Trust me, there were a lot of people upset by this,” he boasted to activists at the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year. But Bush’s effort to dismantle affirmative action in state college admissions and government contracting and hiring—which the Sun Sentinel dubbed the “most grievous blunder” of his tenure and a “prime example of Bush’s shoot-first, take-no-advice method of governing”—illustrates more than his executive style. At a time when racial tensions from Baltimore to Ferguson, Missouri, are a national issue, Bush’s fight against affirmative action, which led to a confrontation with the state’s black community, remains a significant episode in his political history.
In 1999, Bush’s first year as governor, Ward Connerly, the anti-affirmative action crusader who had spearheaded successful ballot initiatives to eliminate racial preferences in California and Washington, descended on Florida to gather signatures for a similar measure that would appear on the November 2000 ballot. Bush was no fan of what he called Connerly’s “divisive” approach. (Republican support for Connerly’s amendment in California had pushed minority voters away from the GOP and helped Democrats take control of Sacramento.) But Bush also expressed skepticism about Florida’s affirmative action policies, which he described in one private email as “stupid and destructive.” So Bush decided to preempt Connerly’s effort by ending affirmative action in Florida himself. He did so by signing Executive Order 99-281 on November 9, 1999.
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Jeb Bush Is Very Proud Of Ending Affirmative Action in Florida. He Shouldn’t Be.
