PETE WILSON I200 KEEPS EQUAL PAY, OUTREACH AS LONG AS ALL HAVE CHANCE
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To:             	kclp@ix.netcom.com (kclp Mailing List)
From:           	malkin1@ix.netcom.com
Subject:        	kclp: Letter from Pete Wilson re: Prop. 209 and I-200 (I hear Wilson personally authored this).
Date sent:      	Fri, 30 Oct 1998 07:45:35 -0800
Send reply to:  	kclp@ix.netcom.com


October 26, 1998


Mr. John Carlson, Chairman
Yes on Initiative 200
203 Bellevue Way, NE, #363
Bellevue, Washington 98004


Dear Mr. Carlson:


Thank you for your inquiry. I welcome the opportunity to set the 
record straight on California's experience post-Proposition 209 by 
presenting facts which flatly contradict the false assertion of 
opponents of I-200. 


In November of 1996, the voters of California enacted Proposition 
209, an initiative virtually identical to I-200 in its prohibition of
discrimination or preferences on the basis of race, gender, or ethnicity
in public employment, contracting, and education.


Virtually identical false claims and predictions of dire consequences were
made by the opponents of 209 as are now being made by the opponents of
I-200, and just as now appears to be true in the heavy media campaign
against I-200, the opponents of 209 made a special effort to frighten
women with the same scare tactics and baseless claims that are now
flooding the airwaves of Washington State to mislead women voters to the
mistaken belief that I-200 will reverse all women's rights and progress. 


As California's experience in the two years since the passage of 209 has
made absolutely clear, none of these false claims or dire predictions has
proved true. Indeed, all have been proved false.


Specifically: 


1. Neither 209 or I-200 "threaten equal pay for equal work": Equal 
pay for equal work is a right protected by both federal (the Federal Equal
Pay Act) and state laws enforced by agencies specially created for that
purpose. Obviously state law cannot supersede or preempt federal law, as
both 209 and I-200 acknowledge by their express terms. Beyond that,
neither 209 nor I-200 seek to or can be construed as seeking to in any way
abridge any rights of women guaranteed by the ultimate touchstone, the
Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States
Constitution. Proposition 209 has been tested and upheld on that specific
point by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a ruling declarative of the
governing federal law in Washington State as well as in California
(Coalition for Economic Equity v. Wilson). Indeed, the irony is that 209
and I-200 expressly prohibit such discrimination against women in
compensation by prohibiting gender-based preference. 


2. Neither Proposition 209 or I-200 pose any threat to outreach or 
recruitment provided that such activities in fact make an equal 
effort to reach and in fact offer equal opportunity to all members of a
broadly defined class of beneficiaries - without preference based on race,
gender, or ethnicity. For example, it is perfectly permissible under 209
and under I-200 to offer to girls, as do California public schools, the
opportunity to attend a single gender academy where without the
distraction and competition of male classmates, some girls do better

academically - especially in science and math - than in the usual co-ed
environment. The sole proviso that attaches to this offer is that the same
educational program offered to girls by a single gender academy must be
offered to boys as well. That satisfies the equal opportunity requirement
of the 14th Amendment. By offering boys the same educational opportunity
as is provided to girls California's public school single gender academies
are immunized against the constitutional attack that has invalidated a
number of such schools in other states, despite the clear educational
benefits they offer. At my urging, the California Legislature passed the
enabling legislation that authorized our single gender academies in the
same year that California voters passed Proposition 209, which poses no
threat to them - as long as their benefits are offered to both sexes -
because no preference is made. 


The contention that 209 has threatened programs to get welfare 
mothers to work is ludicrous fabrication. The truth is that post-209
California has moved some 500,000 recipients from welfare to work -
virtually all of them single mothers. 


3. For exactly the same reason, 209 - and therefore I-200 - pose no 
threat to women's apprenticeship programs. The fact is that post-209
enrollment in apprenticeship programs has increased by 28 percent for
women and 40 percent for minorities, according to statistics reported by
the California Division of Apprenticeship Standards for the period
1994-1998.


And there is absolutely no evidence that 209 has in any way 
constrained the continued growth in the number of California 
businesses owned by women. To the contrary, the 78 percent increase 
in women-owned businesses over the last eight years argues that it 
has had no harmful impact at all. Women now own 38 percent of all 
California businesses, and in recent years have started double the 
number of new businesses started by their male counterparts. It is 
flatly untrue that "women in California are no longer invited to 
compete for government contracts " as was asserted in an op-ed in the
Saturday, October 24 edition of the South County Journal by Governor Locke
and former Governor Evans. Again, 209 prohibits such gender-based
discrimination. Clearly someone has seriously misled Governor Locke and
Governor Evans. They are honorable men - but they are mistaken. 


In short, none of the tragedies, calamities or injustices which the 
opponents of 209 insisted its passage would produce have in fact 
taken place. To the contrary, two years after their dire predictions,
girls athletic programs have been expanded, not curtailed (no surprise, as
they are protected by Title IX of the Federal Civil Rights Act); girls are
being encouraged to study science and mathematics in the nurturing
environment of California's single-gender academies and so are boys);
women are participating in and contributing to California's vibrant
economic growth as apprentices, as employees, (including those 500,000
former welfare mothers), and most notably as business owners (including
winning women bidders on government contracts) in record numbers. 


There is simply no evidence to support the false charges of opponents that
209 has been or that I-200 will be a bar to equal opportunity for women.
The facts flatly contradict all the scare-tactic predictions.


But what is true is that 209 was needed and I-200 is needed to lift 
the bar that unfairly denies opportunity to many women like Katuria 
Smith - because they are "not the right race." That's intolerable. I
respectfully submit that there ought not to be any wrong races - not in
California, not in Washington, not in an America that keeps faith with
immigrant dreams of upward mobility and the belief in a land that offers
opportunity to all who are willing to work - whatever their race, gender
or ethnicity.


Whether they know it or not, the opponents of 209 in California and 
of I-200 in Washington are the keepers of a grossly unfair status quo that
penalizes people for the accident of being born in a politically incorrect
race, gender or ethnicity - one not given political preference.


Whether they admit it or not, the opponents of 209 and I-200 are 
attempting to defend and preserve a morally indefensible system of 
racial and gender discrimination.


Racial and gender discrimination is just wrong, whether practiced 
overtly and illegally or indirectly through preferences and quotas 
which deny opportunities to those who would win a fair competition on the
merits. The opponents of I-200 cannot legitimize racial or gender
discrimination by substituting a new set of victims. It is wrong when
practiced against any American anywhere, and whether accomplished by
unabashed bigotry or politically correct preferences.


One more thing. The present system of race and gender preferences and
quotas quotas are simply preferences quantified) is not only inescapably
unfair, and therefore inevitably divisive, but perhaps worst of all it is
a cop-out -- a cop-out on the duty we owe as a just and caring society to
assure that every child, whatever his or her ethnicity is provided the
health care and education which every child needs and deserves to become
all that he or she can be. When all our children arrive at their
classrooms healthy and able to concentrate and learn from a school system
that challenges and prepares them for life's competition, then the high
achievers of both sexes and all ethnicities will win life's prizes based
on individual performance and individual merit - rather than gender or
race.


That day will come sooner if I-200 is enacted. I only hope that the 
truth of California's experience in the two years since 209 passed - the
facts of what has happened, and of what was predicted but has not happened
- will help set free the good people of Washington from the same gravely
wrong and unfair preferences and quotas we cast off in California when we
passed 209.


Again, I thank you for the opportunity to present the truth about 
post-209 California and I thank you for having the courage and moral
stamina to stand and fight for what is right and fair for all
Washingtonians.


Sincerely, 




Pete Wilson