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What Does It Take to Beat English? Ron Unz is a veteran of initiative campaigns. In 1998, his ballot initiative to end bilingual education in California won with 61% of the vote. In 2000, he repeated the victory with the same initiative in Arizona with 63% of the vote. In 2002, liberal Massachusetts voters gave him the same lopsided victory, in the process boosting Republican Mitt Romney after Romney made support for the initiative a centerpiece of his campaign for governor. But in Colorado, on November 5, a similar Unz-backed initiative lost 56% to 44%. The reason: an enormous political ad campaign, built on overt racism and funded by a trust fund heiress. The day after the election, the Denver Rocky Mountain News carried a fascinating analysis and interview with the political consultant behind the opposition vote: John Britz. In February 2002, 68 percent of Colorado voters favored the initiative, according to a Rocky Mountain News poll. Then on July 28, Britz went to see Patricia Stryker, heiress to her grandfather's medical equipment fortune. Stryker's daughter went to a Spanish-immersion public school in Ft. Collins, Colorado, and she wanted to make sure her daughter had many more classmates who could speak only Spanish. "Can you guarantee me a victory for $3 million?" Stryker asked Britz. He said he would find a way. Britz kept the Stryker money under wraps until the end of the campaign, hoping to surprise Unz with the biggest political contribution in Colorado history. Britz had a problem, however, finding his magic message. His polling showed enormous support for the initiative, and against bilingual education. He couldn't find a way to defeat the initiative. Then, as he told the Rocky Mountain News "an 'a-ha' moment came in September" in an interview with "what they considered a typical suburban voter: female, Republican, a parent. The woman was adamant in her support of" the initiative. "Then Britz said her own children would be affected. That her child's teacher might be distracted by having to work with students who know little English. She turned. She said, 'they're going to put them in my kid's class?' That moment led to what would become a key slogan for No on 31 - the controversial 'Chaos in the Classroom' theme hammered home in their TV ads." The $3 million contribution was announced October 1, and a huge radio campaign started immediately. A blitz of television ads followed. As the Rocky Mountain News described them: "The TV spots are dark, showing still pictures of sad-looking children while an announcer ominously lists the faults in Amendment 31. In one, the announcer states children who speak little English, largely Hispanic students, would disrupt the education of 'your children' - presumably the majority white families of Colorado." Media critics and newspapers sharply criticized the ads as "ugly" and racist. Britz shrugs off the criticism: "Yeah, it's ominous, but it's cutting through. Do you want to win or do you want to be right?" Support for the initiative plummeted. The initiative backers tried to fight back, bolstered by former Governor Richard Lamm's ringing endorsement of the initiative. Lamm said he had signed the first Colorado bilingual education legislation, but now wanted to reverse his mistake. But there wasn't enough time or money to reverse the "Chaos in the Classroom" ads. The initiative lost.
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The
ELPAC Report 