Anti-affirmative Action Campaign in Jeopardy in Michigan.

Article from:     Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News  (Freep)
Article date:     April 17, 2004

 Apr. 17--Plagued by legal challenges, money woes and organizational dysfunction, the campaign to ask Michigan voters to end race and gender preferences in the November election is close to collapse.

Although officially still active, the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative has lost its campaign manager and been declared temporarily suspended by its treasurer and "dead in the water" by a cochair of its steering committee. ...

... "There's no question right now that we are dead in the water," state Rep. Jack Brandenburg, R-Harrison Township, a cochair of the campaign steering committee, said Friday.

Leonard Schwartz, an Oakland County attorney and treasurer of MCRI, wrote this week in an online newsletter of the Libertarian Party of Michigan (www.lpmich.org ) that the campaign has been suspended while backers awaited the outcome of legal challenges by its opponents. ....

....State Rep. Leon Drolet, R-Clinton Township, cochair of the steering committee with Brandenburg, said the legal roadblocks are "not a significant factor" in MCRI's lack of progress.