As Joe Lieberman's 2004 presidential campaign begins its first big road trip today, he is already on the defensive over seemingly conflicting views on affirmative action.  And to add even more tension, he is heading to Michigan, ground zero in that controversy. (Getty Images)...

Lieberman Denies Shift On Race Policy
January 20, 2003
By DAVID LIGHTMAN, Washington Bureau Chief

WASHINGTON -- As Joe Lieberman's 2004 presidential campaign begins its first big road trip today, he is already on the defensive over seemingly conflicting views on affirmative action.

And to add even more tension, he is heading to Michigan, ground zero in that controversy.

Lieberman told a national television audience Sunday that he supports the University of Michigan admissions system, which uses racial preferences, and said President Bush's opposition was flatly "wrong" and "divisive."

But nearly eight years ago, as Democrats struggled to keep their historic backing of affirmative action from becoming a serious political liability and as California considered banning preferences at state-funded institutions, Lieberman sounded a different tone.

"You can't defend policies that are based on group preferences as opposed to individual opportunities," he said in 1995 as he raised serious questions about affirmative action.

Group preferences are devices used by employers, colleges and others to give minority candidates extra credit or points when considering whether to hire or admit them. Opponents complain that is unfair; supporters counter that the extra help is needed because minorities often lack the same cultural and educational advantages as whites.

Lieberman and his staff insisted Sunday that he has not changed his view. They said many Democrats were questioning affirmative action in 1995. The Supreme Court was considering the matter, and President Clinton was reviewing how to deal with preferences.

Anyway, the senator contends, he was concerned about group preferences that had become, or were in danger of becoming, quota systems.

On March 9, 1995, before an audience of national reporters, Lieberman said of group policies: "When we have such policies, we have the effect of breaking some of those ties in civil society that have held us together because [the affirmative action policies] are patently unfair."

Lieberman continued: "Those who are the victims of [group preferences] and lose out when choices are made based on group preferences as opposed to individual ability naturally become disaffected from the process."

Asked that day about the California initiative, Lieberman said: "Looking at the wording of the Civil Rights Initiative in California, I can't see how I could be opposed to it," he said, "because it basically is a statement of American values ..."

Lieberman today says that while he opposes quotas, which courts generally have banned, he sees nothing wrong with the Michigan system, which awards extra points to certain minority students as part of an overall admissions rating system.

Such a system, he said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," is "a response to the unfortunate reality that a lot of minority students go to schools that are under-performing, and to give them the opportunity to come up and make it into America's middle class they need that plus factor."

Asked to square his present views with what he said regarding the California initiative, Lieberman responded, "It was at a press conference. Reporters read that statement [details of the California plan] to me. Frankly, I said on the face of it, it sounds like basic American values to me. It doesn't mean the end of affirmative action. It meant the end of quotas."

No one read him any such statement. A Scripps Howard reporter asked only: "If you were a California resident, would you vote for [the initiative] and will the Democratic Leadership Council have a position on it?"

Lieberman, an active DLC member since coming to Washington in 1989, said that while he did not know the DLC view, he knew his own. "I think we all want to say that we're against quotas," Lieberman said in March of 1995, "and against group preferences, but there ought to be some room for the kind of outreach that has been part of affirmative action programs without getting into quotas."

He spoke on the Senate floor that summer after Clinton offered a "mend it, don't end it" policy on affirmative action. "Most Americans who do not support equal opportunity and are not biased don't think it is fair to discriminate against some Americans in a way to make up for historic discrimination against other Americans," Lieberman said.

An outraged Jesse Jackson went to Lieberman's Hartford office that summer. Lieberman was out of the country, but the Rev. Jackson bent his head and prayed for Lieberman's political soul.

Later, the senator issued a statement saying, "Many affirmative action programs must change because they are inconsistent with the law and basic American values of equal treatment and opportunity."

These views came back to haunt Lieberman in 2000, when Al Gore picked him as his running mate. To defuse the controversy, Lieberman appeared at a meeting of black delegates as the 2000 Democratic National Convention began.

"I have supported affirmative action. I do support affirmative action, and I will support affirmative action because history and current reality make it necessary," he told them.

Those views are the template for his 2004 positions as a presidential candidate, views he tried to offer firmly Sunday and probably will discuss again today as he addresses multiracial audiences in Detroit in celebration of the Martin Luther King holiday.

But Lieberman probably will face more questions such as those posed by NBC's Tim Russert, who wondered whether all this was political opportunism. "Not true," Lieberman said. "This whole debate and discussion occurred in 1995, seven years ago."

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