Orange County Register, April 17, 2001

Several months ago, before a group of hundreds of African Americans, he openly used the racial slur most calculated to offend that group. Many in the audience got up and walked out.

Had the speaker been a non-Latino Republican from Orange County, he would have been the target of angry demonstrations, charges of insensitivity, and surely forced to resign. The Lt. Governor, the first Latino Speaker of the Assembly, awkwardly explained that he didn’t understand what he had done.

His defenders in the press and legislature explained it all away as a slip of the tongue. The storm quickly passed but the Fresno-area Democrat kept to similar themes.

Bustamante has been demanding that the University of California reinstate the race and gender preferences it banned in 1995. That position is as revealing as it is untenable.

Before 1995, the University of California (UC) practiced a system of racial profiling that not only violated the best civil rights tradition but stood at odds with reality. The UC classified East Indians as whites, a notion that would surprise the city council of Calcutta.

The UC also treated anyone with a Hispanic surname as an underrepresented minority, even the all-white child of a Spanish banker. Using a rigid point system, the UC automatically admitted blacks and Latinos with far lower test scores than many of the Asians and whites, often from impoverished backgrounds, that they rejected. The UC gave preference to affluent out-of-state minority applicants over economically disadvantaged Californians who did not come from preferred groups.

California’s Lt. Governor wants to reinstate this same discriminatory system, which the UC Regents voted to end in 1995. As it turned out, they were ahead of the curve. The following year the voters of California ended race and gender preferences in state education, employment, and contracting by passing Proposition 209.

A district court judge ruled the measure unconstitutional, but an appeals court upheld the law. The judges on the Ninth Circuit ruled that it was absurd to argue that a state law that requires equal protection under the law somehow violates equal protection of the laws. Neither does it violate UC admission.

There is now only one percent fewer blacks, Latinos, and American Indians in the UC system than there was in 1995. Minorities don’t need preferences and the very concept of a minority is now in doubt.

The Census shows no clear majority in California, prompting Bustamante, who was first elected to the Assembly in 1993, to observe that “if there is no majority maybe there are no minorities,” and that we should simply all be Californians. It was a flash of common sense but was quickly contradicted by the Lt. Governor’s push to reinstate race preferences.

Under Proposition 209, now part of the state constitution, such preferences are illegal. Support for illegal policies is a very odd activity for a Lt. Governor, who takes an oath to uphold the law and the state constitution. More recently, Bustamante has been backing some very odd legislation he thinks will solve the energy crisis.

Bustamante has sponsored a bill, AB67x, authored by Merced Democrat Dennis Cardoza, that would use California’s three-strikes law to punish utility companies that sell electricity or natural gas at “unjust or unreasonable rates.”

“There is a tremendous amount of wealth that is being transferred from California to five companies, mostly in Texas,” Bustamante told the Sacramento Bee. “If what they are doing isn’t illegal, it ought to be.”

The bill would punish companies with fines as high as 10 percent of gross corporate assets. The measure could also mean serious jail time. The three-strikes provision requires sentences of 25 years to life.

Bustamante is not an economist but a lifetime politico. Like many with that background, he is oblivious to the reality that California’s energy crisis is a question of supply and demand. Threatening suppliers with jail and draconian fines will drive them from the state and worsen California’s energy woes.

A better outcome would be for this truly ignorant and appalling legislation to constitute a third strike for Cruz Bustamante, following his racial slur and push for discriminatory preferences. He should consider another line of work and legislators should consider getting rid of this office entirely.

Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley is editorial director of the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco and the author of "From Mainline to Sideline: The Social Witness of the National Council of Churches." He can be reached via email at klbillingsley@pacificresearch.org