THE MAN BEHIND the Civil Rights Initiative campaign is a California businessman who has made a fortune serving the interests of the housing, real estate and construction industries. A Republican and protégé of Pete Wilson, Connerly helped Wilson get elected as California governor in 1991, and Wilson appointed him to the University of California Board of Regents in 1993, a post Connerly held until 2005.

One of Connerly's first actions as a UC regent was to draft a resolution that abolished affirmative action in the system in 1995. The next year, Connerly was behind the effort to pass Proposition 209, which banned affirmative action in public contracting, employment and admissions throughout the state.

In 1997, Connerly founded the American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI) and attracted funding from the major right-wing foundations. Since 1997, according to Media Transparency (a Web site that tracks conservative philanthropies), Connerly's ACRI received 47 foundation grants totaling more than $5.7 million. Major donors included the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has given more than $2.5 million. In 2006, the Bradley Foundation gave ACRI $450,000 to support Connerly's successful campaign in Michigan to pass the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.

Connerly attracts a lot of attention because he is an African-American on a crusade to eliminate an education program of which he, seemingly, is a beneficiary. Further, he's even aligned himself with such bizarre allies as the Ku Klux Klan. When the KKK was the largest group to endorse the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative in 2006, Connerly's response was captured in a YouTube video: "If the Ku Klux Klan thinks that equality is right, God bless them. Thank them for finally reaching the point where logic and reason are being applied instead of hate."

But more than ideology motivates the man. The Winter 2008 issue of Ms. Magazine reveals how Connerly has financially benefited from his anti-affirmative action advocacy.
Connerly has set up two nonprofit organizations (ACRI and another called the American Civil Rights Coalition) that have paid him salaries of $1.1 million in 2003, $1.3 million in 2004, $1.7 million in 2005 and $1.6 million in 2006. In most of those years, Connerly's compensation has comprised more than half, and up to 66 percent, of the total revenue the nonprofits took in from the foundations.

Personal enrichment through the administration of a nonprofit entity is a violation of federal law. U.S. Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) asked the IRS in 2006 to investigate "possible excessive compensation practices" at Connerly's nonprofits.
In addition, Connerly's for-profit company, Connerly & Associates, which is managed by his wife, is another winner. AFT has looked at Connerly's tax returns and found that the firm, which lobbies on behalf of construction clients, also has received subcontracts from Connerly's ACRC and ACRI.

Connerly is viewed as a clever political strategist. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle after the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative passed, Connerly revealed his
vision for the future. "Three down and 20 to go," Connerly boasted, referring to the 23 states at that time that had systems for putting laws directly before voters in the form of ballot initiatives. "We don't need to do them all, but if we do a significant number, we will have demonstrated that race preferences are antithetical to the popular will of the American people."

And he'll have made a pretty penny at the expense of minorities and women, to boot.