LANSING – Proposal 2006-2, the measure that would abolish affirmative action in public hiring or academic admissions based on race and sex, won Tuesday with a 58-41 margin.

The win for the measure was both surprising and not surprising, given the measure of success similar proposals had seen in California and Washington. But the pedigree of corporations, social and religious groups, political parties and candidates that organized to oppose the proposal as they had not done in California and Washington had helped give the opponents a solid, well-financed wall of defense.

Given the overall magnitude of success Democrats enjoyed statewide, the passage of Proposal 2006-2 seems even more surprising given that Democrats made defeating the proposal a critical part of their campaign.

Doug Tietz, campaign manager for the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, said the measure’s success was due to “clear and compelling ballot language” that left voters with little question that they were only voting to end unfair preferential treatment.

“Michigan is ready to move beyond the use of race in our government. The voters are smart enough to know the era of judging people by the color of their skin is over,” he said.

In fact, last week East Lansing political consultant Mark Grebner had suggested that once voters who were not paying attention to the ballot proposals went into the voting booth and read the language for the first time they would support it.

Polls had shown consistently that support for the proposal was tight. On Monday, polls actually showed the opponents ahead. But polls had also asked voters if they thought special preference should be offered people of different race or gender – independent of the language on Proposal 2006-2 – a significant majority said no.

Many counties showed the proposal winning by a more than two-to-one margin. Despite the lead, officials held up calling the race until they had a better idea of how many votes were coming in from Detroit and other urban areas.

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