Publicly, Connerly’s concern is that Bush’s plan to replace preferences in state universities with automatic admission of the top twenty percent of each public high school graduating class will damage academic standards in Florida state universities. But only slightly less publicly, Connerly is miffed at the treatment he received from Bush when he brought his crusade to end race and gender preferences to Florida last year. Florida Republicans, he grouses, accused him of wanting to start a "war," froze him out of the state convention, and even refused to rent him a hospitality suite. What’s more, they’ve used transparently obstructionist legal tactics to keep his referendum to amend the state constitution to outlaw preferences off the ballot.

But as a battle-hardened veteran of successful campaigns in California and Washington state to end preferences, Connerly holds his nose and soldiers on. He well understands the dynastic dynamic that joins Florida Republican politics to national Republican politics this year. What might have once been parochial squabbles in Tallahassee are now potential roadblocks on the way to the White House. And that’s precisely the problem.

"‘Compassionate conservatism’ to some means bide your time in 2000," he says. But in fact, if the goal is the principled one of ending the practice of government counting and sorting by race, there is very little daylight between Connerly and Bush. Although less comprehensive and potentially less permanent than Connerly’s proposed constitutional amendment, Bush’s One Florida program outlaws — by executive order — race, ethnic and gender preferences in state contracting, college admissions, and some state hiring.

But by doing less, the Bush plan has the potential to does much, much more. It would build on his revolutionary plan to transform Florida education by giving vouchers to students in failing public schools. It is this compounding effect — of "leveling the playing field" by lifting up failing public schools — that makes Bush’s 20-percent solution a plausible plan to preserve minority enrollment without damaging academic standards.

This is a hugely ambitious — and commensurately perilous — political balancing act for Bush. He is attempting to strike a cord for color blindness while at the same time pre-empting Connerly and avoiding a polarizing Prop. 209-style debate. And his precarious position, needless to say, has not been lost on partisans eager to score political points at a time when Florida politics and national Republican politics are linked as never before.

The fun began on Super Tuesday, when 11,000 representatives of the Democratic race/gender/organized-labor base descended on the state capitol in Tallahassee to protest Bush’s plan. Although they were powerless to reverse Bush’s executive order — signed fully four months before in November 1999 — Jesse Jackson, Kweisi Mfume and Patricia Ireland showed up anyway and happily trained their overheated rhetoric on the presidential election. No hyperbole was spared.

* State Representative Tony Hill: "Jeb Bush is the lethal injection. Ward Connerly is the electric chair. They both kill affirmative action."

* South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn: "We’re here to say to Jeb Bush, to George W. Bush and all the Bushes, we will not be bushwhacked today,".

* Martin Luther King III (proving that honor and eloquence are not hereditary): "We are here because apparently stupidity runs in the Bush family."

And closer to home, an ironic consequence of Connerly’s principled crusade in Florida may be to reinvigorate the black members of the state’s Democratic- party base.

African-American Democrats were badly divided after white Democrats publicly dumped Willie Logan, a black legislator, as their choice for state House speaker two years ago. And more recently, State Rep. Rudy Bradley of St. Petersburg stunned his fellow members of the all-Democratic black caucus by becoming a Republican.

Jeb Bush was able to exploit these divisions to pick up critical black support for his bid for the governor’s office in 1998 and his school voucher program last year. But the drive to end preferences has given African-American Democrats in Tallahassee a rallying point at a time when Bush’s education plan is under fire in the courts.

Connerly is philosophical about the train of events he helped set in motion. Although he publicly supports Bush’s plan, his drive to get the Florida Civil Rights Initiative on the ballot in November continues. According to Connerly, his mission is to go from state to state promoting the principle of color blindness "until the Supreme Court does what I feel it is obliged to do" and finally declares preferences unconstitutional.

And politics? Politics be damned. Connerly makes a persuasive case that Republican political support is more of a drag on his referenda than his referenda are a drag on Republican politicians. After all, Prop. 209 out-polled Bob Dole in California in 1996.

As for Florida in 2000, Connerly and Bush have found precarious common ground. Democrats bent on scoring political points may yet succeed in derailing Bush’s plan in the legislature or the courts. If that happens, they may still have Connerly’s ballot question to contend with in the fall. No matter what happens, Republicans have a full-fledged debate on their hands, one we will lose if we fail to defend the principle of equality before the law that started the whole fight.