Nevada is among the states where a California-based group is considering proposing an anti-affirmative action ballot initiative.

The Sacramento-based American Civil Rights Coalition, which was behind successful initiatives in California and Michigan, said Wednesday that it plans to propose ballot measures in up to five states.

The group will choose from among nine possible states, including Nevada, based on its assessment of those states.

"I think that we are witnessing the end of an era," the group's chairman, Ward Connerly, said in a conference call. "We need another critical mass of states in the race-free zone. I am today deciding to begin the process of exploring which would be most suitable for a Super Tuesday for equality on Nov. 4, 2008."

Connerly said the group hoped to choose three to five states from a list of nine states -- Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming -- where it would propose amending the state constitution to ban use of race as a factor in university admissions, government hiring and government contracting.

Connerly's trial balloon struck Nevadans across the political spectrum as a bit of a lead zeppelin.

Liberals and conservatives alike said affirmative action has never aroused the controversy in Nevada that it has in other states, chiefly because the public sector in Nevada apparently does not use race as a factor in hiring or admissions.

"It's not as much of a flashpoint issue here as it is in California and Michigan, which have had very aggressive policies, especially on the part of the university systems," said Eric Herzik, a University of Nevada, Reno, political scientist.

California's Proposition 209, passed in 1996, was largely a reaction to affirmative action programs in the state's university system, in which Connerly was a regent.

Likewise, the Michigan proposal, passed last month, came after Michigan universities were the subject of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Both proposals amended their states' constitutions to say public institutions could not consider race, color or gender.

Proponents said affirmative action programs were shutting out qualified applicants, while opponents claimed the student body should reflect diversity.

That controversy hasn't erupted in Nevada, in part because the state's universities accept every qualified applicant, so one student's acceptance doesn't mean another's rejection.

With illegal immigration emerging as the latest hot-button issue with racial undertones, affirmative action seems like yesterday's controversy, Herzik said.

"The only kind of hook this group might catch people with is the general anti-immigration sentiment, but that's not the same thing," he said, pointing to the Pahrump Town Board's passage of an English-only rule and legislators' proposals to restrict illegal immigrants access to most state benefits.

The Supreme Court has ruled that race can be considered as one of many factors but quotas cannot be used in public admissions or hiring decisions.

But officials with state government, the university system and Clark County said they don't use race as a consideration.

Nevada System of Higher Education institutions don't use race in the admissions process, per Board of Regents policy.

"We don't use race or gender in the admissions process, and we never have," University of Nevada, Reno, spokeswoman Jill Boudreaux said.

The regents' handbook states: "There shall be no difference in the treatment of persons because of race, religion, color, age, sex, disability, or national origin, and that equal opportunity and access to facilities shall be available to all."

Similarly, "there are no preferences for minorities in state hiring," said Shelley Blotter of the state Department of Personnel.

The state has an affirmative action plan, put forth by Gov. Kenny Guinn this year, but it focuses on removing barriers to minority achievement.

Clark County maintains a directory of minority and female-owned businesses that is shared with its contractors, but its use is totally voluntary, county spokesman Dan Kulin said. "So we kind of promote" those businesses, "but they don't officially get an edge."

Blotter and Kulin noted that some federal grants do give an advantage to minority and female-owned businesses, and the state or county would adhere to federal guidelines in those cases.

But federal requirements presumably wouldn't be affected by a change to the state's constitution, as Connerly would propose.

Connerly said he chose the nine states in question out of the 20 states that have a ballot initiative process but don't yet have an anti-affirmative-action amendment.

He said members of the American Civil Rights Coalition would visit the nine states to learn about their requirements for qualifying ballot initiatives and their political dynamics, as well as to gauge how much it might cost to run an initiative campaign and what its chances of success might be.

Asked whether there was a specific reason for putting Nevada in the running, Connerly said, "Not at this point, except that it affords us a lot of opportunities to visit some great places there."

According to the secretary of state's office, the Nevada Constitution requires that a constitutional amendment initiative gather signatures amounting to 10 percent of voters in the previous general election. For 2008, that number would be 58,628.

That's a pretty easy number of signatures to collect in a state whose population is highly concentrated in two metropolitan areas, a fact that has attracted all sorts of national issue groups to target Nevada, Democratic political guru Billy Vassiliadis said.

This year alone saw efforts to limit state spending increases, restrict the government's ability to take private land and legalize recreational marijuana use, all funded largely by out-of-state interests.

"Everybody looks at us as a cheap date," Vassiliadis said. "Nevada is a cheap media market."

Vassiliadis said he hoped Connerly's group wouldn't target Nevada because such an effort would likely bring ugly sentiments to the surface to no constructive end, along the lines of what has happened in Pahrump.

"We really just don't need that here. The growth here has created enough opportunities for mobility for everyone -- black, white, Hispanic and otherwise. Hopefully they'll just say, 'This isn't really an issue in Nevada,' and move on."

Louis Overstreet, president of the Las Vegas Urban Chamber of Commerce, agreed. "I've been dealing with this since the Sixties, and I've never seen a situation here where a qualified white was replaced by an unqualified minority."

The private sector in Nevada, especially the gaming community, has done an admirable job of prioritizing diversity, Overstreet said, while the public sector has lagged.

Ironically, affirmative action by government may not be much of an issue in Nevada because there isn't enough of it, from the perspective of minority groups, Overstreet said.

State Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, said while he opposed race preferences, it wasn't an issue he often had occasion to consider.

"It's definitely not a top-of-mind issue for Nevadans," he said.

Making public education adequate to create opportunity is a more urgent goal than banning a practice that doesn't apparently exist, Beers said.

"Historically, I've voted against constitutional amendments that, near as I could tell, didn't do anything."

Review-Journal writer Lawrence Mower contributed to this report.