If you’ve even considered voting in California, odds are you’ve seen the endorsements of Alice Huffman, president of the California NAACP, on any of the state’s dozen ballot propositions. She appears repeatedly in the voter handbook and numerous television ads, and has written numerous op-eds for everything from election mailers to Black newspapers. As the leader of one of the largest and most visible Black organizations in a true-blue state, her endorsement, along with the endorsement of the chapter, carries significant weight, particularly at a moment when racial justice is at the forefront of political discourse.
One such endorsement pamphlet is Minority News, an eight-page tabloid newspaper–style dossier with op-eds that’s being sent to California homes in heavily Black neighborhoods. Minority News features a smattering of op-eds written by Huffman, former state Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, and others, weighing in on the state’s various ballot measures. And for those less interested in the literature, it features a rundown of endorsements on the back page.
Minority News is published by a political organization called the Committee to Protect the Political Rights of Minorities (the paper’s endorsements are referred to as “Minority Committee” recommendations). But the recommendations themselves are confounding. The Minority Committee, with Huffman as its figurehead, is against rent control (Prop 21), against altering the state’s retrograde property tax system (Prop 15), in favor of a measure that would exempt food delivery and rideshare drivers from worker protections and minimum wage (Prop 22), against a measure that would add patient protections to dialysis treatment (Prop 23), and against ending cash bail (Prop 25). All of these are positions that would disadvantage the state’s minority communities inordinately. What, you may then wonder, is the Committee to Protect the Political Rights of Minorities?
According to public records at the California secretary of state’s office reviewed by the Prospect, the Committee to Protect the Political Rights of Minorities is an independent political group run by none other than Alice Huffman, who is both its treasurer and its controlling officeholder. It’s funded by advocacy groups behind those very propositions. In late August, the committee received $100,000 each from No on Prop 21 and No on Prop 15, both of which Huffman, and Minority News, have come out strongly against. And if that weren’t enough, those payments weren’t even made directly to Huffman’s committee. Rather, they were made to an intermediary: AC Public Affairs, Huffman’s personal consulting firm that she runs in parallel to her post as the president of the state’s NAACP chapter. The Committee to Protect the Political Rights of Minorities has also made outgoing payments, in the amount of $155,000, to both AC Public Affairs and the California NAACP. Huffman founded AC Public Affairs in 1988, 11 years before she was elected president of the state’s NAACP chapter.
The Committee to Protect the Political Rights of Minorities is the outgrowth of an extremely peculiar operation that Huffman has set up for herself, and while to any layperson it might seem impossibly corrupt, it’s technically not illegal. Huffman, the 2004 chairwoman of the Democratic National Convention, has been paid more than $1.2 million so far this year by ballot measure campaigns that she or the California NAACP has endorsed, via payments made to AC Public Affairs, her consulting firm. She’s taken money from campaigns funded by commercial property owners fighting property tax increases, major corporate landlords opposing rent control, and even the particularly odious bail bond industry fighting an initiative to end cash bail, all issues that affect the state’s Black population. In turn, she’s used her platform, via the NAACP, her Committee to Protect the Political Rights of Minorities, or simply her personal brand, to endorse those measures, all without disclosing her direct financial incentives.
Huffman has long had a reputation as an endorsement for purchase among those in the know in California politics. But her dual position as leader of one of the foremost civil rights groups and pay-for-play consultant is particularly important in this election cycle, as racial justice has risen to the forefront of political priorities, especially for Democrats. In a state like California, functionally a one-party state, Huffman is uniquely positioned to influence the outcome of various measures with her endorsement.
That’s why 2020 has produced a record-setting windfall for her side hustle. According to CalMatters, “Huffman was especially sought after this year” in the wake of the hundreds of Black Lives Matter protests that occurred throughout the country. Huffman’s cashing in on that popular movement has garnered some criticism from activists and those who feel like she’s set up a standard where the endorsements of prominent Black rights groups are for sale to the highest bidder. Indeed, AC Public Affairs has received $590,000 from the No on Prop 15 campaign, $280,000 from the No on Prop 21 campaign, $200,000 from No on 25, and $85,000 from the Yes on Prop 22 campaign, according to public records.
Huffman’s dual position as leader of one of the foremost civil rights groups and pay-for-play consultant is particularly important in this election cycle.
This isn’t the first time Huffman’s consulting business and the California NAACP’s endorsements have aligned in ways that would seem to defy reason. She backed pharmaceutical companies and cigarette makers that made payments to her consulting company on various ballot measures throughout the 2000s, while the California NAACP endorsed their positions. In 2018, in what proved to be a preview of 2020, Huffman’s firm banked nearly $900,000 from opponents of rent control, which she and the NAACP opposed, and was eventually defeated. She took home another $90,000 from the kidney dialysis industry on a ballot measure that threatened their bottom line. After getting downed at the ballot box the first time around, both issues now find themselves back, as industry groups try to block reforms once again.
The California NAACP has not yet responded to the Prospect’s request for comment.
In the past, Huffman has told the press that she only takes money from groups that the NAACP already supports, though there’s little transparency in the group’s endorsement process, and thus no way to prove that case. On cash bail in particular, a common criminal justice reform measure that has been gaining steam as an important racial-justice issue nationwide, that claim seems particularly tortured, even as activists have disagreed on the efficacy of the solution put forward in Proposition 25.
While brands and corporations have capitalized on the language of racial justice to cynically wokewash their messaging, Huffman has uniquely capitalized on those growing calls to cover for corporate money on the state’s most essential ballot measures on issues crucial to the Black community, and has made significant money doing it. She’s helped issues like Prop 22, which would result in a massive pay cut for an overwhelmingly minority workforce, and opponents of Prop 15, which would result in one of the most meaningful redistributions of wealth the state has seen in years, allowing it to fund desperately needed social services like education that would benefit the Black community enormously, disguise themselves as somehow pro-Black.
