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"A lie," Connerly says flatly, adding that the charges came from estranged kin who resent his success and disagree with his stand on affirmative action. His aunt Bertha Louis agrees, telling TIME that when Connerly left her house and moved in with his grandmother, "it was very, very rough going. What he says is true. And if his grandmother could rise from the grave, she would tell you the same thing." Louis says she walked into her mother's house one day in 1959 to find Connerly, then a freshman at American River Junior College, "sitting down in the kitchen cutting a piece of paste-board and putting it into his shoe. I said, 'What on earth--?' He said, 'The pavement's so hot.' He was covering these big round holes in the soles of his shoes so he could walk to college." His detractors, she says, "are just lyin' on him. It's jealousy and it's hatred, as low as you can get."
After two years at American River, where he was voted student-body president, Connerly enrolled at Sacramento State, where he won the honor again. On campus he courted Ilene Crews, a white freshman. Interracial relationships were rare, but as a campus leader, Connerly says, "I probably was viewed somewhat differently than most [blacks]." When the couple married in 1962, Crews' parents "were not thrilled, but they came around. We are very close now."
Two days after graduating, Connerly went to work as an urban-renewal trainee at the Sacramento redevelopment agency. It was the heyday of urban renewal, with state and federal funds flowing into cities, and Connerly quickly rose to a managerial position at the state department of housing and community development. While there he got a call from a young Republican assembly member who was about to become chairman of the housing committee. He offered Connerly a job as chief consultant. "You'll have a chance to put your fingerprints on housing policy in this state," said Pete Wilson. Connerly took the job and began an association with the future Governor that has served both men well. "He was just bright as hell," says Wilson. "He seemed to have an effortless understanding of what it took to succeed in a world where blacks weren't being afforded much opportunity."
Wilson often told Connerly that he should leave the safe haven of government and "go into business for yourself." Connerly already had. While still working for the state, he managed to build up a large portfolio of single-family homes, which he rented out. He and a partner bought and renovated a boarded-up apartment complex called Strawberry Manor and leased it to the Sacramento city housing authority. (A 1972 state investigation cleared him of conflict-of-interest charges.) After Wilson left Sacramento to run for mayor of San Diego, Connerly spent two years as a deputy director of the state department of housing. He then quit government for good, becoming a consultant specializing in guiding businesses through the housing and development regulations he had helped create. Connerly & Associates grew to a professional staff of 15. He won't disclose company earnings except to say they are "substantial."
Connerly has often been accused of benefiting from the minority-contracting policies that Proposition 209 eliminates, but these charges don't hold up under scrutiny.