McCain Stands By Vote Against '90 Civil Rights Act

Forty-years ago, just days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., President Lyndon Johnson signed the '68 Civil Rights Act. Twenty-two years later, John McCain cast a deciding vote against the Civil Rights Act in 1990.

In 1990, McCain was one of the deciding votes in helping then-President George H.W. Bush sustain a veto against the relatively benign Civil Rights Act of 1990.

In doing so, the senator found himself at odds with majorities in both chambers of Congress, most senior African Americans within the Bush administration, and the Republican-led U.S. Civil Rights Commission. He also helped Bush became the first president ever to successfully veto a civil rights measure -- Andrew Jackson in 1866 and Ronald Reagan in 1988 both had vetoes overridden.

But unlike his decision against the Dr. King holiday in 1983, this is one vote John McCain will not apologize for.

"The issue in the early '90s was a little more complicated," he told Fox News Sunday. "I've never believed in quotas, and I don't. There's no doubt about my view on that issue. And that was the implication, at least, of that other vote."

It is, critics say, a shaky defense; one that only a third of the Senate felt comfortable holding on to.

As noted by the Times at the time of the bill's debate, opponents could not produce any evidence that the original ruling in 1971 had led to a rash of quotas. And indeed, as Thomas Homburger of the Anti-Defamation League said at the time: his group historically opposes quotas and the Civil Rights Act of 1990 was "simply not a quota bill."

The measure fell one vote short.