The Associated Press

California businessman Ward Connerly is enjoying success in Nebraska but failure in Arizona this week in a national effort to dismantle preferential-treatment programs for women and minorities.

He offered a $10,000 reward in Arizona to anyone who can provide information about fraud he says may have kept an initiative off the November ballot. Connerly’s American Civil Rights Institute is sending a team of lawyers to the state after Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer announced Thursday the measure got about 35,000 signatures too few.

“All our opponents know if we get it on the ballot, it passes,” Connerly said Friday.

In Nebraska, Secretary of State John Gale said Friday the initiative had 24,000 more valid signatures than it needed to make it on the November ballot.

Signatures were still being reviewed in Colorado, but similar attempts failed this year in Missouri and Oklahoma. Connerly has prevailed with similar measures in California, Michigan and Washington in past elections.

The proposed constitutional amendment never uses the words “affirmative action.” But it would prohibit state and local governments from giving preferential treatment to people on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity or national origin.

Connerly said he’s not giving up and doesn’t look at successes and failures in isolation.

“You can’t judge this as a snapshot,” Connerly said. “We will be back in Missouri.”

And if he fails in challenging the Arizona result, his organization will try again, Connerly said. It took more than three years to get on the ballot in Michigan, he said.

Opponents of his Nebraska measure have vowed to keep fighting, too. A lawsuit pending in Lancaster County District Court challenges the ballot language, which opponents say is misleading and unclear.

And Nebraskans United, a group created to fight the initiative, has given the secretary of state video and other evidence that petition circulators left petitions unattended, among other alleged violations of state law.

David Kramer, spokesman for Nebraskans United, said his group will continue to try to disprove the legitimacy of petition signatures. He said Nebraskans United has so far found more than 36,500 signatures it considers questionable.