Paul F. Streitz, a marketing consultant and author from Darien, issued his call after recovering from being hit in the head with a cream pie thrown by an unidentified white man, who immediately ran from the room Streitz had rented in the West Hartford Public Library.

Streitz, who was dirtied but not injured, resumed his discussion of the survey he said he and other members of Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Control conducted over the last six months at 152 McDonald's outlets across the state.

Streitz's business card lists the group's address at a post office box in Manchester, but he said the organization was founded in Danbury and maintains no central headquarters. He described CCIC as primarily Internet-based, comprised of about 200 people who keep in touch via electronic mail messages.

Streitz said the survey had observed 1,183 employees at McDonald's restaurants whom his group classified, based on "personal observations," as either white, African-American, Hispanic, or Asian.

He said the group concluded that the McDonald's workforce in Connecticut "is not representative of the population of the state," and particularly of the workforce in Fairfield County, New Haven County, and the city of Danbury, where he claimed 100 percent of the employees at many restaurants were Hispanic.

Streitz said that "leads to the possibility" that McDonald's may be violating equal-opportunity employment laws and said he had asked Gov. M. Jodi Rell, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, and Kevin O'Connor, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, to investigate its hiring and wage practices.

A spokesman for the governor, Judd Everhart, said today that while her office had received a letter from Streitz, she had not yet reviewed it and had "nothing to say."

But Blumenthal said today he wasn't about to initiate the probe Streitz requested. "We question the reliability and the relevance of this study," he said. "There seems to be no methodology or scientific collection of data beyond simple observation.

"More important," Blumenthal added, "there's absolutely no claim of any member of a racial, ethnic, or religious group that they were disfavored or turned away by any intentional decision. There may be a disproportionate number of one group or another working in any particular location, but that fact does not constitute a violation of the law."

Streitz was essentially cross-examined during his presentation by a lawyer from the Connecticut chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, Peter Goselin, who forced Streitz to acknowledge that he had referred to the study as his "MexDonald's" survey in e-mail messages exchanged with other CCIC members.

Asked by Goselin if he was embarrassed by his use of that "juvenile ethnic slur," Streitz responded that he was not, and that he believed McDonald's was out to change the ethnic composition of its workforce "to reflect the inflow of illegals into the United States.

"It's the same thing you're seeing with Tyson Foods," Streitz added, referring to his previous discussion of that company's extensive meat packing operations and what he said had been its "organizational displacement" of higher-paid white workers with lower-paid nonwhite workers.

Streitz also tangled with Goselin over his characterization of the Hispanics observed at the McDonald's restaurants, with Streitz insisting that if anything, he had probably miscounted some Hispanics as whites.

Streitz also insisted that he was no racist, but rather an "exclusionist" concerned about the loss of jobs for "resident Americans."

Goselin, however, today dismissed Streitz's "study" as both pseudo-scientific and racist.

"Since the statistical evidence -- including U.S. Census data -- shows that the vast majority of Hispanics in the state of Connecticut are legal citizens, Mr. Streitz's decision to investigate the tendency of McDonald's in Connecticut to hire Hispanics can't possibly be related to any genuine concern about the problem of immigration," he said. "This is further evidence that the CCIC's real agenda is to try to marginalize and criminalize people of color.

"And just in case there is any doubt," the lawyer added, "his private use within his organization of the term "MexDonald's' because of the presence of Hispanic workers in my mind clinches the deal: This is about race."

The CCIC logo includes an illustration of the colonial Minuteman and Streitz last April traveled to the desert in Naco, Ariz., to take part in the Minutemen's self-styled citizen's border patrol in a bid to stop the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico.

He unsuccessfully sought the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination last year, challenging Sen. Christopher J. Dodd.

The 62-year-old Vietnam veteran is the author of "Oxford, Son of Queen Elizabeth I," which argues that the Earl of Oxford not only was the illegitimate son of the queen, but wrote the works attributed to William Shakespeare.