(http://www.politico.com/)
Arizona suit imperils Western Dems
By: Maggie Haberman and Carrie Budoff Brown and Scott Wong
July 7, 2010 04:52 AM EDT
The Obama administration's lawsuit over the stringent Arizona border law
might have just made the incline a little steeper for many Western
Democrats, providing instant fodder to _Republicans_
(http://topics.politico.com/index.cfm/topic/Republicans) who are already
optimistic about regaining
ground lost over the last two election cycles.
The dust from the _Department of Justice lawsuit_
(http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39413.html) filed Tuesday is just
starting to settle,
but the reflexive sense among strategists on both sides is that it will be
a net negative for Democrats this fall.
The suit could, of course, help boost turnout among Hispanic voters in key
areas across the West. And stridently anti-immigrant rhetoric could turn
off independent voters. Yet many foresee a midterm electorate featuring an
energized Republican base — for whom the immigration issue has emerged as a
priority — prompting moderate white Western voters who are concerned about
jobs to decamp to the GOP at least in the short term, political observers
said.
“This is a tough issue for _Democrats_
(http://topics.politico.com/index.cfm/topic/Democrats) ,” said former Colorado
Gov. Dick Lamm, a Democrat who
is co-director of the Institute for Public Policy Studies at the University
of Denver. “Politically, I just can’t think of any place in the West
where this is going to play well.”
"If you look like you're siding with illegal immigration, you're in
trouble," said one national Republican strategist, adding that when it comes
to
the discussion of _secured borders_
(http://topics.politico.com/index.cfm/topic/BorderSecurity) , "people think
that's what should happen."
While the suit could prove helpful to President Barack Obama by revving up
his own base in 2012 — and, by extension, _prove harmful to Republicans_
(http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/36617.html) that year because
they risk offending a key and growing segment of the electorate — the
near-term impact is a different matter.
One GOP strategist compared it to the ads Republican Pete Wilson ran in
1994 in California as he was trailing in the polls for his gubernatorial
reelection bid on Proposition 187, the state's tough-as-nails immigration
ballot option that roiled Latino voters for a generation — but won him his
seat
for another term.
"Those ads hurt him moving forward, but that's what won him the election,"
the strategist added.
Wes Gullett, an Arizona political strategist and a former longtime aide to
Sen. _John McCain_ (http://topics.politico.com/index.cfm/topic/JohnMcCain)
(R-Ariz.), said the lawsuit was “manna from heaven” for Republicans.
“Obviously, the _White House_
(http://topics.politico.com/index.cfm/topic/WhiteHouse) is tone-deaf on
Western politics,” said Gullett, who noted he
personally opposes the law. “While a lot of people wish that our law wouldn’
t go into effect, for the administration to sue on this is crazy. It is
just a complete political loser.”
Republicans have failed in recent years to turn the anger towards illegal
immigration into a winning election issue, Lamm said, but this year could
be different.
“This is an issue that is boiling, and it is not one that is going to be a
happy outcome for Democrats,” said Lamm, who favors tougher immigration
and border enforcement policies.
The White House pre-empted the suit —which it insisted it had no immediate
role in — with a sweeping speech last week in which President Obama talked
up the need for "comprehensive reform" and a bipartisan fix.
But the speech got little by way of traction, and didn't do much to offset
the political dangers for Democrats dealing up close with an immigration
law that has the support of nearly 60 percent of Arizonans.
At least three Arizona Democrats saw trouble they could face in November,
and broached the topic with the White House well in advance of the court
filing, which the administration first announced last month.
Three House Democrats who are all facing tough reelection fights — Reps.
Ann Kirkpatrick, Harry Mitchell and Gabrielle Giffords — asked the Obama
administration last month to ditch any planned court battle, saying legal
maneuvering isn't going to fix a system that's widely seen as broken.
Kirkpatrick on Tuesday called the suit “a sideshow, distracting us from
the real task at hand.”
“A court battle between the federal government and Arizona will not move
us closer to securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration
system," the freshman lawmaker said in a statement.
“Washington failed us on this issue again today, and Arizonans have had
enough. ...” she added. “Our law enforcement and communities are at risk
right now — this is a time for solutions, not new obstacles.”
Mitchell, who was elected 2006, said he was disappointed by the lawsuit,
calling it “the wrong way to go.”
“Arizonans are tired of the grandstanding. Political posturing on this
issue has to end,” he said.
Republicans, meanwhile, seized on the suit as more evidence that
Washington has gone soft on the issue and abdicated it role in securing the
border.
“There is a perception that the president is not only out of touch but
really asleep at the wheel,” Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) told POLITICO.
Franks is among the many GOPers who have urged the president to visit the
border.
“I don’t have confidence it would change [Obama’s] mind, but it might go
a long way toward demonstrating his arrogance-to-competency ratio is not as
catastrophically out of balance as it appears to be.”
Franks was one of 20 House Republicans who signed a letter to Attorney
General Eric Holder on Tuesday taking the administration to task for filing
suit over the Arizona law and ignoring the broader illegal immigration
problem.
Both sides of the issue are well aware that, in every survey since
Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed the bill into law, voters have shown support
for
the measure, which greatly complicates the situation for Democrats. Now,
at a minimum, they’ll spend what should be a relatively sleepy stretch of
summer months defending themselves on a wedge issue.
A May national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the
Press found 73 percent of Americans support requiring people to produce
papers verifying their legal status if police ask for them.
In Colorado, home to a competitive Senate and gubernatorial race this fall
and several vulnerable House Democrats, a Denver Post/9News Poll conducted
last month showed even 62 percent of Colorado Hispanic voters — roughly
the same percentage as white voters (61 percent) — would favor their state
implementing a law similar to the one in Arizona.
Brewer has also gotten a bounce. A Rasmussen Reports poll released last
week found 58 percent of all voters in the state approved of the job she was
doing, a spike from 41 percent in March.
Not surprisingly, the administration's move drew near-uniform support from
advocates pushing for comprehensive reform that includes a pathway to
citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants — including labor heavyweights
such as the AFL-CIO.
Yet one notable pro-reform group denouncing the move was ImmigrationWorks
USA, a national federation of small business owners, whose leader feared
the larger goal of a comprehensive reform bill next year is now in jeopardy.
It energizes the conservative Republican base in time for the crucial
midterm elections and angers Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), whom the
president should want on his side, said the group's president, Tamar
Jacoby.
“This is tantamount to dropping a nuclear bomb on the senator they need
most to pass comprehensive immigration reform,” Jacoby said. “If Jon Kyl is
on the warpath against you, just forget it. Don’t bother. Today, the
administration is making a choice that I am very concerned about.”
The issue for Republicans, one Democratic strategist said — and a
potential saving grace for the House Democratic majority — will be how the GOP
handles messaging.
There is a split among Republicans about how to approach immigration
reform, with conservatives and tea party activists backing the Arizona measure
and moderate GOP-ers using language similar to that Obama has used.
"If they don't package it right, then I think it could be a tie, with the
tie going to the Democrats," the strategist said.
The illegal immigration issue already reared its head in the California
gubernatorial primary last month, with state Insurance Commissioner Steve
Poizner dragging former eBay CEO Meg Whitman to the right in ads over the
issue, in which she vowed to be "tough as nails."
She won the primary, but is now plowing her personal fortune into
Spanish-language paid media aimed at moving back toward the center and undoing
damage caused with the state's Hispanic voters, who still recall the Prop. 187
fight with fury.
Chris Lehane, a California-based Democratic strategist, said the suit
might help Democrats in the long run and also invoked the Pete Wilson com
parison, saying the legacy of that maneuver was "good short-term politics for
the
Republicans and bad short-term for the Democrats, but it created an entire
consituency that became Democratic."
Another point in the administration's favor? New York City Mayor Michael
Bloomberg's recently announced coalition on immigration reform, which
involved business leader and Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch. The mogul's
involvement might serve to neutralize the heated discussion of immigration on
the
influential conservative cable network leading into the fall.
The problem with the politics of illegal immigration, said Dan Schnur,
chairman of the California Fair Political Practices Commission and director of
the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern
California, is that it's really "two issues in one."
"It's an issue of border security, but it's also an issue of civil
rights," he said."In a general election, [candidates] have got to be able to
talk
about both."
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