Arizona gives Dems a boost

Opinion: May 3, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

“He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind,” concludes a well-known biblical proverb. Republican immigration hard-liners may be about to learn that lesson — again.

In the mid-1990s, California Gov. Pete Wilson’s anti-immigrant policies damaged his party’s standing with Hispanics in the nation’s largest state. A decade later, a GOP congressional stand against immigration reform spurred nationwide demonstrations and helped the Democrats reverse a modest GOP increase in Hispanic support attracted by President George W. Bush.

This time, Arizona Republicans may have unwittingly given another boost to Democratic support in the nation’s fastest-growing demographic group by enacting a law giving local police the authority to round up suspected illegal immigrants and thus thrusting the contentious issue back onto the national political stage.

Whether that impact is more long-term than short-term is hard to say. To be fair, the politics of illegal immigration aren’t clear-cut, and members of both parties play politics with the issue.

But this surely won’t help Republicans achieve a goal that many strategists regard as crucial to their long-term hopes: attracting an increased number of this culturally conservative, rapidly growing voter group. Barack Obama’s election ensures black voters will stay overwhelmingly Democratic; the whites who favor Republicans constitute an ever-declining portion of the electorate.

Hard-liners

Those were not the main concerns of the Arizona Republicans who clearly saw political gain in a state where Hispanic turnout runs far below its share of the population and immigration hard-liners dominate the state GOP.

Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed the controversial measure, ascended to the governorship when Janet Napolitano joined the Obama administration and promptly angered conservatives by accepting a one-cent sales tax increase to curb budget shortfalls resulting from the recession.

She faces a difficult primary in August, as does Sen. John McCain, who once pushed a bipartisan effort to enact a broad-ranging immigration reform offering a conditional path to ultimate citizenship for the 12 million immigrants here illegally.

If it’s in the interests of Republicans facing primary battles to take a hard-line on immigration issues, some endangered Democrats see a different calculation. That may explain the decision to seek immigration reform this year by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat in re-election trouble who would be helped by expanding Hispanic turnout in Nevada.

Also favoring action is Obama, whose administration has been under pressure from Hispanic groups because it has stressed enforcement of existing laws against illegal immigration over pushing a reform measure. Democrats face a difficult political year nationally, in part because of diminished enthusiasm within key party constituencies. But immigration reform is an important issue to Hispanics, so it’s hardly surprising that some party strategists favor a step that might increase their turnout. To complicate the politics still further, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who has assumed the old McCain role by pushing a bipartisan reform plan, has abandoned his similar centrist role on climate change legislation and blamed the Democrats’ push on immigration reform.

Slotting immigration reform ahead of a climate change bill “is nothing more than a cynical political ploy,” declared Graham, a longtime McCain ally who has faced his own backlash from GOP conservatives back home who denounced his efforts to work with Democrats.

Caught in the middle are House Democrats, many of whom would rather not vote on the immigration issue at a time when high unemployment has created concerns among blue-collar workers whom they depend on for support.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would bring the measure before the House if it passes the Senate. That’s a big “if,” given the fact that its Senate supporters may have difficulty mustering the required 60 votes.

Indeed, the outlook is that, when all is said and done, Congress won’t act again this year despite widespread belief it needs to confront the issue.

But unless the courts save the Arizona Republicans from themselves, the one thing that will probably survive the year’s political games is a law that, at the very least, is yet another negative GOP signal toward Hispanics.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.