Will Obama's Immigration Focus Hurt Democrats?

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Charles Dharapak / AP

President Barack Obama speaks about immigration reform on July 1, 2010, at American University in Washington

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Many Democrats are also worried about the timing of the Arizona lawsuit (over the weekend Holder said he might even file a second challenge). Not only does it put the Administration on the opposite side of a law that many Americans support in theory, but it could be easier to argue against the controversial statute once it goes into effect on July 29 and people see how hard it will be to enforce. "It's just an easier case to make," Governor Bill Ritter, a Colorado Democrat who decided not to run for re-election given the tough climate this year, told the New York Times at the National Governors Association meeting in Boston over the weekend. "I just think that law-enforcement officers are going to have a terribly difficult time applying this law in a constitutional way."

At the Boston gathering, Ritter and some other Democratic governors expressed concerns to Administration officials about the focus on immigration so close to the midterm elections, according to a source at the private meeting. Their concerns are echoed in Congress, where members and aides openly worry why the President is delivering speeches calling for comprehensive immigration reform when all voters want to hear about is the economy. "The No. 1 issue in the state is jobs and the economy," said Pat Waak, chairwoman of the Colorado Democratic Party. "I don't think immigration is going to be that much of an issue this fall — it's not the issue that pops into people's heads."

The odds of getting immigration reform done this year are next to nil, though there is a small chance of passage for two highly popular provisions: the Dream Act, which would help certain illegal minors who've graduated from U.S. high schools get the chance to earn citizenship, and an AgJobs bill that would make it easier to import immigrant farm workers and legalize the ones already in the U.S. The Latino community is split at the prospect, with some groups opposing the move as a potential threat to seeing comprehensive reform done down the road.

For their part, Republicans actually have an incentive to be seen working on the issue, even if it's just in the form of those two small provisions: they still have a lot of ground to make up in regaining the trust of Latino voters. More than 60% of Americans claim to support the Arizona bill, but many in the GOP believe the provision will hurt them in the long run. And they need look no further than Proposition 187, passed in California in 1994. The GOP ballot initiative created a screening system to prevent illegal immigrants from receiving state services. The law, which helped Republican governor Pete Wilson win re-election, was eventually overturned by the courts and sparked enormous Latino anger. A Republican has not won California in a presidential election since then, and the only Republican governor elected since, Arnold Schwarzenegger, disavowed the proposition.

Since the loss of the South, Democrats have increasingly been courting the western states as a new base of voters. They've succeeded in turning New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada — all of which Obama won in 2008 — into bona fide swing states in recent years, mostly on the back of the Latino vote. "What's happening in Arizona is ground zero. The Latino community feels that they're under assault as a result," says Maria Teresa Kumar, president of Voto Latino, a group that works to register Latino voters. "What are those implications come midterm elections? It is going to rally the vote at the midterms and in the years to come." Democrats just have to hope that the rallying effect is louder than the cries of white swing voters out west who are getting tired of hearing about immigration.

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