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| Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. Reed Saxon/AP |
Immigration issue could make or break presidential candidates
The touchy subject has become a political minefield for '08 contenders.
from the November 19, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
The reason is that more Hispanics are voting. In 1992, Hispanics made up 4 percent of voters in the presidential election, according to an analysis of the data by Mr. Zogby. In 1996, it was 5 percent; in 2000, 6 percent. By 2004, Latinos made up 8-1/2 percent of voters. And many of them are in swing states such as Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and Florida that President Bush won – some just barely – in 2004.
"The Republicans are losing one of the great swing votes in American politics – Hispanics and Latinos," says Larry Sabato, a political analyst at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. "They're taking great offense at the Tom Tancredos of the world."
The presidential platform of Representative Tancredo (R) of Colorado says, "I am 100 percent opposed to amnesty…. I will secure our borders so illegal aliens do not come and I will eliminate benefits and job prospects so they do not stay." He also routinely ties the broken immigration system to the terrorist threat.
For many Hispanic voters, such adamant opposition to illegal immigration translates into opposition to Latinos in general. That became clear to them in the spring of 2006: Many Republicans abandoned Mr. Bush's efforts at comprehensive reform, and the House instead passed a bill that made it a felony to be an illegal immigrant and a felony to help one. That prompted mass demonstrations by legal and illegal immigrants and played a key role in that fall's election, which gave control of Congress to the Democrats.
A recent report called "Hispanics Rising" done by NDN, a progressive Democrat-leaning think tank, notes there was "a dramatic reversal" of Hispanic voting patterns as a result. In 2004, 40 percent of Hispanics voted Republican, according to exit polls cited by NDN. In 2006, only 30 percent pulled the lever for the GOP.
"This has been a catastrophic issue for the Republican Party because they've made a massive investment in something that's gotten them nothing," says Simon Rosenberg of NDN.
That trend also has some Republicans worried. "Republicans have given Democrats a way to take a free ride: Too many people in my party have chosen to demagogue on immigration, and that makes it easy for Democrats to say, 'We'd like to do better,' " says Tamar Jacoby, a political analyst at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.
Supporters of taking a tough stance on illegal immigration disagree. Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington-based advocacy group, argues that Hispanics still make up a relatively small percentage of the voting population. There are enough moderates angered by illegal immigration in both parties to offset the Hispanic vote, he says.
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