The problem for the governator

J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times
Burros don't vote motherfucker, and where
is your sombrero


Immigration May Tip Vote in California

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: August 20, 2006

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 19 — Illegal immigration has long been a political minefield in California, making and breaking political careers. Now, with Congress considering the most sweeping changes to immigration laws in two decades, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is learning just how troublesome that terrain can be in an election year.

No Republican candidate for governor or president since the 1970’s has won in California without getting at least one-third of the Hispanic vote, which Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, achieved in a wide-open recall election in 2003. In his bid for re-election in November, he faces the difficult task of courting both Latino voters and his core conservative supporters, two groups that are often far apart on immigration.

The immigration debate in Congress has also rippled into several other races for governor, including those in Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Colorado and Arizona. Democrats and Republicans are carefully staking out their positions, often with intense political calculation.

Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona, a Democrat, has sought to appear tough, declaring a state of emergency last year in the four border counties that bear the brunt of the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico. But this spring, with a commanding lead in the polls, Ms. Napolitano rejected bills from the Republican-dominated Legislature intended to make life harder for illegal residents and the businesses that employ them, questioning the legality and effectiveness of the proposals.

In Massachusetts, two of the three Democrats in the primary race for governor have said they would consider using state troopers to enforce immigration law, as Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, has proposed.

“It’s like Iraq,” said Jennifer E. Duffy, who tracks governors’ races for The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter in Washington. “It may not be the driving issue of a campaign, but every candidate has a position that has been articulated.”

As a Republican in a state dominated by Democrats, Mr. Schwarzenegger has a difficult task in balancing the two competing constituencies, Ms. Duffy said, because “if just Republicans vote for him, he loses.”

So one week Mr. Schwarzenegger defends his support for the Minutemen civilian patrols on the border that many conservatives strongly endorse, and the next he distances himself from an anti-illegal-immigrant ballot initiative passed in 1994 that galvanized Latino political involvement on the side of Democrats.

At a recent town-hall-style campaign appearance by Mr. Schwarzenegger in Orange County, Larry Collins, vice president of a local Republican club, asked the first question, and it was about border security.

Mr. Collins said later that although he supported Mr. Schwarzenegger, he wanted the governor to take a harder line on immigration. He said he could not bear hearing more and more Spanish being spoken in the county, and he wondered about the legality of the newcomers. “We are being overloaded with a potential hazard,” Mr. Collins said.

Even as Mr. Schwarzenegger seeks to hold on to voters like Mr. Collins, he is striving to attract Latinos. His aides concede that if the election is close, Latino voters could prove vital, and so they have embarked on a campaign to attract them, particularly native-born middle-class and professional Latinos.

The aides predict that these Latinos are more likely to approve of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s stance on other issues, such as his advocacy for small businesses and tax cuts and his promises to improve education and health care.

Yeah, you're insulting the shit out of them, threatening to ship Tia Nina back to Cabo and make her a felon in the process and they care about tax cuts?

Every time Sensenbrenner, King or Tancredo opens their mouths, they lose Latino votes for Arnie. The only issue is if the Dems don't fuck up and shoot themselves in the foot and keep Latinos home

I think the same people who marched in the streets are gonna march to the voting booths to "send a message".

When you get a stupid motherfucker like Collins, living in a place where Spanish was spoken before English, sick of hearing Spanish, defining the GOP, you have problems if you're the governator.