Gil Gutknecht's campaign attacking Tim Walz on immigration flooded local television; we sometimes saw this ad a dozen times a night on Mankato's KEYC-TV. It was ugly stuff that distorted Walz's positions on immigration.
And the focus was no fluke: Representative Gutknecht had chosen to associate with local immigration "reform" groups associated with the Minutemen. He shopped Colorado xenophobe Rep. Tom Tancredo around the district at town meetings. Gutknecht had hitched his wagon to this star issue--so much that going into the summer, Gutknecht was fond of saying that people in the First cared more about immigration than the Iraq War.
Not so much, as it turns out. Aaron Blake at the Hill takes a look at what happened to candidates who focused on this issue in House GOP’s immigration strategy no ‘magic bullet’:
Earlier this year Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.) argued that illegal immigration would play a bigger role in the election than the war in Iraq. People know what they want to do about illegal immigration, he reasoned, but most Americans find the war more confounding without a clear strategy in mind to turn it around.
But Tuesday Gutknecht lost his reelection bid, and that loss, as well as those of many other so-called border-enforcement-first Republicans around the country, punctuated their party’s failed election strategy, casting doubt on their handling of what was supposed to be a winning campaign issue and demonstrating that issues like Iraq and President Bush’s low popularity in the polls trumped the polarizing illegal immigration issue even at the southern border.
The examples are most notable in Arizona and Colorado, but also showed up in places such as Indiana and Minnesota.
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who has supported a comprehensive approach to illegal immigration that includes a guest-worker program, said last week before the election that Republican leaders had mistakenly coalesced behind the enforcement-first strategy as a cure-all to the election challenges they faced.
After the Memorial Day recess, Flake said Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) came back arguing in favor of drawing an election line in the sand at the border. House Republicans even set up a communications “war room” to do a public-relations blitz on the issue and held field hearings around the country over the August recess, standing defiant against the Senate-passed comprehensive bill.
Republicans thought immigration was going to be “our magic carpet that we’re going to ride to reelection,” Flake said, arguing that that strategy failed to address the “elephant in the room” — what to do about the millions of illegal immigrants already in the country.
One need not look far from Flake’s Arizona district to see how House Republicans’ immigration strategy failed.
Minuteman-backed Randy Graf won the Republican primary to succeed retiring Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) in southeastern Arizona by running a one-issue campaign as an illegal immigration hard-liner. Graf started out the general election significantly down in the polls and lost by 12 points to Democrat Gabrielle Giffords in what was supposed to be one of the closest open-seat races.
Likewise, Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) appeared to have impeccable timing when he published a book on immigration enforcement titled “Whatever It Takes” in January. But the once safe Republican soon found himself in a tight race with Democrat Harry Mitchell, and on Tuesday, Mitchell beat Hayworth by five points in the Phoenix suburbs.
In Colorado, Republican Rick O’Donnell emphasized securing the borders first and opposed a guest-worker program while running for retiring Rep. Bob Beauprez’s (R) seat. Similarly to Graf, he fell by double digits and gave Democrats a valuable open-seat takeover.
Other candidates who stressed enforcement-first farther from the southern border faced similar fates, including House Immigration Subcommittee Chairman John Hostettler (R-Ind.) and Gutknecht.
Hostettler lost big to socially conservative Sheriff Brad Ellsworth, while Gutknecht lost to veteran Tim Walz. Gutknecht’s campaign Wednesday declined to comment about his previous predictions about the impact of immigration. . .
Many pundits talked about the Northeast sector of the country getting bluer. But, when I looked at the election results, I noticed a number of names that lost and not just in blue states. Rejected by the voters were incumbents Chocola (IN-02), Northrup (KY-02), Pombo (CA-11), Hayworth (AZ-05), Hostettler (IN-08), Sodrel (IN-09), Ryan ( KS-02), Taylor (NC-11) and our own Gil Gutknecht. What these congressmen had in common is they were members of the Republican Study Group which advocates fiscal accountability.
Mouthing fiscal responsibility helps to get you elected but when voters see the deficit rising, the pork-laden earmarks rising, the corporate tax incentives being created, they recognize they are being flimflammed.
When you I heard Walz point out the obvious fiscal inappropriateness of the DM&E loan, he was telling voters he would weigh the economic impact (jobs) for his district versus subsidizing corporations at the taxpayer’s expense. But when Walz challenged Gutknecht on his support for H. R. 4761 which concerns itself with allowing drilling for oil on Outer Continental Shelf (that even the Bush Administration opposed as it would reduce Federal Receipts by several hundred billion dollars over 60 years), it was a statement that Walz would stand firm on fiscal responsibility.
Minnesota should be proud to have Walz and Amy (Pay-as-you-go) Klobuchar in Congress … they will watch our pocketbooks like their own.
Posted by: MinnesotaCentral | November 09, 2006 at 08:40 AM