Perry and White likely to tread lightly on immigration

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Perry and White likely to tread lightly on immigration
AUSTIN — Arizona's new anti-illegal immigration law puts a spotlight on a battleground issue for Gov. Rick Perry and his Democratic challenger Bill White, but it has political liabilities for both candidates.
Illegal immigration is a sensitive issue for Perry and White because they want to attract Hispanic votes. But Perry has the additional need to fire up a conservative Republican base that blames illegal immigration for many of the nation's ills.
“In the best of all worlds, for White to win, there has to be a large Latino voter turnout,” said Jerry Polinard, a political scientist at the University of Texas Pan-American.
He said if the anti-immigration debate nationally is perceived as anti-Latino, it could spark a voter turnout that has not been there for Democrats in the past.
“This is almost like a gift to him,” Polinard said of White.
The anti-immigration voters already like Perry and do not need to be convinced to vote for him, Polinard said.
“What this does is make it harder for the governor to get back to the middle of the road,” he said.
Perry disappointed some supporters in his 2006 re-election on the immigration issue. Perry ran tough-on-the-border television commercials hinting at a crackdown on illegal immigrants, but after winning came out against ending birthright citizenship, opposed a border fence and favored an immigration guest worker program. Perry has said there can be no immigration reform without border security and blames a porous border on the federal government. A spokeswoman for White also said border security is a federal problem.
Off sanctuary city list
Perry's campaign aides twice now — citing the Congressional Research Service — have taken shots at White, claiming he had a de facto “sanctuary city” as Houston's mayor because police did not automatically check the immigration status of people arrested for other crimes.
What they do not say is the research service in its most recent report took Houston off its sanctuary city list and noted police have been checking immigration status since October 2006. They also overlook the fact that the Texas Department of Public Safety under Perry does not routinely check immigration status.
Republican pollster David Hill of The Woodlands said he expects the Arizona law to have little influence on the Texas governor's race. Hill said business leaders in Texas support reforms to make workers available and the state's Anglos grew up with Hispanics and the new immigrants did not feel like an invasion.
“I still don't get the sense that Texans are anywhere near Arizonans or Californians are in craziness on this issue,” Hill said.
National implications
Harris County Democratic Chairman Gerry Birnberg said he does not see Perry using the issue against White because he already has the anti-immigrant voter and risks prompting increasedLatino voter turnout.
“You've got little to gain and a potential lot to lose. So why do it?” Birnberg said.
St. Mary's University political scientist Henry Flores of San Antonio said the Arizona crackdown likely will influence national politics more than Texas politics.
Flores noted that rapidly growing Hispanic states hold enough electoral votes to decide a presidential election. He said President Barack Obama carried all but Texas and Arizona in 2008.
“This issue could cause a permanent realignment of the Latino vote,” Flores said.
But in Texas, he said, Republicans already get about a third of the Hispanic vote. And Flores said polling shows 80 percent of Hispanics support some form of immigration reform.
“So long as he doesn't play it to the extreme, the Arizona issue can be to Perry's benefit,” Flores said. “As long as Perry gets 20 percent of the Hispanic vote, he still wins.”
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...n/6978815.html