Opposing comprehensive immigration reform was supposed to spell doom for Republicans like Colorado’s Rep. Cory Gardner because of the nation’s growing Hispanic population, but that isn’t proving to be the case.
Recent polls have given Gardner a consistent lead in his effort to oust incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Udall. His lead has grown, despite regularly being hammered by Democrats for opposing immigration reform.
Gardner leads Udall among Hispanic voters, 49 to 35 percent, according to a little-noticed breakdown in a recent Denver Post poll. A month ago, Udall had a narrow 48-46 percent lead with that demographic group.
Colorado’s Hispanic population grew by about 45 percent between the 2000 and 2010, according to the Census Bureau. Hispanics now total 21 percent of the state’s population, up from 17 percent a decade earlier. Gardner’s own home town of Yuma has seen an influx of Latino immigrants.
That was widely assumed to be a problem for Gardner, who has endorsed the GOP’s border security first approach and opposed President Obama’s executive order allowing children of illegal immigrants to remain in the country.
“Americans are tired of watching the political establishment lack the will to enforce our nation’s laws,” Gardner says on his campaign website.
But Gardner has not made immigration a focus of his campaign and has even expressed sympathy for their plight.
“Cory Gardner has made the calculation that he can say a few nice things, fool enough voters and get away with this,” Patty Kupfer of America’s Voice, which supports comprehensive reform, told the Associated Press.
Gardner appears to have been aided by missteps from Udall’s campaign, which has highlighted hot-button social ones like immigration and especially contraception.
In its endorsement of Gardner, the Denver Post was lukewarm in its praise but nevertheless said it was time for Udall to step down. It scolded Udall for devoting a “shocking amount of energy and money trying to convince voters that Gardner seeks to outlaw birth control despite the congressman’s call for over-the-counter sales of contraceptives … His obnoxious one-issue campaign is an insult to those he seeks to convince.”
