(Florida Gov. Jeb Bush weighs in on the immigration debate.) Posted on March 31, 2006: Jerry Kilgore lost his bid to succeed the prospective 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Mark Warner. Though as Election Day drew near, the Kilgore camp believed they had an issue that would put them over the top — illegal immigration. It didn’t work and may be a harbinger of things to come for Republicans if, as the Wall Street Journal editorializes today, the party of Reagan morphs into the party of Tom Tancredo. Just after Kilgore’s defeat Fred Barnes noted in the Weekly Standard that Republicans had lost their grip on what had been two solidly Republican counties in Northern Virginia.
From the governor’s election in Virginia last week, there’s a bit of evidence that the Republican grip on the exurbs may be loosening…. [T]he outcome in Loudoun and Prince William should be alarming to Republicans. Located west of Washington, Loudoun is the second fastest-growing county in the country. Kilgore lost Loudoun by 51 percent to 46 percent. A year earlier, Bush did 10 points better…. The numbers in Prince William, south of Washington, were slightly better. Kilgore was defeated by 50 percent to 48 percent, slipping five points below Bush…. I think there are two better explanations for the Republican retreat in the two exurban counties. First, there’s the immigration issue. Late in the campaign, Kilgore played up his opposition to government aid for illegal immigrants. He did so in TV ads and speeches, criticizing Kaine for supporting taxpayer-financed services for illegals and their families. The tagline in his TV spots was: “What part of ‘illegal’ does Tim Kaine not understand?” The question is not whether Kilgore was indulging in blatant immigrant-bashing. He wasn’t. The question is whether his emphasis on illegals might have been seen as unfriendly to immigrants, especially by the large immigrant communities in the two counties…. “They overplayed the immigrant issue,” says Mark Rozell, professor of public policy at George Mason University in northern Virginia. “They may have caused a counter-mobilization by people who were offended by the ads.” Rozell says he was “stunned” when he heard a Kilgore radio ad on illegal immigrants on a classical music station in Washington. “Is that the demographic their ads were supposed to appeal to?” he says. In all likelihood, Rozell says, the ads appealed only to Republicans already committed to vote for Kilgore. Loudoun and Prince William were not as vote-rich for Bush last year as many other exurbs. Of the 100 fastest-growing counties, according to Brownstein and Rainey, “Bush took 70 percent or more of the vote in 40 of them and 60 percent or more in 70 of them. In all, Bush won 63 percent of the votes in these 100 counties.” So Loudoun and Prince William aren’t quite typical in yet another way: They’re not landslide Republican counties. But the fact that Kilgore fell far short of the president’s showing in the two Virginia exurbs is bound to be a matter of concern to Republicans as they focus on 2006 and 2008.
President Bush opposes the House-passed immigration bill because it isn’t “comprehensive” and has asked for everyone involved in the debate to keep it “civil.” Of course, he was talking to House Republicans. Having successfully run STATEWIDE in Texas and twice NATIONALLY, the president may have a better grasp on how to maintain Republican majorities than those from overwhelmingly safe districts who appear to be the most vocal on the immigration issue.
