A Democratic victory in a Missouri state Senate seat last week has immigration advocates hopeful that President Trump’s immigration playbook will backfire in November.
Republican Kevin Corlew pulled from Trump’s strategy, accusing Democrat Lauren Arthur of giving “amnesty to dangerous illegal immigrants.” Arthur beat Corlew by 19 points, flipping the Missouri state Senate seat for the first time in a decade.
“[Voters] rejected the attacks, which I think were racist and misogynistic,” Arthur said.
Though Trump benefited by making immigration and a border wall central pillars of his campaign, there’s growing backlash to his policies among independents and centrist Republicans, particularly on how the administration has handled so-called “Dreamers” during his first two years in office.
Still, Trump is set to repeat his 2016 strategy, which he displayed in Tennessee recently. Trump fired up the crowd by asking them what name he uses for the transnational MS-13 gang.
“Animals,” the crowd shouted.
Trump came under fire for using the term in relation to immigrants. The White House claimed Trump used it to describe members of MS-13. Trump went on to call House Minority Nancy Pelosi an “MS-13 lover” at the Nashville, Tenn., rally.
“If the entire Republican strategy is to make immigration and sanctuary cities and MS-13 and amnesty and Democrats are soft — the special elections that have happened to date suggest — at best it’s not going to work and at worst it’s going to backfire,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice.
The GOP tried to make immigration the central issue in the 2017 Virginia gubernatorial race and it flopped, Sharry said, citing the Pennsylvania special election for the 18th District as a second example of Trump’s strategy failing to connect with voters.
In Virginia, Ed Gillespie, a known Bush Republican, morphed into a mini Trump, pushing out MS-13 ads and hammering Democrat Ralph Northam for being soft of immigrants. Northam won the contest by 9 percentage points, driving up Democratic turnout in GOP strongholds.
A super PAC affiliated with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., repeatedly hit Democrat Conor Lamb on immigration in his bid to hold the 18th District of Pennsylvania, which went for Trump by 20 points in 2016.
“Lamb is weak on illegal immigration,” said one Congressional Leadership Fund ad. “He’ll join Pelosi to give amnesty to millions of illegals.”
In another ad, CLF said “Lamb worked in the Obama administration that encouraged sanctuary cities, which put illegal immigrants who commit crimes back on the street.”
Lamb won the election, sending a signal to Republicans that even districts Trump overwhelming won could be in play.
Though Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Missouri show a pattern, Sharry said, Trump’s rhetoric is effective with his base.
“We have to ask ourselves whether the intensity among Democratic voters is going to outdistance the racially charged wedge strategy of the Republicans,” Sharry said.
Immigration reform advocates are bracing for Republicans to push out “Willie Horton” style ads. In the 1988 presidential election, then-candidate George H. W. Bush benefited from Republican ads criticizing Democrat Michael Dukakis for supporting the weekend furlough program in Massachusetts’ prison system. The ad features a mugshot of Horton, a convicted murderer, while calling Dukakis soft on crime. Horton is black and critics charged the ads were racist and fear-mongering.
If Republicans use similar tactics regarding immigration, it won’t work in Illinois, said Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos.
Bustos leads heartland engagement for House Democrats and is traveling all over the Midwest this cycle to boost Democrats trying to flip red seats. If Republican candidates copy Trump’s scare tactics concerning immigrants and MS-13, she said, it will fail.
“It’s a losing issue for them,” Bustos said of the GOP immigration strategy. “I’ll tell you why: I‘ve got a very rural district but we have farms that can’t find workers, we have nursing homes that can’t find workers, we have hotels that can’t find workers. We have American citizens who aren’t willing to take those jobs.”
In California, more than 15 cities have joined the administration’s lawsuit against the state for its sanctuary-state law which is designed to limit local law enforcement authorities from cooperation with federal immigration agents.
“They’ve shot themselves in the foot,” Chapman University political science professor Fred Smoller said of the GOP.
Smoller likened Trump’s playbook to former Republican Pete Wilson, governor of California from 1991 to 1999. If people are surprised by the direction Trump’s taken the GOP, Smoller said, they shouldn’t be.
“Go back to 1994 it was telegraphed to us,” Smoller said. “Pete Wilson grabbed the immigration issue, which was a much bigger issue in ’94, and lobbed it and he won a selfish victory and destroyed the party statewide.”
One of the only Republican candidates to make immigration a key focus ahead of California’s primary, secured less than 9 percent of the vote in her contest. Kristin Gaspar pressured San Diego County to join the Justice Department’s lawsuit against California and met with Trump at a round table on the issue during her campaign. She came in fifth, failing to land one of the top-two spots to advance to the general election.
Still, Trump shows no signs of slowing his immigration agenda. Deportations, detention practices, the separation of children from their parents, and a new order by Attorney General Jeff Sessions blocking immigration judges from granting asylum to most victims of gang violence and domestic abuse continue to make headlines.
To counter the backlash to Trump’s crackdown, vulnerable House Republicans pushed their leadership to bring up bills that would provide protection for Dreamers. Republicans’ internal debate over what route to take on immigration is coming to head in the House. Conservative members who think hardline immigration positions will beat back Democrats this cycle are at odds with their moderate colleagues who think providing a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients is the best way to preserve the Republican majority. So far, Republicans have embraced the former strategy.
Republican House leadership brokered a deal Tuesday, quelling the uprising by centrist Republicans, which would have circumvented the speaker and allowed them to bring four immigration bills to the floor for a vote. Under the agreement, Republican leadership said, they’ll bring two immigration proposals to the floor that would provide some protections for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.
Immigration advocates remain skeptical that a measure providing a pathway to permanent citizenship for Dreamers will pass the House. And there’s no guarantee the Senate will take up whatever the House passes.
Advocates are already preparing for GOP candidates to hammer vulnerable Senate Democrats on immigration in competitive races like Sen. Bob Casey’s in Pennsylvania.
Sharry of America’s Voice is cautiously optimistic that the president’s “divisive and dehumanizing” immigration policies will increase turnout for Democrats in Senate and House contests.
The 2018 cycle, Sharry said, is “going to be a remarkable referendum on whether racism really works as the core strategy of the Trumpian Republicans or not.”
