Posted on 06/27/2006 11:05:10 AM PDT by Spiff
The decision of House Republican leaders to road-test the volatile issue of illegal immigration in field hearings this summer has delayed a showdown between the two camps in a congressional majority deeply riven over the issue. But there is no deferring the biggest test that the issue is likely to get in this year’s congressional primaries: Tuesday’s face-off in Utah between Rep. Chris Cannon, who favors a path toward citizenship for many of the people in the country illegally, and John Jacob, who favors a strict law enforcement approach.
The intensity of the challenge Cannon faces in his bid for a sixth term was established at the state GOP convention six weeks ago. Jacob, a wealthy water rights and property developer, won 52 percent of the delegate ballots. Cannon’s 48 percent showing was especially poor, given that the ballots were cast mainly by the party insiders who dominate such conventions. (A Jacob victory with 60 percent would have denied Cannon the opportunity to wage a primary campaign.)
That left the decision to the strongly conservative electorate in territory that includes Salt Lake City suburbs and the city of Provo to the north, and some of the nation’s most forbidding and sparsely populated areas to the south and west. The conservative dominance of the district, Utah’s 3rd, was made plain two years ago when President Bush took 77 percent of the vote there — his fifth-highest share of the vote among the nation’s 435 House districts.
As a result, whoever wins is virtually guaranteed a seat in Congress next year. If Cannon loses, he stands to be the only House GOP incumbent denied renomination this year.
The symbolic importance of the contest in the immigration debate was underscored last week by the president, who has made his top domestic priority for the year an overhaul of federal immigration law that includes not only increased border security but also a legalization program and an expanded system of visas for guest workers. Bush made a rare if not unprecedented endorsement in the race, saying Cannon deserved re-election because “he has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with me as we fought to cut taxes, reduce spending, protect traditional values and secure the border.”
The GOP’s House campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, has done what it normally does and endorsed the incumbent. But first lady Laura Bush has gotten involved to an unusual degree, recording a message to be used in a get-out-the vote effort in Cannon’s behalf — important in any close primary, where a candidate’s best chance for victory starts with getting as many of his core supporters to the polls as possible.
Cannon on the Record
Cannon, a former steel company owner and venture capitalist, has long advocated a view on immigration that is similar to Bush’s, shared by many in the business community and reflected in the bill passed by the Senate in May. Reflecting the internal party strife, Utah’s two GOP senators split their votes, with Robert F. Bennett in favor and Orrin G. Hatch opposed.
Cannon contends that the economy requires a steady influx of low-wage immigrant labor. He also says permitting immigrants to pursue their freedom and prosperity in the United States is akin to championing their human rights. “I am going to show voters my record on the immigration issue and the fact that I am trying to solve the problem,” he said in an interview.
But his position contrasts with that of most House Republicans, who in December pushed through a bill focused almost entirely on heightened border security and punitive measures: interdiction and deportation of illegals and penalties against those who employ them.
Jacob has pilloried Cannon as tolerant of illegal immigration and as a supporter of “amnesty,” a characterization the incumbent strongly disputes. He has argued for full enforcement of current immigration law and funding to house and process illegal immigrants and then return them to their countries of origin.
Like many activists on the issue, Jacob contends that securing U.S. borders comes first and foremost; only after that is achieved can the nation afford to worry about mainstreaming immigrant workers.
Jacob’s message has been reinforced by Team America, a political action committee that takes a stringent approach to immigration and has labeled Cannon the “king of amnesty.” The group — founded by Colorado Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo, the most vocal member of Congress on this issue, and headed by conservative media personality Bay Buchanan, sister of former presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan — has spent $50,000 on radio ads in the last few weeks of the primary campaign.
This year’s campaign is actually the second in a row in which Cannon has faced a primary challenge focused largely on his immigration position, and also the second in which Team America has sided with the challenger. The last time, though, Cannon won by a relatively comfortable 8,000 votes, and 17 percentage points, against former state Rep. Matt Throckmorton.
But immigration in 2004 was nowhere near as prominent a national campaign issue as it is in 2006. And Buchanan said her group plans to spend “more than twice what was spent in 2004” on radio ads, which she said will be “running day and night until primary day.”
A Jacob win, she predicted, would “shake Congress . . . and give an enormous boost to the House immigration bill.”
All for the Constituents
Cannon has shown his awareness of the perils inherent in the immigration issue, establishing a campaign task force that includes some past critics, Throckmorton among them. He’s sought to emphasize his support for stricter border security and other aspects on which he and his conservative critics agree. But his major focus has been to try to persuade voters to view the entirety of his congressional record — and to remind them that his defeat would sacrifice a decade of accumulated seniority that enables him to deliver for his constituents.
Among the credentials Cannon highlights is his seat on the Judiciary Committee, which first brought him to national attention: He was one of the 13 House members who prosecuted the case against President Bill Clinton in the 1999 Senate impeachment trial.
Cannon tells voters that his Judiciary seat gives him a place at the table when immigration is debated. He also notes that, as chairman of its Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, he holds sway on issues such as patent law, an important matter for technology and medical device companies concentrated along Interstate 15 south of Salt Lake City.
Cannon’s campaign cites political scorecards that they say back up his claim that he is a conservative’s conservative. In each of the past two years, his voting record has received a 100 percent support score from the American Conservative Union. And he sided with most members of his caucus against most Democrats 96 percent of the time last year and 98 percent of the time the year before — “party unity” scores much higher than the GOP average.
In addition to the support he has netted from Bush and the NRCC, Cannon is also supported by Grover Norquist, who heads Americans for Tax Reform and is a member of a core group of conservatives who have helped formulate the party’s message in recent years.
“He supports a pro-immigrant rather than a restrictionist immigration policy,” Norquist said. Adding that he thinks it is a “bad idea to go after Cannon this way,” Norquist said, “If you want to send President Bush a message, use Western Union.”
Jacob, meanwhile, has had to deflect efforts by Cannon to pinion him as a single-issue candidate. His campaign Web site describes him as a Reagan conservative — and his first job, as an air traffic controller, came open after President Ronald Reagan fired the controllers during a 1981 strike. He also has a “Contract with Utah” that details his conservative views on three other issues: education (he’d repeal the 2001 No Child Left Behind law), energy (he would extract more fuel from Utah’s lands) and gun owners’ rights (he’d back them unambiguously). He also pledges that if he fails to keep any campaign promise, he will not seek re-election to the House or run for any other office in the next election cycle.
Jacob, in the closing days of the campaign, also had to fight a brush fire of controversy that threatened to cloud his standing on his central issue. In a radio debate between the candidates last week, Cannon questioned Jacob’s assistance to a Chilean husband and wife who, his opponents say, were in the country illegally. Jacob said he did nothing wrong and maintains that he aided the couple by giving them money and putting them in touch with an immigration lawyer. Jacob’s campaign said the lawyer then helped the couple set up a company that Jacob paid to do work for him.
The Jacob campaign says its polling shows the challenger within striking distance; the NRCC predicts that the incumbent will win. Whatever the outcome, no Republican seems worried that it could threaten the party’s hold on the seat. Attorney Christian Burridge, who has no competition for the Democratic nomination, is mounting essentially a token campaign.
Voted against amendment to end special amnesty for certain Central Americans in 2006
Cosponsoring bill to reward illegal aliens with amnesty in 2005-2006
IBTOBL
The case against Chris Cannon
Actions Speak Louder Than Words: Cannon's Voting Record
Cannon co-sponsored the DREAM Act which would give in state tuition for illegal immigrants
Cannon voted against the Sullivan Amendment to help aid local law enforcement
The Company You Keep: Cannon's Association with Radical Latino and Pro-Amnesty Groups
In 2002, Cannon won lawmaker of the year from the radical Mexican American Legal Defense Fund. During his acceptance speech, he tells the audiance "We love immigrants in Utah. And we don't oftentimes make the distinction between legal and illegal. In fact I think Utah was the first state in the country to legislate the ability to get a drivers license based on the matricula consular and of that I am proud." Click Here to see the Video
La Raza honors Cannon at their 2005 Capital Awards Dinner
Cannon speaks before the pro-amnesty American Immigration Lawyers Association (See Video)
It's intresting that the article says that President Bush, and his wife got into this primary race. Which is VERY unusual. Primary races are decided by primary voters, then the big arm of the GOP gets involved.
The last time the Big Arm of the GOP, with all it's strength, a lot of Senators and congressmen got involved they took a licking.
Remember Pat Dewine, son of Senator Mike Dewine.
He had all the GOP Big Arm Washington insiders, Senators and Congressmen
supporting Pat Dewine. Pat Dewine had 10-1 money ration over his closest primary foe...and the endorsement of the newspapers and media in his district
And what did all that BIG ARM GOP support buy him?
A FOURTH PLACE FINISH IN THE OHIO PRIMARY.
So we will see if the BIG ARM of the GOP can pull this one off.
They did not have much luck in Ohio.
The deep question is how do you make Mexico a first class country. This is something that Vincente Fox has brought up frequently recently.
The trouble is that no one quite sees that the very best thing we could do for Mexico is to send their now well trained citizens home.
Suddenly Mexico would have a skilled workforce who knew something about how a world class country worked.
Think these folk would propel a great leap forward for Mexico?
I do.
Basically the ruling class in Mexico is preditory to its own detriment and will not change of its own volition--even if those changes were in its own interest. But it can be forced to change.
The Mexicans in the USA have had the picture of what a well run country looks like tatooed on the back of their eyeballs. And they'll have an idea of how to get there. Send them back to Mexico and they'll get a revolution in Mexico that'll do that country some good.
The shock troops for that would be the 12 million repatriated Mexican citizens. Having seen what a well run country looks like they would not want to be stuffed back in the old wineskin.
There's something more.
I follow water desalination research pretty closely. While water desalination costs have dropped to about a third of what they were 15 years ago--the rate at which prices will drop over the next seven years will accelerate considerably. imo in even the next five years we will see desalination costs drop to 1/10th of today's costs. Or even faster than the fall the 3/4 fall that the LLNL researchers suggest.
http://www.physorg.com/news67262683.html
Basically, the foundations are being laid today to make it economically feasable to to turn all the world's deserts green. (The proper way to look at this is to recall that cars, tv's and computers were at first rich men's toys but when prices came down they changed the world. Desalinised water is still relatively speaking -- a rich man's toy. But when the price drops sufficiently--desalinised water will change the world--because most deserts are right beside the ocean. Pumping the water 1000 miles inland will require that the scientists collapse the cost cracking out hydrogen from water. I think that this nut will be cracked sooner than desalination.)
imho cheap desalinised water will do for the republicans (if they can get this on their agenda or even the democrats if the pubbies drop the ball) what the great dam building projects & the tva of the 1930's & 40's did for democrats because 1/3 of the US is deserts. We would increase the habitable size of the USA by 1/3.
Dirt cheap desalinised water will also do things like make it possible to double the habitable size of Mexico. Cheap water is no magic bullet but it will give the Mexican Nationalists a way to dream while the Mexican people do the real work.
A first generation crop that might be appropriate would be one that India has chosen for ist biofuels program. The crop is Jatropha Curcas - a bush. This shrub produces a seed containing oil. This oil works well for biodiesel production ( see http://www.d1plc.com ).
Jatropha Curcas is native to Mexico and Central America (probably originated there). This shrub can be grown in large plantations on marginal soil - assuming some reasonable amount of, say, desalinated water).
And desalinated water in tandem with repatriation of now skilled Mexican citizens would propel Mexico into being a world class country.
Oh and one last thing. Mexico will need a stronger dose of of the Peruvian Hernando Desoto ideas. Basically DeSoto asked the question why are some countries poor and some countries rich. The basic answers is that in poor countries most of their economy is informal or off the books and their property--ie--land is not formally recognized. (Therefor these countries have no borrowing power.)De Soto's solutions are being implimented successfully in countries around the world. http://www.ild.org.pe/home.htm
Hernando de Soto's organization was invited to Mexico and did some work on the question. He says that only 6 percent of Mexican enterprises are legal, the rest are informal or off the books. So how do you reverse that so that only 6% of the economy is informal -- as is the case the USA. De Soto would provide the ideas around which the 12 million american trained Mexican returnees could rally.
There is a winner here. The winner is Mexico.
The US profits too by having a prosperous politically stable country with a broad middle class to the south as we do to the north.
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