In GOP, immigration is hot

Thirteen years after a ballot measure against illegal immigration fractured the state Republican Party, the issue again is front and center in California’s upcoming presidential primary.

Moderates who have argued that an unyielding stance against illegal immigration would further erode the party’s strength in this increasing polyglot state have effectively been silenced by GOP forces calling for a hard-line crackdown.

The escalating rhetoric in the GOP presidential primary has fed their retreat.

So, too, has a striking increase in the number of Californians who blame illegal immigration for the state’s problems.

“There is more unity among Republicans in this state on illegal immigration than on anything else, including taxes,” said Tom Hudson, chairman of the Republican Party in Placer County, near Sacramento, one of the most conservative counties in the state.

Among the GOP candidates, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has seized the issue with vigor, and U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado has made border security the centerpiece of his long-shot campaign, even airing a campaign commercial comparing illegal immigration with terrorism.

In Wednesday’s GOP debate, Romney sharply criticized Rudolph W. Giuliani for providing “sanctuary” to illegal immigrants while mayor of New York City. Giuliani responded by accusing Romney of hiring illegal immigrants to work at his home. Former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee chided Romney and Giuliani as recent converts on the topic.

The issue packs some familiar political baggage for the state Republican Party, which still feels the aftershocks of Proposition 187, the landmark 1994 voter initiative to cut off services to illegal immigrants.

The measure was approved by California voters before being tossed out by the courts. But Republican Gov. Pete Wilson’s championing of it turned many Latino voters, other ethnic groups and some moderate white voters against the party.

The alienation of Latinos, the fastest-growing group in the state, has been the source of worry in GOP circles ever since, particularly as the party’s share of the vote has ebbed. Republicans now make up less than 34% of the electorate, far outnumbered by Democrats and the independent voters who typically side with them.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other Republicans have made efforts to change the party’s image on illegal immigration. But GOP operatives said those moves lost ground last year after the stinging repudiation of President Bush’s comprehensive immigration reform, which opponents attacked as weak-kneed amnesty.

Bush’s defeat and the backlash against Arizona Sen. John McCain for favoring the reforms have emboldened the most zealous critics of the sort of immigration policy embodied in the bill and electrified the Republican primary.

“I think there’s less concern about appearing to be intolerant now because of what happened a year ago,” said Fred Vanderhoof, chairman of the Fresno County GOP. “The Congress and the president learned their lesson, when they were all pushing for a comprehensive package. The rank and file want border security first.”

In California, the change in public opinion has been striking: In an October poll of registered voters, Californians who believed that the state was on the wrong track blamed illegal immigration and unsecured borders as the main reason. In that Field Poll, 21% chose that issue, compared with 6% only two years ago.

A Field Poll in April showed that 68% of Republicans in California considered illegal immigration a very serious problem, compared with 40% of Democrats and 35% of people not belonging to either party.

Even in the Central Valley, where immigrant labor is essential to the region’s billion-dollar agricultural industry, Republicans overwhelmingly favor a hard-line approach, Fresno County’s Vanderhoof said. The same illegal immigrants who harvest the crops have overwhelmed local hospitals, schools and service agencies, he said.

Already, there is a fledgling effort to place an initiative on California’s November ballot that would require “Type 2” birth certificates to be issued to American-born children of illegal immigrants and to restrict state benefits they may receive. If the measure were to be adopted, it would almost certainly face court challenges of its constitutionality.

“Mitt Romney would not be wasting his time hammering Giuliani on this issue if it didn’t have resonance in Iowa, New Hampshire and California,” said Bill Whalen, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, who was chief speechwriter for former Gov. Wilson. “If you can claim a Republican nominee is soft on illegal immigration . . . it’s like a couple years ago saying they are soft on crime.”

However, Whalen cautioned that candidates who veer too far right will become susceptible to being branded as racially divisive, as Wilson was after he backed Proposition 187 during his bid for reelection.

“I think any smart candidate in California would have a bracelet with WWAD -- What Would Arnold Do,” Whalen said.

Schwarzenegger has managed to appear both tough and compassionate on the issue. He vetoed laws allowing driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants yet has supported comprehensive immigration reform.

But Schwarzenegger became governor without first having to get through a Republican primary. And it is open to question how successful his approach to immigration would be for someone without his celebrity cachet. The two Republican presidential candidates whose views most resemble Schwarzenegger’s -- McCain and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee -- have not seen their positions translate into broad support in California.

Mike Madrid, a Sacramento-based Republican consultant who specializes in appealing to Latinos, said candidates can be strongly against illegal immigration without being so “spiteful and acerbic” that they offend Latino voters and other immigrants who came to the country legally. But sending that nuanced message is difficult during a primary season when Republican candidates are appealing to the party’s conservative base.

“We’ve got five candidates now fumbling to move to the right of one another,” Madrid said. “It’s going to be hard to distinguish any of them on this. It’s going to come down to ‘How high do you want to build the wall?’ ”

Republican leaders in California, however, believe that their party is on the right side of the issue. As evidence, they cite New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, who this month was forced into retreat after his proposal to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants triggered an uproar.

“That was a Democratic governor in a Democratic state, home to the front-running Democratic candidate in the nation,” said Rod Nehring, chairman of California’s Republican Party. “Americans are interested in seeing our borders secured and our laws respected, and not undermined.”

Nehring said he expects Democrats to characterize Republicans as racist and anti-immigrant, as he said they did after the passage of Proposition 187: “That’s just maneuvering on their part.”

Rod Pacheco, who in 1996 became the first Latino Republican elected to the state Assembly in 115 years, joined many other state GOP leaders in the late 1990s in urging the party to shy away from such polarizing issues as Proposition 187 and English-only ballot initiatives, which they said drove away Latino voters.

“Hispanics are not monolithic. Some of them happen to agree that something must be done about illegal immigration,” said Pacheco, who last year was elected Riverside County district attorney. “I don’t think it’s the issue. I think it’s the way people [on both sides] talk about the issue, the way they have been demonizing the issue.”

If the race for the GOP nomination is undecided when California holds its presidential primary Feb. 5, the anti-illegal immigrant rhetoric will probably get sharper and political attacks nastier, analysts say.

“It’s going to take more than a mere statement to move California voters,” said political scientist John J. Pitney Jr. of Claremont McKenna College, a former Republican Party official.

Pitney doubts that the GOP’s stance on illegal immigration will have a major effect on the party in the years ahead, because, he said, most Latino voters abandoned the party after Proposition 187. Also blunting the effect is the fallout of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which helped reframe illegal immigration as a national security issue.

Still, the increased focus on social and cultural fronts rather than economic issues, such as low taxes and limited government, perpetuates Republican difficulties in California.

“They don’t win elections because many of their candidates and policies are more extreme than the state is,” said Shaun Bowler, a political scientist at UC Riverside. “Rather than moderating their platform and backing a Republican like Schwarzenegger, there is no compromise. . . . It seems that no loaf is better than half a loaf.”

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phil.willon@latimes.com