Dole to Push Tough Immigration Stand in California Swing

Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole begins a three-day campaign swing in California today, intending to deliver a hard-edged message against illegal immigration and taking aim at the hearts of his most conservative supporters--troops he normally should be able to take for granted at this late date, the ones he now most needs to woo to the voting booth.

Starting this weekend, the Dole campaign is scheduled to air an anti-illegal-immigration advertisement in television markets throughout the state to coincide with the candidate’s visit. The ad focuses on the social and economic burdens created by illegal immigration, depicted by a scene of an overcrowded classroom.

The candidate got an early jump on his theme while campaigning Friday in Texas, criticizing the Clinton administration over published reports that some recently naturalized citizens have criminal records. “And then we have all these new people coming into America, rushing through the immigration process,” he said. “And we find out [the criminal element] may be as high as 10%.”

Dole is betting everything on carrying California, where he plans to spend at least $4 million in the final days of the presidential race, even as a recent Los Angeles Times Poll showed him trailing President Clinton here by an all-but-insurmountable 20 percentage points.

According to aides, Dole will spend his three-day visit--which includes a bus trip up the Central Valley--emphasizing the cost of illegal immigration to the state’s taxpayers.

He will also stress the administration’s opposition to reimbursing California for illegal-immigration-related costs that Gov. Pete Wilson argues the federal government should pay.

In choosing illegal immigration as one of his final weapons, Dole has picked up a tactic that worked well for Wilson two years ago. But political analysts say the fear of illegal immigration run wild is less likely to be a broad and automatic vote-getter today, as voter anger on the subject appears to have subsided.

Dole faces another problem as well--his current stands contradict positions he took prior to this campaign.

In addition, the administration argues that several policy changes have improved California’s illegal-immigration picture. But perhaps the most important change is that the state’s economy has sharply improved, reducing the economic anxiety that helped intensify voters’ concerns about immigrants.

While California voters still believe that an uncontrolled border is among the state’s top problems, a Times Poll released this week shows that only 7% of respondents consider illegal immigration a major influence when it comes to choosing the man who will run the country. The issue now lags behind everything from welfare reform to “other.”

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That Dole would latch onto the illegal-immigration issue--one that he avoided through most of his campaign--speaks volumes about his flagging presidential effort, underscoring tensions between his state and national advisors in the final stretch.

The move also highlights Dole’s reduced effort to court middle-of-the-road voters crucial to a presidential bid. But even as Dole has toughened his stance on the illegal-immigration issue, many among the activists he is targeting contend that his sharp new rhetoric is way too little, way too late.

To staunch conservatives, who have in recent years formed the state GOP’s foundation, illegal immigration is still an electoral key. They bemoan the time it has taken the Dole campaign to embrace it.

“They’ve got a bunch of brain-dead campaign managers that are Washington-based Bushies who still think California is 10,000 miles away,” said one top state Republican Party leader. “They don’t know anything about California.”

The fact that Dole has tapped the illegal-immigration issue now may be because he “simply sees no alternative,” said political scientist Gary Jacobson of UC San Diego. “But it’s also consistent with the interests of local California Republicans who very much want to hold on to the state Assembly, where they have a very narrow margin, and take control of the state Senate.”

Those Republicans would be helped by an increased turnout of conservative GOP voters--the ones for whom illegal immigration is a key issue, Jacobson argued.

Even if illegal immigration did have wide appeal, Dole’s decision to wait until the final days of the election to address it has severely weakened its ability to help the overall Republican effort, other GOP strategists say.

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“I’m not sure what impact he’s having at this time,” said George Gorton, who helped engineer Wilson’s illegal-immigration-fueled rebirth two years ago. “There’s certainly difficulty at this late date getting the voters to focus on a new difference between Dole and Clinton. . . . It’s very late.”

Dole aides rejected the idea of pushing either illegal immigration--or for that matter, affirmative action--as campaign issues early on because of fears that the grim-faced candidate would appear too negative.

“They are coming in at the last minute, when it’s too late, and they’re wasting $8 million here,” the state GOP official said.

State Republican officials insist that illegal immigration could have been a powerful weapon for Dole here.

“You have $3 billion in costs, and the Clinton administration is saying, ‘Clinton administration to California: Drop dead’ ” said one top Dole aide. “The world may have changed. But the fact of the matter is that Bill Clinton, who is on the wrong side of so many issues important to California, is on the wrong side of this issue in particular.”

Clinton aides dispute that, arguing that the administration has actively sought to help California with its illegal-immigration problems by increasing the size of the Border Patrol and other efforts to control illegal entry to the state.

Beyond that, Democratic operatives happily note that Dole himself has spent time on both sides of several key immigration issues:

In 1982, for example, Dole voted to kill an amendment to the Immigration Reform and Control Act that would have given states the right to deny free public schooling and other benefits to illegal immigrants.

This year, he spoke out in favor of that idea, endorsing it in March during a rally near the Tijuana border crossing.

In 1983, Dole voted against legislation to have the federal government reimburse states for the costs of imprisoning illegal immigrants who had been convicted of crimes.

Now, attacks on Clinton’s refusal to reimburse states for services to illegal immigrants are likely to be a cornerstone of the next 10 days for Dole and his surrogates here. In a hard-edged speech last week in Riverside, Dole asked his audience: “Why are you paying millions more in taxpayer dollars to provide drug rehab for illegal aliens in prison?”

Dole’s campaign also touts his support for the Ryan White Act, passed in 1990 to provide federal assistance to AIDS patients. Among its provisions is a rule that essential services to individuals and families infected with the AIDS virus cannot be denied because of their immigration status.

But now, Dole argues that illegal immigrants suffering from AIDS should not receive public care. In the same Riverside speech, he castigated Clinton for changing the immigration reform bill “so that illegal aliens afflicted with AIDS cannot be denied free taxpayer-funded medical treatment no matter how high the cost.”

“Over the last 12 years, fighting illegal immigration was not Bob Dole’s cause,” said Rahm Emanuel, assistant to Clinton for domestic policy. “You can’t just all of a sudden say, as a tactic, ‘We’re going to try it.’ ”

Until last week, illegal immigration was so invisible in the Dole campaign that a group of California Republicans gathered in Burbank to raise it themselves at a testy press conference staged by Wilson and about half a dozen GOP members of Congress.

The candidate’s anti-illegal-immigration rhetoric has shown a marked change as his California advisors have prodded him to address the problem.

At the border in March, Dole called illegal immigration a burden on the states but admitted that cutting benefits--particularly to children--was a tough call for many legislators. “Again, it’s not an easy choice for a governor,” Dole said. “Their heart tells them one thing. Their head tells them another.”

His discomfort with the issue showed up again in June, with a verbal slip in front of a San Fernando Valley audience. While endorsing a proposal that would have allowed states to ban the children of illegal immigrants from public schools, he tried to emphasize his party’s compassion. “America is a boiling pot,” he said. “We have open arms.”

While marching in the Columbus Day parade in Newark, N.J., earlier this month, he went out of his way to praise legal immigrants like the “generations of Italian families who have come to America to live out their dreams. They have strengthened America with their values.”

Then last week, he lowered the boom in the Riverside speech, blaming illegal immigrants for committing crimes, sapping services and even committing potential voter fraud.

“Why are thousands of Californians the victims of violent crimes committed by people who should have been stopped at the border before they so much as stepped foot in this country?” he asked.

Then he left the state, headed for New Mexico, and didn’t say the word “immigration” again until he hit Texas on Friday--an acknowledgment that the issue has its best shot here.

Times staff writer Ed Chen contributed to this story.