Davis and Democrats Should Beware of Prop. 187 Fight

Sacramento

Like any team, the Democrats have one old reliable play they love to run. And they’ll keep running it as long as it works. It’s called Pummel Pedro.

It’s about hammering former Gov. Pete Wilson for promoting Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot initiative that sought to deny public benefits to illegal immigrants. This play scores well with Latinos, theoretically, and drives them to the polls.

Democrats have dusted it off again because Wilson is a campaign co-chairman for Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“Judge a person by the friends he keeps,” California Democratic Chairman Art Torres declared Sunday on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

Wilson, being interviewed on the same show, countered that “Torres and others in the Democratic Party have tried to play the race card” for years.

Democrats guffaw, remembering Wilson’s 1994 TV ad that showed hordes of Mexicans fleeing across the border and proclaimed in a Darth Vader tone, “They keep coming.” Many Latinos saw the ad as racist. But it helped Wilson win reelection.

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante -- the Democrats’ main hope in the recall election -- told me once that “187 was like illegitimatizing the Latino experience.”

Democrats have been demonizing Wilson ever since -- especially Gov. Gray Davis at the end of his 1998 election race.

Then, hypocritically, Davis vowed in his inaugural address to “end wedge-issue politics” -- an ungracious slap at the former governor who was sitting on stage. Such insensitivities are one reason why Davis now is facing recall. And it’s not surprising -- even if it is unprecedented within the brotherhood of governors -- that Wilson is helping the dump-Davis movement.

Whatever slim hope Davis has of survival depends on attracting a big turnout of core Democrats, especially Latinos. Bustamante’s candidacy could help. So could trashing Wilson one more time, Davis and Torres theorize.

After all, Schwarzenegger did support Prop. 187.

But do Davis and Democrats really want to resurrect the volatile issue of illegal immigration?

Schwarzenegger voted for Prop. 187, but so did 5.1 million other Californians. It passed with 59% of the vote.

A federal judge tossed out most provisions and Davis didn’t put up any fight in the courts. Some parts wound up in federal welfare reform.

But Prop. 187 would pass again today, pollsters and strategists say. A 1999 Times poll found that 60% of registered voters would support another Prop. 187. Moreover, 75% of Republicans said they’d back it -- a sentiment that’s bound to help Schwarzenegger, since the recall election could be tilted to the right by an unusually large turnout of GOP voters.

“The worst thing for Democrats to do is rerun Prop. 187,” says political analyst Tony Quinn. “It helps Schwarzenegger where he needs the most help: among core Republi- cans.”

Beyond that, Democrats shouldn’t be demagoguing on illegal immigration -- or any immigration.

Dig into those deficit numbers -- in Sacramento and city halls -- and you’ll find a lot of red ink flowing to services for immigrants, legal and illegal.

L.A. County’s health department estimates it spends $340 million annually to treat illegal immigrants who seek emergency and follow-up care.

Rand did a study in 1999 showing that U.S.-born Californians paid about $1,200 extra in state and local taxes just to finance services for immigrants.

Public schooling costs roughly twice as much for immigrant families as for native-born households.

“There’s a reason we had Prop. 187,” notes Jim Smith, Rand senior economist.

In Sacramento, the big-ticket items in spending growth have been health care, K-12 schools and tax relief.

Medi-Cal eligibility and programs were expanded, helping mostly low-income families, which also means immigrants.

A lot of the tax relief went for child exemptions and child care credits -- roughly $1 billion a year.

First-generation Latino immigrants have more children than other people -- 3.23 per family, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

“The real story here is that the federal government should be subsidizing -- reimbursing -- our costs for immigrants,” notes Ronald Lee, demography professor at UC Berkeley.

That’s because the feds have failed to stem the flow of illegal immigration. California gets perhaps 175,000 a year, according to Ira Mehlman, state spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

“We might not be facing this recall vote if the politicians had not ignored the will of the voters on Prop. 187,” adds Mehlman. “If we’re going to have a safety net, we have to limit access to it. If we don’t, it will eventually collapse.”

Davis and Democrats should be very careful running their Pummel Pedro play. They could be sacked.