Immigration may have cost Majority Leader Eric Cantor his election. His defeat almost certainly dooms the issue in the House.
Cantor, R-Va., was supposed to cruise to victory in Tuesday’s GOP primary over Dave Brat, an underfunded political novice who is an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College.
The only question was how wide Cantor’s winning margin would be. Immigration advocates were watching intently, hoping that if it was big enough, Cantor would feel free to green-light action on immigration legislation in the House.
Instead Cantor lost, decisively, after a campaign in which Brat made immigration the central issue. Brat accused Cantor of embracing “amnesty” and open borders, signed an anti-immigration pledge, and got assists in recent weeks from conservative figures popular with tea party voters such as radio host Laura Ingraham and columnist Ann Coulter, who labeled Cantor “amnesty-addled.”
Cantor fought back, boasting in strongly worded mailers of shutting down plans to grant “amnesty” to “illegal aliens” — a changed tone for a lawmaker who’d spoken out in favor of citizenship for immigrants brought illegally to this country as youths.
He hardened his stance on the policy, moving to block House action last month on a GOP-authored measure offering citizenship to certain immigrants here illegally who serve in the military.
It wasn’t enough.
After a primary election season in which immigration had barely registered, the outcome suggested that it can still be a potent political issue for Republican primary voters.
And Cantor’s loss almost certainly ended whatever slim hopes remained for a deal on immigration in the House this year, likely putting the issue on ice until after the 2016 presidential election.
“It’s really dead now,” said Roy Beck, president of Numbers USA, a group that opposes comprehensive immigration legislation. Immigration “has been pronounced dead many times over the last two years, but I think the voters of Cantor’s district have sent an incredible message.”
Some immigration advocates and pollsters cautioned it was too soon to say whether immigration was the deciding factor for Cantor. David Winston, a GOP pollster who advises House Republicans, said that had Cantor known he was truly threatened, he would have campaigned differently, possibly producing a different outcome. Instead, Cantor’s internal polling had shown him comfortably ahead.
“Was that the key issue? We don’t know because the candidate never thought he was in a race,” Winston said.
Immigration advocates also noted that some GOP candidates who embraced immigration legislation escaped their primaries unscathed. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., an author of the comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate last year, won his primary handily Tuesday.
Another House member, Rep. Renee Ellmers, R-N.C., also won last month even though her opponent attacked her as a supporter of relaxing immigration laws.
Some Democrats were still holding out hope for action. “Now Mr. Cantor can do the right thing instead of the political thing,” said Rep. Joe Garcia, D-Fla.
But Cantor’s loss was such a stunning rebuke for a politician seen as next in line to be speaker of the House that it immediately emboldened conservative opponents of immigration legislation.
For a Republican House rank and file already reluctant to take on the politically volatile issue in an election year, the outcome offered an object lesson on the benefits of steering clear.
And for establishment Republicans who’ve been pushing support for an immigration overhaul as the best way for the GOP to win back the Latino voters crucial to national elections, Tuesday’s result was a sobering setback. In the year since the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration bill, House Republicans have resisted the entreaties of the business community, religious leaders and the GOP establishment.
That doesn’t look likely to change anytime soon.
“We’re all shocked that you got the No. 2 Republican taken down and the entire campaign was on immigration,” said Hector Barajas, a Republican consultant in California who is trying to sell the GOP to Hispanics. “That emboldens the Ted Cruzes of the world to go out there and say ‘I told you so.’”
(AP)
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4 Responses
Nativists may be loud, but they alienate two groups that are otherwise part of the Republican coalition: 1) Religious conservatives see most new immigrants as fellow religious conservatives and prospective recruits, not to mention that hospitality is generally a characteristic of most religious fanatics; 2) Anyone other than a WASP with roots going back to the Mayflower (or at least the colonial period) is alienated by those who deny the legitimacy of immigrants and their descendants – and for quite some time, persons of “old stock” descent have been a minority.
There were several other issues in this race:
1) Cantor was (correctly) seen as being more concerned about the interests of Wall Street than of his district.
2) There was an active campaign to have Democrats vote in the Republican primary for Brat. In Virginia this is totally legal because there is no voter registration by party.
3) There is a fight to the death battle for control of the Virginia Republican party between the establishment right wing extremists like Cantor and the out and out nutcases like last year’s Lt. Governor nominee E. W. Jackson. The nutcases took over the party machinery in Cantor’s district a few weeks ago. The same folks came out big for Brat.
4) Cantor laughably attacked Brat for being a liberal college professor. That one backfired, big time.
5) Brat repeatedly employs Christian references in his writings and speeches, even though he professes to be an admirer of the notorious atheist hedonist Ayn Rand. Cantor, not being Christian, had no response. The district is overwhelmingly Christian with lots of conservative evangelicals.
Brat will likely win the general election; the Democratic nominee is a political novice and the district voted for Romney over Obama 57% to 42%. Cantor can’t run in the general election because Virginia has a sore loser law.
“Anyone other than a WASP with roots going back to the Mayflower (or at least the colonial period) is alienated by those who deny the legitimacy of immigrants”
Even those whose ancestors were on the Mayflower — or whose ancestors were in Virginia even earlier (and BTW I know two American Jews for whom that is true) came here as immigrants, as there were indigenous peoples who greeted them (sometimes with hostility).
He lost because he did not pay attention to his district. He lost because he was never there.
He lost because his rival had a total plan and agenda
But more importantly he lost because his opponent used obamas ways went to the people