Published November 27, 2013
EFE

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Wednesday appealed to the memories of Hispanic voters to help him counter the campaign of a controversial Republican businessman who wants to take over the congressional seat he has held since 1997.

If Jim Oberweis wants to make it to the Senate he will have to be ready to face the things he has done to offend immigrants, Durbin told the Chicago Sun-Times.

"We've already had people contact our office from the Hispanic community who will never get over that ad," the Democrat said, referring to a notorious commercial Oberweis ran in a previous run for the Senate.

In the ad, the current state senator - who made a fortune in the dairy business - appears in a helicopter that flies over Soldier Field in Chicago.

"Illegal aliens are coming here to take American workers' jobs, drive down wages and take advantage of government benefits such as free health care, and you pay. How many? 10,000 illegal aliens. Enough to fill Soldier Field every single week," Oberweis says in the spot.

Durbin said that the immigrant community considered the ad to be racist and that Hispanics are calling his office "to say they're anxious to help and to make sure that he doesn't get elected."

The businessman has already tried twice without success to get elected to the U.S. Senate from Illinois.

Durbin, who has declared a campaign fund of more than $4 million, said that Oberweis "has a tradition of putting millions of dollars into the campaign."

The Democratic lawmaker is the No. 2 man in the Senate and a leader to immigrants in the state for his authorship of the DREAM Act and his participation in the group that prepared the bipartisan immigration reform bill the upper house approved in June.

Oberweis announced his candidacy in a video in which he alluded to the ad regarding immigrants and acknowledged his past mistakes.

In earlier statements, Oberweis said he opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants but would be ready to accept a plan that would give additional resources for border security measures and would allow children who were brought illegally to the United States and raised here to obtain citizenship.

"We all believe we ought not force a breakup or split in families," Oberweis said. "I also believe that amnesty would be a big mistake and would result in increasing illegal immigration."

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/pol...an-challenger/