http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/washi ... r=homepage

September 6, 2006
In Bellwether District, G.O.P. Runs on Immigration
By CARL HULSE
AURORA, Colo. — It was not by chance that Republicans brought their summer tour of hearings on illegal immigration to this growing community just outside Denver.

Not only is Aurora bearing the costs of schooling and providing other services for a significant population of illegal immigrants, it is in the heart of a swing district and so is central to the intense battle for control of the House of Representatives.

And while Congress is unlikely to enact major immigration legislation before November, inaction does not make the issue any less potent in campaigning. In fact, many Republicans, on the defensive here and around the country over the war in Iraq, say they are finding that a hard-line immigration stance resonates not just with conservatives, who have been disheartened on other fronts this year, but also with a wide swath of voters in districts where control of the House could be decided.

“Immigration is an issue that is really popping, “ said Dan Allen, a Republican strategist. “It is an issue that independents are paying attention to as well. It gets us talking about security and law and order.”

Leading Republicans, leery of a compromise on immigration, are encouraging their candidates to keep the focus on border control, as in legislation passed by the House, rather than accept a broader bill that would also clear a path for many illegal immigrants to gain legal status. The latter approach, approved by the Senate with overwhelming Democratic support and backed by the White House, makes illegal immigration one of the issues on which Republicans face a tough choice of standing by President Bush or taking their own path.

“The American people want a good illegal-immigration-reform bill,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House majority leader, “not a watered-down, pro-amnesty bill.”

Here in the Seventh District, the Republican push brought a Senate subcommittee hearing the other day to explore the costs of illegal immigration. The taxpayer-financed, ostensibly nonpartisan meeting took on the air of political theater.

“They are here in this district with this topic attempting to drum up support in a closely contested Congressional race,” fumed Lisa Duran, director of an immigrant rights group.

If that was the tactic, it may have worked. The angry confrontation thrust the session into the headlines, reminding residents that the issue remained a leading one in the House race between Rick O’Donnell, the Republican nominee, and Ed Perlmutter, the Democrat, who are running to fill a seat being vacated by Representative Bob Beauprez, a Republican seeking the governorship.

The issue remains on voters’ minds “because people are trying to keep it on their minds,” said Mr. Perlmutter, who accused Republicans of staging the hearing for political gain.

Mr. Perlmutter, a former state legislator, is trying to navigate tough political terrain by coming down hard for border enforcement while leaving the door open for illegal immigrants to seek citizenship eventually. His opponent, a former state higher education official, says such a position will not sell in Denver suburbs characterized by unease that the nation has inadequately policed its borders.

“I know the voters in my district are adamantly opposed to anything that smacks of amnesty,” Mr. O’Donnell said.

Republicans went into this year determined to keep the midterm elections from becoming a referendum on national issues and Mr. Bush, insisting that they would run on local concerns instead. But in this district, as in most others with tightly contested races around the country, the campaign is turning on the overarching national issues.

On immigration, many Republicans, like Mr. O’Donnell, have put distance between themselves and the Bush administration, emphasizing stronger border security and ignoring or rejecting the president’s support for the broader legislation.

Similarly, on Iraq, Mr. O’Donnell is trying to find a middle ground that, though basically supportive of Mr. Bush, allows the candidate to be critical of the war’s management. Like the president, Mr. O’Donnell says that American troops should not be withdrawn until Iraq is stabilized and that setting a deadline for a pullout could lead to disaster. Yet he is trying to separate himself from the administration’s handling of the war, saying that “we may need new leadership at the Pentagon.”

Mr. Perlmutter has tried to put his Republican opponent on the defensive over a third issue, embryonic stem cell research. He made it the subject of his first television commercial, pointing to the potential benefits for a daughter of his who has epilepsy. “It is personal to me,” he said.

Until recently, Mr. O’Donnell sided with Mr. Bush in opposing expanded federal financing of such research. Now he says the effort should move forward, given a scientific advance, reported last month, that may allow stem cells to be obtained from embryos without destroying them. He rejects Mr. Perlmutter’s assertion of a flip-flop on the research, which both men say is popular with voters. “I didn’t move,” he said, “the research did.”

But here as elsewhere, Democrats too are still trying to calibrate their positions on the big issues, a reflection of what the two parties agree is a fluid political situation. Even as they try to tap into the antiwar sentiment in their liberal base, many Democrats in swing districts, like Mr. Perlmutter, are articulating positions on Iraq that they hope will insulate them from the “cut and run“ charges being leveled by Republicans. So Mr. Perlmutter paints his opponent as an adherent of what he portrays as Mr. Bush’s policy: “stay the course until we run aground.”

Yet he does not endorse a quick exit, calling instead for the beginning of a phaseout of the troops, tied to a multinational reconstruction effort, with American forces out completely by the spring of 2008.

“We will have been in Iraq for five years by that time,” he said.

Certainly the topics dominating the campaign landscape have proved challenging. “The war and the issue of immigration are sufficiently complicated that both parties are having a hard time getting a real clear, laserlike fix on the whole thing,” said John Straayer, a political science professor at Colorado State University.

Just a few weeks ago politicians and analysts suspected that immigration had lost its political punch in Colorado, after the legislature enacted a tough immigration overhaul including tighter identification rules for those seeking state government services.

But the issue refuses to die. Mr. O’Donnell said it was the subject most frequently raised with him by residents. At the hearing here the other day, presided over by Senator Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican, more than 200 people showed up even though it had promised to be a fairly dry look at the fiscal effects of illegal immigration.

On the street outside, the emotions surrounding the debate were on vivid display. Advocates on both sides chanted slogans, sought to outshout each other and displayed signs like “No Human Being Is Illegal” and “Stop the Invasion.”

Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican elected eight years ago, testified on illegal immigration’s costs to the state, saying the influx was not a driving issue when he first took office but had since risen to the top of Colorado’s concerns. “The state did take some important steps,” Mr. Owens said of the recently enacted immigration measure, “because of weaknesses in federal law. But there is a lot more that needs to be done.”

In an interview, Mr. O’Donnell accused his party’s leader, Mr. Bush, of being soft on illegal immigration. “I don’t know why the administration hasn’t enforced the laws,” he said, adding that his objective was border security.

Mr. Perlmutter said he shared that goal. But he said the government also had to deal with the millions of illegal residents already in the United States, enabling some to “earn your citizenship if you are learning English, paying taxes, haven’t committed a crime and have a job,” as the Senate bill provides. He blames Republicans for allowing the problem to fester.

Hoping to throw Mr. O’Donnell off stride, the Perlmutter campaign also resurrected an opinion article he wrote in 2004 suggesting that male high school seniors be required to perform six months of community service, with the option of assisting in border security. Mr. Perlmutter equated that plan to a draft; Mr. O’Donnell said he had simply been endorsing a call for community service that many civic leaders have backed.

As they fine-tune their messages, the two men agree on at least one thing: this evenly split district will be a bellwether in November.

“The issues that end up driving this campaign,” Mr. O’Donnell told a Rotary Club luncheon in nearby Commerce City, “are going to set the tone for this country.”