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Iowa Republican Kingmaker Makes Immigration a Household Issue

http://www.bloomberg.com
Dec. 6 (Bloomberg) -- When a roofing crew arrived at U.S. Representative Steve King's Iowa home earlier this year, he made a ``point to check the people pounding nails,'' his ear tuned for any hint of Spanish.

The lawmaker, who's positioning himself as the state's Republican kingmaker before the Jan. 3 presidential caucuses, is subjecting his party's candidates to similar scrutiny over their policies on illegal immigration to ensure they share his views.

``If you're not willing to send someone back to their home country under U.S. law, then you are by definition supporting an amnesty,'' says King, 58, the only Republican lawmaker in Iowa who plans to back a candidate, in the first contest of the presidential election.

Immigration is increasingly resonating across the country among likely Republican voters, with 23 percent of them citing it as their top priority, according to a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll. Forty percent of all Republicans say undocumented workers and their families should be denied all social services, compared with 22 percent of Democrats.

King may be leaning toward former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, whose failure to check the immigration status of workers at his home exposed him to attacks from Rudy Giuliani, who accused Romney of running a ``sanctuary mansion.''

On Dec. 4, Romney, 60, fired his landscaping company for ``failure to comply with the law.'' He has attacked Giuliani, 63, of New York as the former mayor of a ``sanctuary city'' for not terminating social services to paper-less immigrants.

Romney has been courting King for more than a year-and-a- half. King says Romney is ``solid'' on the issue. ``I have taken him down this path, and he's willingly gone,'' he says.

`Important Message'

A King endorsement would send ``an important message'' to voters concerned about immigration ``that they are better off going to Romney,'' says Dennis Goldford, a politics professor at Drake University in Des Moines. ``Steve King certainly has his credentials on immigration,'' says Goldford.

Immigration isn't as burning an issue for Democratic voters, although Senator Hillary Clinton's recent stumble over the question of whether undocumented residents should be allowed to get driver's licenses suggests it might also pose a danger to candidates in that party.

Many of the leading Republican candidates, including Romney and Giuliani, have only recently adopted strong anti-immigration platforms, having left behind a paper trail for their opponents to criticize.

Fertile Ground

As Mike Huckabee, 52, has risen in Iowa and national polls, Romney has highlighted the former Arkansas governor's earlier support for allowing children of illegal immigrants to compete for college scholarships.

That charge may find fertile ground among party voters: Only 8 percent of Republicans nationwide support providing in-state discounts on college tuition to undocumented residents, according to the Bloomberg/L.A. Times poll.

The poll of 1,467 adults, including 1,245 registered voters, was taken Nov. 30-Dec. 3. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

In Iowa, the presence of mostly Hispanic-speaking illegal immigrants, who come to work in the meat-packing industry, is driving this year's political conversation more than any other issue, say local Republican officials.

``At the county level, we have to deal with the social ills of immigration,'' says Sheriff Randy Krukow of Clay County in northwest Iowa. ``We're looking for a national solution from the candidates.''

Eighty percent of those incarcerated at his county jail are Hispanic and all are ``illegals,'' says Krukow, president of the Iowa State Sheriffs and Deputies Association.

Impact on Communities

Iowa has 115,000 Hispanics, just 3.8 percent of the state's population of almost 3 million, according to 2006 U.S. Census estimates. Still, the number of Hispanics is up 38 percent from six years ago, says Jeff Passel, a senior research associate at the Pew Hispanic Center.

Nationally, 42 percent of Republicans say illegal immigrants have had a negative impact on their communities, compared with 29 percent of Democrats, according to the Bloomberg/L.A. Times poll.

Of those who think immigration has had a negative impact, 39 percent of Republicans cited crime, drugs and gangs as the ways it has most affected their communities. That compares with 23 percent of Democrats who cited those ills.

Democrats are more likely to blame undocumented workers for taking jobs from Americans or hurting their wages, with 40 percent citing those as the main drawbacks to illegal immigration.

Both Parties Angry

Providing driver's licenses to undocumented workers angers members of both parties. Only 14 percent of Republicans and 31 percent of Democrats think undocumented workers should have access to driver's licenses.

Confusing the matter for King is that almost all the candidates now claim to share his views.

During the summer, he was moving toward endorsing his ``good friend,'' Representative Tom Tancredo, a Colorado Republican who has taken the lead in Congress in opposing illegal immigration. Now, King says Tancredo may lack ``the juice'' to influence ``the debate beyond the earliest part of January.''

Huckabee worries him for two reasons. First, King hasn't ``heard him say anything that would convince'' him he has the proper ``conviction'' on immigration. Second, an Iowa triumph for Huckabee might amount to a tactical win for Giuliani nationally, King says, because it might mortally wound Romney.

King says he expects to make his endorsement soon.

To contact the reporter on this story: Hans Nichols in Washington at hnichols2@bloomberg.net