Bloomberg

Senators’ 2014 Campaigns Complicated by Immigration Issue

By Kathleen Hunter - Jan 30, 2013

Nine senators who will help determine whether Congress passes the most significant rewrite of U.S. immigration law in decades will have 2014 electoral challenges that may complicate their support of the legislation.

Six Democrats -- Montana’s Max Baucus, Alaska’s Mark Begich, North Carolina’s Kay Hagan, South Dakota’s Tim Johnson, Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu and Mark Pryor of Arkansas -- are seeking re-election to the Senate in 2014 in states that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney carried in November.

Senate Republicans viewed as vulnerable to primary challenges include Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, South Carolina’sLindsey Graham and Texas’s John Cornyn. Graham is part of a group that unveiled a bipartisan immigration plan Jan. 28, and Cornyn is the second-ranking Senate Republican.

Such candidates may have an incentive to oppose the plan’s path to citizenship, said Jennifer Duffy, who tracks Senate races for the non-partisan Cook Political Report in Washington.
“The potential for it being the bright, shiny object of 2014 definitely exists,” Duffy said in a telephone interview. “It’s fair to say that you’ll see it both in primaries and general elections.”The 60-vote threshold for advancing major legislation in the Senate presents a hurdle and helped derail immigration measures in 2007 and 2010. Electoral pressures in the Senate -- where Democrats will defend 20 seats in 2014, compared with 13 for Republicans -- are among the dynamics that make counting votes complicated. Democrats control 55 votes in the 100-member chamber.

‘Overwhelming Majority’

Senator Charles Schumer of New York, the chamber’s third- ranking Democrat and an author of the bipartisan framework, predicted that the “overwhelming majority of Democrats in the Senate” would back an immigration overhaul.
“But we won’t get all of them,” Schumer said at a breakfast sponsored by Politico today. “So we’re going to need a good number of Republicans to vote for the bill to get 60.”

Baucus, Landrieu and Pryor voted in 2007 not to advance a comprehensive immigration overhaul. Baucus, Hagan and Pryor in 2010 opposedlegislation known as the Dream Act that would have provided a path to legal status for younger undocumented immigrants.

Baucus, whose Montana Democratic colleague Jon Tester won a tough Senate race in 2012, told reporters this week that he would have to take a close look at the Senate framework before determining whether he could support it.
“There is no legislative language; I’ll have to see what it is,” Baucus said.
Dream Act

Hagan, who said in 2010 she opposed the Dream Act because she preferred a comprehensive approach to immigration law, said in a statement she still wanted a broad overhaul and would “consider any proposals in that context.”
She won her seat in 2008 when Obama became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry North Carolina since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Landrieu also stopped short of embracing the immigration framework, calling it a “good start.”

“I look forward to the debate ahead to strengthen it,” Landrieu said in a statement.
The Senate group, which includes four Democrats and four Republicans, is calling for tougher border security and enforcement before providing a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. These immigrants would face a prolonged process to remain in the country legally.

The immigration issue could especially play a role in 2014 races for open Senate seats in Georgia, Iowa and West Virgina, Duffy said.

60 Votes

The proposal, which members of the group want to draft into legislation by March, would need the support of at least one more Republican senator to get the 60 votes to advance. The number of Republican backers needed would increase with every Democratic defection.

One factor working in proponents’ favor is the Republican defeat in the 2012 presidential election, which has compelled the party to seek the support of more Latino voters. The rapidly growing voting group cast 71 percent of its votes for Obama in November. The president traveled toNevada yesterday to push for a rewrite of immigration law.
Still, some Republicans are already under pressure from outside groups that oppose the Senate framework.

The Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based group that supports smaller government, released a statement that the latest immigration effort is poised to repeat “the mistakes of the past.” The group said that could “further polarize Americans, fail to solve the real policy problems and make matters worse.”
Citizenship Path

Opposition from Heritage and other groups may make it harder for McConnell, Graham, Cornyn and other Republicans to support the legislation, especially the path to citizenship.

Immigration legislation signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 made 3 million undocumented workers eligible for legal status and created a market for fraudulent documentation. Illegal immigration soared, casting a shadow on subsequent efforts to legalize immigrants.

“I think predicting how one is going to vote on this package before it gets out of committee is something I’m not prepared to do,” McConnell told reporters this week.

Graham said he’s reassuring conservatives he speaks to in South Carolina that the plan would include “an earned legalization process” that would make it possible to secure the border “and control who gets a job.”

‘Fair Share’

“I feel good that we’re going to get more than our fair share of conservatives who understand now’s the time,” Graham said in an interview.

Another Republican seeking re-election next year, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, pledged “to ask the tough questions” on the latest effort. In 2007, Sessions was one of the chamber’s most vocal opponents of a path to citizenship.

“I remember, particularly 2007, I was intrigued by that legislation and thought it might be acceptable,” he said. “But, as we reviewed it carefully, we realized it was not going to work when it got put into legislative language. So that’s my concern this time.”

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