Thread: Politicians flocking to border for election-year photo ops

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington ... rder_x.htm


Politicians flocking to border for election-year photo ops
Updated 8/22/2006 10:25 PM ET
By Mike Madden, Gannett News Service
SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. — Along with the local Labor Day parade, the U.S.-Mexico border is one of the hottest campaign stops for politicians looking ahead to this fall's elections.
Dozens of lawmakers and would-be members of Congress from around the country have made visits to the border this summer, both on their own and for a series of field hearings the House scheduled for its August recess. Republicans and Democrats alike have gone to the nearly 2,000-mile frontier, hoping to convince voters they'll be tough on illegal immigration in a year when polls show the issue has people concerned.

Politicians go back home saying they understand the problems of illegal immigration better having seen the border up close. The visits have yielded stern rhetoric and plenty of photo ops for the politicians, but residents of border communities say they're weary of being used as political props while migrants continue streaming into the country through their backyards. Disdain for visiting politicians from the nation's interior unites some border residents who otherwise disagree about immigration policy.

"They're actually doing this to hold everything off until after the election and try to get the re-election of the incumbents — that's what this is all about," said Connie Foust, of Palominas, Ariz.

Foust recently left the national leadership of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps to form Grannies for a Secure America, which also agitates for more secure borders.

"We're not stupid out here," she said. "They're discounting the American people as being stupid."

In nearby Nogales, Ariz., just across the international boundary, Mayor Albert Kramer, who favors broad reforms that would let many undocumented immigrants get legal status, rolled his eyes at all the attention.

"They come down and get their picture taken with a cactus," he said.

Those visits could help candidates bolster their credibility on a key issue as they try to persuade voters they'll do more to stop illegal immigration than their opponents. Many Republicans in particular have taken a hard line on immigration as they try to motivate the GOP's conservative base, and border visits give them a chance to talk about the subject.

Lawmakers say the trips provide valuable experience, both for legislating and for campaigning.

"It gives you far more credibility on any issue once you've been there, whether it's Iraq, Israel or the Southwest border of the United States of America," said Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., who visited El Paso and met with the director of a Texas Minuteman chapter last week.

Even in districts like Kingston's that are far from the border in rural southern Georgia, voters are passionate about immigration because foreign-born workers have begun settling in places they never used to live. But Kingston said he understands how border residents might view the visits.

"It's like any other issue — you spend a half a day in the hospital with a doctor, you know more about health care but you're not an expert," he said. "There are all types in Congress, and there are those types who will go for a photo op, and I don't think either party has a monopoly on them."

Still, no matter how often candidates head south, the border trips are unlikely to swing many elections on their own. In Tennessee, two of three candidates in the Republican Senate primary visited Arizona this spring, competing for toughest-on-immigration honors. But the candidate who didn't make a trip won the primary.

"In states that aren't border states where this issue is playing, it's another sort of 'seeing is believing' (maneuver)," said Jennifer Duffy, a political analyst with the non-partisan Cook Political Report, based in Washington. "It's not a bad backdrop, but I don't know that it's going to change a lot of minds. It's a good picture, some of it will appear in ads, but it's more like a credential."








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TOO LATE, THEY CAN SHUCK AND JIVE AND SPIN ALL THE WANT, BUT WE KNOW WHO THE BAD GUYS ARE AND WILL REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER.