July 7, 2010, 7:00 AM ET.

Taking On Arizona: Will Obama Gain or Lose Support?


By Peter Brown
Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, is a former White House correspondent with two decades of experience covering Washington government and politics. Click here for Mr. Brown’s full bio.

The question isn’t whether President Barack Obama’s decision to file a lawsuit to block Arizona’s new immigration law is a political risk. There’s little doubt of that. What’s unclear is whether taking on public opinion on this emotionally charged issue will cost him more votes among the overall electorate than he will gain among the vocal minority who find the law abhorrent.

The American people like what Arizona has done to combat illegal immigration, polls show. They are comfortable with the law-enforcement-only approach that the president disdains.

The political unknown about the Arizona lawsuit – the state’s law has become the symbol of the fight over illegal immigration — and its electoral repercussions involves the question of comparative salience: Your third-grade social studies teacher may have told you that majority opinion rules in the U.S., but that is not always the case.

The majority doesn’t always prevail on political issues.

Clearly, based on the polling data, the American people were opposed to the health care overhaul that Congress passed and the president signed in March. We’ll see in November whether that issue will have electoral repercussions for the president and his party.

Often a well-organized and dedicated minority can overcome a majority that is less committed to a cause. That is what the White House hopes will happen politically with immigration.

The Big Question

The key political question on the lawsuit is this: Will the goodwill that the Obama administration gains among Hispanics and other immigrant-rights supporters be worth the loss among the much larger group of voters who disagree with him on Arizona?

The Justice Department on Tuesday asked the U.S. District Court in Arizona to block implementation of the law scheduled for July 29.

The law would allow police to ask people stopped in connection with a non-immigration crime to prove they are in the U.S. legally.

It is expected that U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton, appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton in 2000, will handle the case. She is already handling other lawsuits challenging the Arizona law, and just last week ruled that Mexico can file a legal brief opposing the law.

The federal suit, which challenges Arizona’s ability to pre-empt Congress’s role in setting immigration policy, becomes one of six challenges to the new law. But by filing its own lawsuit, rather than joining or endorsing one of the others, the White House is making a political statement.

Despite condemnation of the law by the Obama administration – the president labeled it “misdirectedâ€