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Tancredo brings his message of immigration crackdown to Iowa
'08 run for president by congressman not entirely discounted

By M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News
July 13, 2005

DUBUQUE, Iowa - After his first long day stumping across Iowa last week, a weary Tom Tancredo dragged himself up to a hotel room in Cedar Rapids, zipped open the suitcase and started looking for his pajamas.

"This doesn't look like my wife's packing!" he exclaimed.

Inside, he found a bag of dirty laundry and other stuff belonging to some poor guy who was making a connecting flight for Hawaii. The congressman had grabbed the wrong bag when their puddle-jumper landed in Moline, Ill.

Uh-oh.

That's life on the road for a man hoping to put a scare into the 2008 presidential contenders.

During a three-day barnstorming trip, Tancredo, a Littleton Republican, also faced cases of mistaken identity, a mind-numbing schedule of interviews and a swarm of insects that seemed straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

Despite all that, Tancredo created a buzz of his own. He got enough standing ovations from hard-core conservative Iowa voters that it should worry any top-tier presidential hopefuls who thought they could get through 2008 without touching the immigration hot-button.

Tancredo has visited New Hampshire and now Iowa, seeing how his hard line against illegal immigration plays in the two early presidential primary states. He's testing the waters for a possible presidential run of his own, but the real goal is to turn his pet issue into something akin to abortion in past campaigns - a big deal that nobody is allowed to ignore.

Even in Iowa, far from any international borders, Tancredo found his views an easy sell in front of friendly faces gathered by the Christian Coalition of Iowa. He talked about a national identity under attack, wages at risk and a border so porous he sees it as a welcome mat to would-be terrorists.

After last week's bomb attacks in London, Tancredo drew big applause by calling for the U.S. military to help seal America's borders.

"Isn't it better to stop people before they get here, rather than trying to find them once they get here?" he said at one gathering.

At every stop, Tancredo urged folks to ask tough questions about immigration when presidential hopefuls come to call.

"I beg you to ask them about this issue, and do not let them equivocate," he said.

What will they do to secure the borders? Will they use the military if necessary? Will they oppose guest worker legislation that Tancredo equates with "amnesty" for people who entered the country illegally?

"It has to be a part of the presidential debate," he said.

Tancredo took that message from town to town, driving past nearly 400 miles of cornfields before he was through. He preached to standing-room crowds from a backyard porch in Davenport, in a cramped basement in Cedar Rapids, a community center in Cedar Falls and inside a mansion-size log cabin in the affluent suburbs of Dubuque.

Everywhere he went, people asked if he plans to run. Each time came the pat answer: "If we can get no one else to take up the banner, both with their heart and with their lips, then we will do it."

Tancredo has said he is not delusional. He knows he'd have little chance of winning the White House.

Still, as he said during a stroll near the Mississippi River: "I'm putting my life in God's hands - and he may have some strange plans."

Iowa worker drain

Iowa would seem to be an unlikely place to pitch immigration.

After all, the state is 94 percent white, less than 3 percent Hispanic and several states removed from the Mexican or Canadian borders. Still, local economics and national news have nudged immigration into the state's consciousness.

For years, Iowa has suffered from a slow drain of young workers moving to other states, challenging the meat packing, manufacturing and agriculture sectors. So in early 2001, Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack floated a pilot program aimed at attracting 310,000 foreign workers over the next decade to ease the state's labor shortage.

National interest groups mounted a campaign accusing the governor of trying to turn the state into the "Ellis Island of the Midwest."

Vilsack was up for re-election in 2002. "He read the polls and let (his foreign-workers plan) drop," said Mark Grey, a University of Northern Iowa professor who works with the Iowa Center for Immigration Leadership and Integration. Vilsack won.

That same year, growing resentment of Spanish-language accommodations by businesses, schools and the government led the Iowa legislature to pass a law making English the official language of the state.

Traveling through the eastern Iowa cities of Davenport, Cedar Rapids, Cedar Falls and Dubuque, Tancredo hit immigration on all fronts - security, economy and culture.

He said illegal immigration lowers wages. He said a porous border leaves the whole country vulnerable to terrorism. He proudly declared his opposition to President Bush's plan to give millions of undocumented workers a right to remain in the country legally as long as they have willing employers.

"A lot of people put a lot of money into politics. And a lot of those people benefit from cheap labor," Tancredo said.

Tancredo's views on immigration have brought charges he's an extremist, xenophobe or racist. Even some fellow Republicans say he's unrealistic when he calls for rounding up all illegal immigrants and shipping them back to their home countries.

But the closest he came to a challenge in Iowa was at a Christian Coalition event in Cedar Falls. Grey, the professor, wanted to know the biblical basis for Tancredo's hard line on immigration. Tancredo offered a quick interpretation of a few Bible passages and moved on, saying he prays that God will let him know if he's going in the wrong direction.

Joni Scotter clearly thinks Tancredo is going in the right direction. "I think he's incredible," said the 63-year-old GOP activist, who had tears in her eyes after hugging Tancredo in Cedar Rapids.

"I'd say (Tancredo) is running for president, because when you come to Iowa that's a sure sign," she said. "It's the writing on the wall that says, 'I'm interested.' And we're interested, too."

Barnstorming tests

Barnstorming through Iowa tested Tancredo's stamina and sense of humor.

In southeastern Iowa, he repeatedly had to explain that he was not Rep. Steve King, the local Republican congressman with whom he shares a striking resemblance. When his small entourage finally arrived in Dubuque in the wee hours Saturday morning, Tancredo was met by a swarm of "mayflies." They made clouds around the street lights, blanketed parked cars and turned whole stretches of sidewalks gray.

"We need some seagulls," Tancredo shouted. "Where are the seagulls?" A few hours later, he joked about the insect "welcoming committee" during a breakfast gathering.

Even with the trip's lighter moments, there's a serious matter Tancredo has to think about. He knows his flirtation with the presidential race can only go so far before "at a certain point, it gets ugly."

He was alluding to some old news stories back in Colorado that could give national political writers fodder.

That includes a published report that illegal immigrants were part of a contractor's crew that installed the home theater system in his Littleton home - something Tancredo said he had no way of knowing.

And it includes the childhood depression treatments that led to Tancredo's mental health draft deferment during the Vietnam War.

In a restaurant in Cedar Rapids, Tancredo talked about offering to make public service announcements telling people who suffer from depression: "I know what you're experiencing with depression. You can overcome it. You can live your life."

"I can't live my life worrying about that limitation," Tancredo said. "The other way to look at it is to say, 'America, this is who I am. (Here is) what I've had to go through.' "

What seems "so bizarre . . . so outlandish" to Tancredo is that he's being asked whether he wants to live in the White House, even though he's just a fourth-term member of the lower house of Congress without a big name nationally.

He's being nudged along by Bay Buchanan, treasurer of Ronald Reagan's presidential campaigns and the sister behind conservative commentator Pat Buchanan's presidential runs.

About a year ago, she asked for a meeting with Tancredo. After a long talk, they decided to form Team America PAC to raise money for immigration reform candidates.

Eventually, she brought up the idea of Tancredo running for the White House. Buchanan organized the Iowa trip for Team America PAC, asking for meetings with Christian Coalition groups because they represent one of the most important constituencies in state presidential caucuses.

"Tom, to me, is the best grass-roots candidate there is," she said in a hotel room while Tancredo chatted with yet another local radio talk show host on the phone. "He energizes a real base. He has a cause. He represents an entire movement. The movement is there. The others don't have a movement."

Tancredo is "obviously an unknown" among Iowans, said David Yepsen, political columnist who has covered three decades of Iowa caucuses for the Des Moines Register. "But my experience has been that any national political figure who comes to Iowa and says, 'I want to be considered' gets a fair hearing."

"Single-issue candidates don't fare well, but they do get visibility for their issue, which I assume is what he's really doing, much as, say, Gary Bauer or Pat Robertson once highlighted other social issues like abortion."

Immigration is "not a feel-good issue," but Tancredo has vaulted it onto the front burner, said Dick Wadhams, a longtime Colorado political strategist who is now chief of staff to one of the rumored presidential contenders, Sen. George Allen, R-Va.

"You cannot take away from him that he is willing to weather criticism from various entities by talking about this issue the way he does," Wadhams said.

Luana Stoltenberg, for one, said she hopes Tancredo keeps on talking. After a long day driving Tancredo around southeastern Iowa, the local volunteer said, "I think he should try to run."

"I like what he said," Stoltenberg added. "Why not? Everyone else is running."

Meet U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo

• Party: Republican

• Home: Littleton

• Age: 59

• Education: Earned bachelor's degree from University of Northern Colorado in 1968.

• Family: Married in 1977. He and his wife, Jackie, have two children, Ray and Randy, and three grandsons.

• Occupation: Originally a teacher. He told students in a middle school civics class that if every one of them got involved in a political cause, he would run for office. They did. Then they helped him pick his first campaign - for state legislator in 1976.

• Early politics: Served in the Colorado House from 1976 to 1981. He was part of a group of anti-tax conservatives dubbed the "House Crazies."

• Next moves: In 1981, he was appointed by the Reagan administration to head a regional office of the U.S. Department of Education. He held the post through 1993, when a Democrat was elected to the White House. From 1993 to 1998, he led the Independence Institute, a libertarian think tank in Golden. It was there that he started his crusade to clamp down on illegal immigration.

• In Washington: He won a seat in Congress in 1998, pledging to serve only three terms. He recently started his fourth term.



sprengelmeyerm@SHNS.com