Migra Matters: election2006

In the wake of last weeks defeat, the feeding frenzy of Republicans eating their own has reached a feverous level. From the fiscal conservatives come calls that only a return to some sort of mythical economic orthodoxy can save the party. The religious right blames the party's defeat on their failure to enact enough restrictive social legislation. The xenophobe wing complains that Bush and his big business buddies sold them out on border security and the now disgraced neo-cons blame the failure of their vision for transforming the world on the administrations ineptitude in following their plan. But the neo-cons excuses have for the most part fallen on deaf ears. Iraq played a central role in the Republican defeat, and no matter how much spin they put on it, the fact remains that they led the nation into an unnecessary and unwinnable war that cost their party dearly.

Now the neo-cans have fired back and the Weekly Standard has taken the offensive. According to an article by Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, the blame for the Republican defeat is squarely placed on the shoulders of those who forced immigration as a wedge issue.

tags: immigration, immigration reform , wedge issue , election 2006, Republicans, immigration legislation

The fact that those who brought us the nightmare in Iraq would be looking to shift blame comes as no surprise. But the bluntness and honesty with which they skewer the xenophobe wing of the party is still a vindication for those of us on the other side of the aisle who have long been saying that the immigration issue was no more than a carefully crafted "crisis" that had far more to do with political expediency than principle and was doomed to failure.

Jacoby's article, "A Wedge Too Far: The immigration issue didn't work.", not only goes into detail about how the issue was fabricated and fostered for more than a year in anticipation of the election, she lays out a convincing case for why the plan backfired and ended up tearing the Republican Party apart.

As the Democrats take control of Congress the story Jacoby lays out should be a lesson on how not to deal with this issue.

Immigration was the dog that didn't bark. It did not prove an effective wedge issue. And as far as could be determined, it decided few if any contests. No congressional or gubernatorial candidate otherwise poised to win was defeated primarily because of his or her views on immigration. No more than one or two, if that many, struggling to catch up managed to ride it to victory. And the most stridently restrictionist candidate in the country, Arizona congressional hopeful Randy Graf, who ran a campaign based almost entirely on immigrant-bashing, went down in flaming defeat.

This wasn't for lack of trying by immigration naysayers--activists, candidates, or the Republican party establishment. The GOP leadership, particularly in the House, started planning their wedge campaign over a year ago…

…Struggling candidates and activist PACs were only too happy to play into this scenario, generating some of the nastiest ads in recent campaign memory. The 600-plus page Senate bill was reduced to a single sound bite: More than two dozen spots misleadingly claimed that it would pay Social Security benefits to illegal aliens. Democratic candidates who had not been anywhere near the Senate vote or even endorsed the bill were pilloried for its contents. On one particularly unsavory website, Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow was pictured in a sombrero, bobbing back and forth to Mexican music, over a text that thanked her in Spanish for what it implied was an un-American vote for the package.

Still other ads aimed directly at immigrants, calling them, among other things, "sneaky" intruders, "stealing" American jobs and taxpayer dollars. More than one Republican flyer mixed photos of Latino workers and Middle Eastern terrorists; several spots dwelt ominously on mug shots of convicted felons. Perhaps the ugliest commercial, out of North Carolina, showed a Latino man clutching his crotch, followed by an image of the American flag in flames: "They take our jobs and our government handouts," the voice-over ran, "then spit in our face and burn our flag." Far-right restrictionist groups--the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the Minuteman PAC, Bay Buchanan's Team America PAC--were responsible for some of this demagoguery. But the national Republican Senatorial and Congressional committees were not ashamed to put their names on far too much of it.
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Jacoby then goes on to dissect the extent of the issues failure.

Meanwhile, even as Republicans painted themselves into a xenophobic corner, they inadvertently cast the Democrats as the party of pragmatism and problem-solving. Few Democratic candidates sought this role. Few if any, given the climate, wanted to run on the Senate bill's guest worker or earned legalization provisions…

But once pinned with the label "pro-reform," most Democrats had little choice, and many rose to the occasion. Incumbent senator Maria Cantwell made a persuasive case in Washington state; Jim Webb took a similar line in Virginia. And if anything, the harder the job and higher the stakes, the better these sometimes reluctant reformers performed--nowhere more surprisingly or impressively than at the epicenter of the immigration debate, in Arizona.

It would be hard to imagine a tougher test. More illegal immigrants enter the United States by way of Arizona each year than come through California, Texas, and New Mexico combined. Human smugglers and their accomplices have driven state crime rates to the top of the national rankings. And unlike almost everywhere else in the nation, a majority--6 out of 10 Arizonans--told pollsters that immigration was one of the top issues determining how they would vote in the midterms. Still, or maybe because of this, Arizona became the place where candidates--all of them Democrats, unfortunately--showed Americans how to talk effectively about immigration reform.

Gov. Janet Napolitano set the tone. She didn't denounce the fence or other border enforcement--in fact, she led the way, over a year ago, in calling for deployment of the National Guard on the border. She talked tough about smugglers; she repudiated amnesty. But she also insisted relentlessly that border enforcement was only a first step toward the solution: comprehensive reform of the kind proposed by the Senate. The more firmly she held to this tough but pragmatic line, the more frenzied her opponent grew--and as he promised more and more draconian enforcement, her lead only widened….

As Election Day approached, the contrast between these Democrats and Republicans wasn't soft versus hard, as the House leadership had hoped. It was tough versus ugly--and polls showed voters, especially Hispanic voters, very clear about which approach they liked better.

…Will Republicans learn from this? Will the country? The results of the 2006 midterms are not a mandate for comprehensive reform--far from it. Still, they point the way toward change, opening the political space for better, more pragmatic policy by proving that it can be defended on Election Day. Randy Graf once boasted foolishly that if he couldn't win in Arizona, he couldn't win anywhere. And by the same token, if immigration pragmatists can triumph in Phoenix and Tucson, they should be able to win in any state.

It will still take a bipartisan majority to pass immigration reform. Democrats and Republicans will still have to compromise to get it done. And this may or may not happen in the 110th Congress. But one thing is clear and must be fixed: The Republican party has maneuvered itself onto the wrong side of the immigration issue.

The lesson here for Democrats as they take power in Washington is that the American people are by and large a pragmatic yet compassionate people. Despite what anti-immigration hardliners believe, the polling has been consistent since this issue came to the forefront, the American people favor an immigration policy that is firm but above all fair. How this will all shake out in the new Congress is yet to be seen. "Comprehensive Reform" has been to a catch-all term used by many to mean anything that's not the Tancredo/Dobbs/Buchanan brand of restrictionist immigration policy. It will be up to this upcoming Congress, immigration advocates, organized labor, and the American people to determine what the true face of comprehensive reform will look like. Let's hope we can finally get it right this time around.

Tuesday's midterm election provided mixed results in Arizona with respect to immigration reform. While voters passed the anti-immigrant ballot initiatives with overwhelming majorities, the Minutemen Candidates were rejected by the electorate to represent our state.

Randy Graf, who devoted an entire page of his website to his work with the vigilante group (now taken down), was defeated by Gabrielle Giffords for the Congressional District 08 seat spanning a huge swath of Southern Arizona including hundreds of miles of the U.S/Mexico border. Giffords not only carried heavily-Democratic Pima County, as expected, but also garnered the votes of a majority of voters in Cochise County - home of the Minutemen Project.

Pima County
Giffords (D) - 94,434
Graf (Minuteman) - 70,386

Cochise County
Giffords - 16,726
Graf - 15,687

Source: AZ Secretary of State

According to Giffords' website, her position on immigration reform aligns with the bipartisan approach offered by Senators Kennedy and McCain in the Senate.

Gabrielle Giffords has a consistent record of supporting increased security and a comprehensive approach to immigration policy. Her strong commitment to security and public safety has won her the consistent support of law enforcement, including the endorsements of the Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs (AZCOPS), the Associated Highway Patrolmen of Arizona, the Professional Fire Fighters of Arizona, and the Tucson Fire Fighters Association. Her record in the legislature of providing law enforcement personnel with the equipment and funding to maximize public safety is second-to-none. Like Governor Napolitano, Senator McCain, and Congressman Grijalva, Gabrielle has supported thoughtful and reasonable approaches to the immigration crisis, including a viable guest worker program that meets our state’s economic needs.

Democrats now hold both Congressional seats that span our border with our friends to the south, with Congressman Raúl Grijalva in neighboring Congressional District 07 being the other representative. It is clear that the voters who are most affected by the border policies of the U.S. government endorse a comprehensive approach to immigration reform that strikes a humane balance between enforcement, economics, and family unification. A guest worker program is a central competent to any future actions in our backyard.

Incumbent Congressman J.D. Hayworth, another Minuteman candidate, is currently trailing in the final count of votes cast in Congressional District 05 that includes north-eastern portions of the Phoenix Metro area as well as rural regions in central Arizona. His challenger, Democrat Harry Mitchell is/was a popular local figure in the Valley of the Sun as a former celebrated mayor of Tempe and State Senator. Mitchell's position on immigration reform also aligns with a comprehensive approach:

I oppose amnesty and will not support it. Still, we must deal with the millions of illegal immigrants who are already here. Catching and deporting 11 million illegal immigrants, as some have suggested, is neither realistic nor wise. I believe we should give families an opportunity to gain legal status if they pay a penalty for breaking the law, pay their taxes, learn English, and hold a job for a period of years.

Harry Mitchell and Gabrielle Giffords' tough talk on immigration enforcement helped to insulate them against the hardliner attacks that were a given considering the "bullies" and extremists they faced in the election. While it certainly grated the nerves of supporters of comprehensive reform, like myself, to hear Democrats use the rhetorical language of Republicans during the campaign, it is clear that Mitchell and Giffords will support a middle-ground approach in the 110th Congress. The same could not be said if the Minutemen Candidates were given the platform.

So all-in-all it's a mixed bag when it comes to the future direction of immigration reform in Arizona. What clearly needs to change in the short-term, however, is the divisive politics of race-baiting that has been employed by the Minutemen Project, Border Guardians, and other vigilante movements. When that occurs on a wide-scale as it has recently, we all lose.

NRC Broadcasting has refused to run the newest campaign ad by Bill Winter, Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress in CD-6. The ad, that began running earlier this week, highlights Congressman Tom Tancredo's personal and financial ties to a number of leaders and organizations in the "White Power" movement.

Winter's campaign manager, Berrick Abramson, was informed by the General Sales Manager at NRC that the ad was pulled on direct orders from NRC Broadcasting's CEO, Tim Brown, a major Republican donor who has given over twelve thousand dollars to various Republican candidates in 2006 including Marilyn Musgrave, Doug Lamborn, Scott Tipton, Rick O'Donnell, Rick Santorum and Winter opponent Tom Tancredo.

The Winter for Congress campaign began airing the radio ad titled "Dateline: South Carolina" earlier this week addressing Tom Tancredo's ties to a number of "right-wing hate groups" like the League of the South and Aryan Brotherhood.

On Tuesday, October 31, the campaign also issued a press release titled, "Winter Calls on Tancredo to Sever Racist Ties," in which the campaign provided more detail about the direct ties between Mr. Tancredo and these hate groups. Additionally they posted full documentation on their web site backing up all the claims made in both the radio add and the press released.

On Wednesday, November 1, shortly before noon, the Winter for Congress campaign received an e-mail from a sales representative of NRC Broadcasting, whose stations include Jack FM and KCUV, claiming that the stations were getting "lots of complaints" about the "Dateline: South Carolina" radio spot and suggesting, "Can we pull it?" After advising the representative of NRC to refer any complaints to the campaign and providing them with both the statement issued by the campaign as well as significant documentation supporting the claims made in the spot, a representative of NRC wrote to the campaign stating, "wish it was that simple. Management has given me no other choice put (sic) to pull this spot."

tags: immigration, Tom Tancredo , League of the South , CO-6, white supremacists, Bill Winter

At the time of the last e-mail message from the NRC message, the Winter campaign had not received any complaints from other stations, despite the ad being in heavy rotation on nearly every station in the market. When campaign manager Berrick Abramson spoke with the General Sales Manager at NRC, the campaign was told that "the CEO heard the spot and wants it off the air," according to Abramson.

When Abramson asked if there were any claims or assertions that anything in the ad was false, Abramson was told "No, the CEO just doesn't like it," and that "you have to admit, it's pretty harsh on Tancredo." After pointing out that there were no complaints from other networks, the General Manager conceded that the "complaint" had come from "down the hall" in Mr. Brown's office. In spite of the acknowledgement that the ad contained no factual errors, the Winter campaign was advised that CEO Tim Brown "had made his decision" to have the ad pulled.

Winter campaign manager Berrick Abramson, noted "Mr. Brown is entitled to his political views, but when he crosses the line by censoring what messages go out over the public airwaves, he has crossed the line from expressing his opinion and is now suppressing free speech."

"It's difficult enough to understand the apathy surrounding Mr. Tancredo's indisputable ties to a network of hate groups," remarked Abramson, "but it's even more difficult to fathom that somebody allegedly serving as trustee of the public airwaves, would abuse that position in order to prevent the public from knowing about Mr. Tancredo's disgraceful record."

[Update 11-02-2006,1:40PM EST:] It looks like Tim Brown is trying to now backpedal on the ad cancellation. From today's Rocky Mountain News

The executive, Tim Brown, chief operating officer for NRC Broadcasting, said he does not consider the ad titled "Dateline: South Carolina" offensive, and it continues to run on the air.

But Berrick Abramson, Winter's campaign manager, said he was called by a station representative early Wednesday and told the ads had to be pulled.

An e-mail message forwarded to the Rocky Mountain News by Abramson seems to confirm that.

"Management has given me no choice but to pull this spot. As I said, we will be happy to run your other spots, but we cannot run the South Carolina spot," the e-mail, apparently from NRC's Neil Conway, said.

Despite his claims that "here at Focus on the Family, we're not political" , the Reverend James Dobson appears to have endorsed Republican Rick O'Donnell over his Democratic opponent Ed Perlmutter in the congressional race for Colorado's 7th District.

In e-mail sent Friday to all it's members in CD-07, Dobson accused Perlmutter of being a "die-hard supporter of abortion" and hiring "homosexual youth to work on his behalf." He went on to say that "Fortunately, the other 7th District candidate, Rick O'Donnell, has a very different track record, particularly on the sanctity of human life and marriage."

Dobson went on to urge his followers to "encourage Rick O'Donnell to continue his strong support for life and marriage" and forward the e-mail to friends and family. He ended his letter with a message to "(not) let the abortion industry and advocates of homosexual marriage have their way in Colorado. Make your voice heard!"

Focus on the Family is officially listed as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, which is prohibited by law from engaging in any political activity whatsoever. Dobson does have a spin–off group, Focus Action, that is listed as a 501(c)(4) organization, and by law may engage in "some" political activity, but it cannot be its primary mission.

I'm sure Dobson and his attorneys would be able to argue exactly how this letter does not constitute a formal endorsement…. But you be the judge:

tags: immigration, CO-7 , Rick O'Donnell , Ed Perlemutter, James Dobson, Focus on the Family

An Important Message from Dr. James Dobson

Dear Colorado Friend,

I hope you'll take a few moments to read this important and very timely update ... and then forward it to friends, family and fellow church members.

In just a few days, Colorado voters will be going to the polls to elect new leaders, and I have reason to be both very concerned and very hopeful about where your candidates for U.S. House stand on the biggest moral issues of our day – life and marriage.

Let me be specific: The evidence clearly indicates that one of the candidates for our state's 7th Congressional District seat—state Sen. Ed Perlmutter—is a die-hard supporter of abortion. In fact, he has made his pro-abortion position a centerpiece of his campaign.

But that's not surprising, considering he garnered a nearly 100-percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado during his years in the state Legislature. Now, as a candidate for the U.S. House, he proudly boasts of that pro-abortion record, declaring on his Web site that he will be a "strong voice" for pro-abortion policies.

And what about his stance on marriage? Unfortunately, Ed Perlmutter stands squarely with those who would overturn the natural order of marriage as between one man and one woman. Not only does he support "domestic partnerships" for homosexual couples, but he has gone a step further in openly supporting same-sex marriage.

As a result of these stands and his championing of homosexual causes in the Colorado Legislature, Sen. Perlmutter has become a favorite of gay-rights organizations around the country. They have given him significant financial support and have even hired homosexual youth to work on his behalf. The nation's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy organization, the Human Rights Campaign, has made Perlmutter's campaign one of 23 targets for assistance from its Youth College.

Fortunately, the other 7th District candidate, Rick O'Donnell, has a very different track record, particularly on the sanctity of human life and marriage.

When it comes to life, there's no guessing where he stands. Rick O'Donnell has emphatically and repeatedly stated his across-the-board commitment to pro-life policies on abortion. Equally important, Mr. O'Donnell's commitment to defending marriage from redefinition is strong. He unequivocally supports the federal marriage-protection amendment that would keep liberal courts and radical gay activists from hijacking the institution of marriage.

With this information in mind, what can you do?

First, please contact both candidates and let them know how you feel about the sanctity of life and the protection of traditional marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Specifically, encourage Rick O'Donnell to continue his strong support for life and marriage. And please urge Ed Perlmutter to renounce his pro-abortion and pro-homosexual marriage positions.

Second, if you have friends, family or fellow church members who feel as you do and who may benefit from this information, please forward this e-mail to them.

Don't let the abortion industry and advocates of homosexual marriage have their way in Colorado. Make your voice heard!

Sincerely,

James C. Dobson, Ph.D.
Founder and Chairman

ColoradoPols.com

For more information on the activities of Focus on the Family and their playing loose with government restrictions on churches engaging in electioneering see:
Focus on the Family and Tax Form Hanky-Panky? and More info on Focus on the Family tax hanky-panky

Perlmutter has been maintaining a strong lead in this race and obviously Dobson is hoping to change that. O'Donnell is probably best know nationally for his bizarre proposal to draft all male high school seniors for service as border guards along the southern border. He then later confounded everyone by defending his position by claiming he got the idea from the Democrats

There's a reason why Peter King, Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, always makes sure to preface the word "terrorism" with "Islamic"

tags: immigration, Peter King , Terrorism , NY-03, IRA

In fact, during the 1980s and 90s, the NSA and CIA collected intelligence on financial transactions between the United States and Ireland and Northern Ireland involving Irish terrorist groups supported by Peter King. The group Irish Northern Aid (NORAID) funneled money to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) that was used to buy weapons used to blow up civilians and members of the British government, military, and police.

King was an active supporter of NORAID, a tax-exempt front for the IRA. Martin Galvin, King's friend and former NORAID chief, rejected the Northern Ireland Good Friday agreement and supports the agenda of the terrorist "Real IRA."

During the 1980s, NSA's British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), intercepted a number of King's phone calls from the United States and from within Britain, in which his political and financial support for the IRA was discussed. GCHQ relied on Canada's Communications Security Establishment (CSE) to monitor King's domestic phone calls in New York and Long Island since U.S. law, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), prohibited the surveillance of King by NSA assets.

King's financial and political support for the IRA coincided with the terrorist group's alliances with Palestinian, Lebanese, Latin American, Basque, Corsican, German, and Breton terrorist groups and the Libyan government of Muammar el Qaddafi. NSA signals intelligence (SIGINT) intercepts demonstrate that Libya and Lebanese terrorist groups targeted Americans in terrorist attacks during the 1980s, while King supported their Irish compatriots with money and weapons.

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Thirty-six hours ago Tan Nguyen was a little know Republican congressional candidate from Orange County CA with no chance of winning and no prospect of ever garnering national attention. That was before it came to light that he was most likely behind a failed effort to intimidate Hispanic voters in his district in hopes of deterring them from showing up at the polls. With that one move, he now becomes the newest poster boy in an election season ripe with disclosures of Republican racism and malfeasance.

The revelations of George Allen's bigotry and hidden past of racist activity shed new light on the undercurrent of racism that has run through Republican politics for years. Yet, Nguyen represents a new, and perhaps more toxic, kind of Republican; those drawn into politics by the volatile issue of immigration. With its ability divide people along the lines of race and ethnicity, the immigration "issue" has drawn a new breed of activists and politicians. These new "movement racists," with ties to organized hate groups, are bent on dragging both their party and the nation down a path of intolerance and bigotry not seen before.

tags: immigration, Tan Nguyen , voter suppression , CA-47, racism

Earlier this week, in a mailing printed on the letterhead of the controversial Huntington Beach anti-immigration group, California Coalition for Immigration Reform, 14,000 Hispanic residents in central Orange County were warned that going to the polls could result in their possible deportation.

You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time, and you will be deported for voting without having a right to do so.

At the same time, you are advised that the government of the United States is installing a new computer system to verify the names of all new registered voters that vote in the October and November elections. Anti-immigration organizations can ask for information from this new computer system.

Link English
Original in Spanish

CCIR, founder, Barbara Coe who has referred to Mexican immigrants as "savages" and "illegal barbarians who are cutting off heads and appendages of blind, white, disabled gringos" denied orchestrating the letter and said she had no knowledge of it's alleged author "Sergio Ramirez,"

Upon further investigation, the letter, which contains grammatical errors that led investigators to believe it was not written by a native Spanish speaker, was found to have originated the offices of Tan Nguyen.

The bulk mail permit used to send out the letter was sent by a Huntington Beach-based company named Mailing Pros. Nguyen's campaign used the company for five different mailers this year, with several highlighting immigration issues, according to campaign finance disclosures.

Christopher West, who owns the company, said he was interviewed for two hours by investigators from the State Attorney General's office. He would not publicly disclose who hired him, although he gave the information to investigators. West said he had no idea any laws were being broken when the mailer was sent.

"I'm the one that processed it and I don't read Spanish, until the investigator read it to me, I didn't know the content," West said.

West said his company sends out many mailers in at least a dozen languages that he does not speak.

"The thing that steams me out about this is I know damn well I didn't do anything wrong," he said. "You're dependent on the integrity of the candidates."

According to campaign finance disclosures, Nguyen's campaign also has contracted with the Burbank-based Political Data Inc. for data sorts from the Registrar of Voters database. Records show the company purchased an Orange County voter database in September, which could show addresses of every foreign-born voter in the county, the target group of the mailer. Company officials couldn't be reached for comment.
Orange County Register

In a written statement, Nguyen denied personal responsibility for the letter claiming, "Evidently, an employee took it upon herself to allow our database to be used to send out the letter. It was disseminated without my authorization or approval. The employee has been discharged."

But Orange County GOP Chairman Scott Baugh disputes Nguyen's claim and has called for his withdrawal from the race. "I've learned that Mr. Nguyen was involved in expediting that mailer," Baugh said. "I've had conversations with the attorney general and folks involved with the mail house. He called the mail house himself and told them to expedite the mailing."

This should come as no surprise given the people Nguyen has chosen to associate with.

His senior adviser, former Orange County Republican Party Chair, Tom Fuentes, has a long history of anti-immigrant advocacy and orchestrating dirty tricks designed to suppress the Latino vote. In addition to being a moving force behind California's failed proposition 187 (along with Barbara Coe), in 1988 he caused a major controversy when he ordered the stationing of Republican poll guards to stand outside polling places in Latino neighborhoods during a local Assembly race.

1988 - In California, the Orange County Republican Party hired uniformed security guards to be posted at polling places in heavily Latino precincts. The guards displayed bilingual signs warning non-citizens not to vote, and such signs were also posted in Latino neighborhoods days before the election. The guards, wearing blue uniforms and badges, were removed from the polling places after the chief deputy secretary of state said their presence was “unlawful intimidation of voters.”

The GOP officials involved in the plan, working on the campaign of GOP state assembly candidate Curt Pringle, claimed they acted on rumors that there was illegal registration of voters. However, according to the Orange County Register, they admitted they had no evidence of such activity and were concerned because of a sudden surge in voter registration in some Latino neighborhoods. Many local Latino Republican officials were outraged. GOP Santa Ana councilman John Acosta said: “This has to be the most blatant method of intimidating that I have ever seen. ... It’s un-American and I would say it borders on Nazism.”

As the controversy grew, the county registrar of voters said that he had warned Republican officials four weeks before the election not to challenge voters at the polls.

In 1989, the Orange County GOP paid $400,000 to settle a lawsuit stemming from the program. The plaintiffs donated $150,000 of the settlement to nonpartisan Latino voter registration efforts in the area. They also released some evidence gathered during the trial, including a map given to a sign-making company by the GOP campaign that indicated intended sign placement. Signs reading “Thank You Curt Pringle” were to go in predominantly white areas and bilingual signs saying “Non Citizens Can’t Vote” were to be placed in largely Latino areas.
PFAW

Even with Fuentes involvement, this could all perhaps be chalked up to an extreme case of "dirty politics as usual" if it were not for the fact that like many other "border security" Republicans, Nguyen's ties to his party are tenuous at best and his strongest allies and supporters come not from the mainstream Republican Party, but rather the extremist, anti-immigrant right.

Groups like Coe's CCIR, the Minutemen and Save Our State.

Save Our State, the Ventura California based anti-immigration group founded by Joe Turner has been called a "Trojan Horse" for Neo-Nazis and white supremacists by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Anti-immigration activist Joe Turner may be one of the best things to happen to the Southern California white power community in years — a man whose group is seen as a "Trojan horse" allowing radical infiltration of mainstream politics….

In rally after rally this year, Turner and other SOS officials have failed to turn away racist Skinheads and likeminded white supremacists who have joined their protests.

Swastikas and sieg heils aren't usually welcome on the streets of Southern California, but Turner's followers, including SOS spokesman Don Silva, have been photographed standing alongside Skinheads clad in high black boots with red laces. Most recently, swastika pennants and Confederate battle flags were hoisted alongside Turner's own picket signs during a July 30 protest outside a day laborer center in Laguna Beach. One group in the crowd sieg-heiled repeatedly….

And then there are Turner's own statements in his forum. "I am sick and tired of all the white bashing that goes on through the use of political correctness as an indoctrinating tool," he wrote on July 16.

"I am sick and tired of multiculturalism, meaning, let's celebrate every culture as long as it isn't a European/white culture." During the same exchange, Turner also wrote that "just because one believes in white separatism that does not make them a racist."
SPLC " Immigration protesters joined by neo-Nazis in California"

Despite SOS's ties to both white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups, Nguyen chose to court the radical group.

In July of this year Nguyen's campaign manager, Ryan S.Flynn sent a letter to SOS introducing his candidate and asked the group for their support. It was posted up on the SOS internet forum, where it received a warm reception

Greetings!

I'm writing to introduce Tan Nguyen and ask for your help. Tan is a candidate for Congress of California's 47th district. Tan, a LEGAL immigrant from Vietnam, believes in upholding our immigration laws and opposes anything which encourages illegal immigration.

We need your help in defeating the incumbent, Loretta Sanchez, a seasoned politician who is for Amnesty. Those who donate $20 or more to the campaign will receive one of our campaign signs, shown below. Please help Tan's efforts by forwarding this email to your friends & family.

Checks can be made payable to Tan Nguyen for Congress. Thank you for your support.

Ryan S. Flynn
Campaign Manager/Fundraising Chair

Tan Nguyen for Congress
12955 Main Street
Garden Grove, CA 92840
(714) 530-1612
www.tanforcongress.com

A month earlier on that same forum a member called "minutemanIII" stated that he/she was "helping out Tan Nguyen in Orange County run for Congress in the 47th district." and requested information about an anti-immigration rally SOS was planning.

Nguyen also courted CCIR

Although Barbara Coe denies any knowledge of Nguyen's letter, she, like her friends at SOS, is well aware of the man, having had him speak to her group a year ago… long before he was his parties candidate for the 47th Congresional District. The press release for the October 2005 event called Nguyen a "man who believes in America as a "nation of law", has made a commitment to uphold and defend our Constitutional rights and freedoms, has courageously publicly praised the Minuteman Project and publicly opposed any illegal alien "guest-worker" program or amnesty..."

Nguyen is not the fist "Border Security" Republican to court organized racists.

Godfather of the "Border Security" Republicans, Tom Tancredo, has had long standing ties with both the Minutemen and their more radical allies. Back in September, while feeling out a run for the White House, he stood on a stage draped in confederate flags, in South Carolina, with the members of the League of the South, and sang "Dixie" after delivering a speech to the hate group about the need to stop illegal immigration.

In Arizona's 8th congressional district Minuteman, Randy Graf, is running for congress on the Republican ticket having been endorsed by none other than former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, David Duke.

Also in Arizona, State Legislator, Russell Pearce, that states leading Border Security Republican and author of numerous pieces of anti-immigrant legislation including Proposition 200, sent out a piece of campaign literature to his constituents that contained an article from the white supremacist group the National Alliance.

Titled "Who Rules America? The Alien Grip on Our News and Entertainment Media Must Be Broken," the article criticized the media for promoting multiculturalism and racial equality, for portraying "any racially conscious White Person" as a bigot and for presenting the Jewish Holocaust as fact.

The media presents a "single view of the world - a world in which every voice proclaims the equality of the races, the inerrant nature of the Jewish 'Holocaust' tale, the wickedness of attempting to halt the flood of non-White aliens pouring across our borders, the danger of permitting citizens to keep and bear arms, the moral equivalence of all sexual orientations, and the desirability of a 'pluralistic,' cosmopolitan society rather than a homogeneous, White one," the article says.
link

Nguyen and the other "movement racists" within the Republican Party who have allied themselves with the likes of Barbara Coe, Joe Turner and Jim Gilchrist represent an insidious and frightening new trend in politics. Never before have such extreme fringes of society been sought out as political allies and patrons. Yet under the leadership of Tom Tancredo and Pat Buchanan, these new "movement racists" are willing to consort with the anyone who is willing to take up their cause … even those who only do so as a stepping stone to gain legitimacy and acceptance of their extreme and dangerous beliefs.

Using the Trojan Horse of "border security" and the "immigration crisis" as their means to enter the body politic, these "movement racists" and their radical allies can only take this nation further down a path of division and hate.

The New York Times reports that: "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called the letter racist and urged Bill Lockyer, the California attorney general, to prosecute those responsible with a hate crime. A collection of other civil rights groups also called on Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to investigate the letter as a violation of federal voting laws." Let's hope they follow through with their prosecution. The time to stop this movement is now.... before it's too late

Like many other Republican candidates from areas far from the border with relatively small populations of undocumented immigrants, Ralph Norman, running in S. Carolina's 5th district, has made "border security" a cornerstone of his campaign.

Accusing his opponent, Rep. John Spratt, of being soft on immigration, Norman has hammered away on the issue tenaciously. Stating that "only by sealing our borders first can we truly stop the unregulated flow of illegal immigrants into our country." Norman proposes that we need to "identify the illegal immigrants living inside our borders and remove the laundry list of incentives that encourage them to live here illegally…"

But the real estate developer turned candidate has one big problem. His development company employs numerous undocumented workers at various sites, making him one of the very people he would have us believe are providing an incentive for "illegal immigrants" to come here.

tags: immigration, Ralph Norman , John Spratt , SC-05

Despite the fact that S. Carolina's 5th District has one of the lowest levels of undocumented immigrants in the nation(1), putting it on par with places like N Dakota and Montana, Ralph Norman, like many other Republicans this election cycle, has chosen to use border security as the key issue in his campaign. Relying on the general hysteria whipped up by the House leadership over the issue of "illegal immigration," candidates like Norman have been focusing on the border as a means to insulate themselves from the electorates overall discontent with Republican performance and policies over the last few years.

Norman's TV spots have all featured some aspect of border security as their major theme. This despite the fact that his opponent has voted with the Republican majority on most border security issues.

Yet despite the obvious contradictions of running an anti-immigration campaign in an area with a very low concentration of foreign-born non-citizens, against a candidate who recently voted to double the size of the border patrol, build a security fence and bolster port security, Norman has continued to press the issue. But revelations about just how Norman runs his person business have raised serious questions about the level of hypocrisy the candidate is willing to stoop too.

Press accounts revealed that Norman, through his company, Warren Norman Co., has hired numerous undocumented workers at various sites.

The Observer identified and visited properties owned by Norman and several of his businesses and spoke with workers.

Two construction workers at Shiland Village, a Rock Hill office and retail project on Celanese Road, said they work for a contractor on the job and are illegal immigrants from Mexico. Norman and his brother David own the property. Across the road, another contract worker at Warrington Place, a townhouse development, said he came here illegally from Mexico.
Charolette Observer

When asked about the situation, Norman replied that "We do what the law requires."

NORMAN: “I don't know who the Mexicans work for. They probably work for Wachovia.”

Norman said the immigrants worked for a sub contractor, not his company.

NORMAN: “I do not check our subcontractors. People that have a company they hire their own people. I don't check it now and won't in the future. That's why we need an immigration policy.”
WCNC News

There are free, federal programs available to employers to verify Social Security numbers and immigration status. The programs are voluntary, but such worker verification has been part of immigration-reform bills in both the House and Senate….

Norman said Thursday that he didn't know about the existing verification programs. Initially, he said he would "absolutely not" require contractors on his projects to use the programs. Later in the day, he said he'd check into the programs and would consider requiring contractors to use them.

However, he said: "It's unfair to say business should take responsibility for the government….
Link

With, sinking poll numbers across the country for Republican polices, it's no small wonder that in races across the country Republican candidates have tried to find a new group do demonize in hopes of garnering support. But Norman has perhaps demonstrated just how shallow and callous this whole issue really is. He apparently sees no hypocrisy in demanding the harshest punishment possible for the undocumented who come here to find jobs and make a better life, while at the same time profiting off their labor. As an employer he was unaware of the very mechanisms available to ensure his workers were in fact legal, and when made aware of them after years of business experience, he stated at first he had no intention of adhering to the law and availing himself of the programs.

From the very start the "border security" and "illegal immigration" issues have been exercises in hypocrisy and misdirection.

Failure after failure by the federal government to really make our nation secure, from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Korea, to securing our ports, mass transportation and vital infrastructure have been convoluted and transformed into a simplistic crusade for "border security" to close the southern border.

Domestically, every policy failure of the last 25 years has been laid at the feet of the demon "illegal immigrant," from the health care crisis, a failing education system, and job loss, to the undue tax burden placed on middle and working class Americans while the top 1% benefit. The Republican Party, through their House surrogates have relinquished all responsibility for their actions. Instead they have formulated a policy of misdirection to place the blame squarely on the 4% of the population that are in this country without documentation.

Ralph Norman has now demonstrated just how hollow the anti-immigrant rhetoric rings. It's all just the smoke and mirrors of a charlatans sideshow. A patent medicine for the American public made of one part fear and two parts ignorance…. and having swallowed down a whole bottle of Tancredo's Magical Elixir, the nation will only be sicker for the exercise.

(1) The SC-05 has a foreign born population of 18,115 (2.78% of population), putting it far bellow the 12.4% national average. Of those, 1.98% are non-citizens (13,680). Of the non-citizen residents 55% arrived prior to 2000, and 45% came between 2000- 2005. This is nowhere near Mr. Norman's claim of a 1000% increase in "illegal immigrants" in the last few years, in fact the number has not even doubled in the last five years.
US Census 2005 Community Survey, SC community profiles
US Census 2005 Community Survey, analysis by MPI

The last time most Americans saw Raj Bhakta, he was being unceremoniously fired by Donald Trump on the TV show, "The Apprentice2." Now, he's running for Congress as a Republican and riding elephants through the Rio Grande to prove…well, quite frankly….that he's still an idiot.

The bowtie festooned Raj, who had shrewdly usurped the ever popular Tucker Carlson look, made his mark on Trump's show not only for making terrible business decisions, but for possessing the uncanny ability to give the entire female viewing audience the creeps with displays of lame flirtation with every woman he came in contact with. His claim to fame; having just heard the infamous words, "you're fired," the ever cocky Raj proceeded to leave "The Donalds" office and immediately hit on Trumps receptionist, Robin. On the way out to the always embarrassing cab ride sequence, he pressed for her for a phone number and she shot him down. It was just one last special moment from the man who claimed, “I’ve always been famous in my own mind.”

That was two years ago. Today Raj is a Republican candidate for Congress from eastern Pennsylvania's 13th District. The Philly native, like other Keystone Republicans, is running on a platform that concentrates on the most pressing issue to Pennsylvania residents: Securing Pennsylvania's border with Mexico.

Raj has built his entire dark horse campaign around border security and stemming the flow of undocumented immigration over the Mexico/Pennsylvania border, much like fellow Pennsylvanian, Rick "Sanatorium" Santorum.

Finding out that Pennsylvania didn't actually have a border with Mexico, the ever clever Raj decided that if the border wouldn't come to Raj - Raj would have to go to the border. So off to Texas, Bhakta went.

tags: immigration, Raj Bhakta , PA-13 , elephants

Once in Brownsville, he had a bright idea right out of a reality show.

To prove the porous nature of the border (and film a clever campaign commercial) he would hire a group of elephants and a six piece mariachi band to march across the Rio Grande with "Raj the Elephant Tamer", riding the lead pachyderm in the procession. Leading a pack of pachyderms hired from a local circus, two African and one Asian, Raj splashed around the river for about an hour.

According to Bhakta's account, “the band played on, the elephants splashed away, and nobody showed up.” “If I can get an elephant led by a mariachi band into this country, I think Osama bin Laden could get across with all the weapons of mass destruction he could get into this country.”

But, just like on TV, not everything was exactly as it seemed.

For one thing, the owner of the elephants, James Plunkett, of the Shrine Circus, was totally unaware of Raj's little publicity stunt.

Circus producer James Plunkett of rural Van Zandt County near Dallas said he thought he was renting out three elephants for a private party at a ranch east of Brownsville near Boca Chica beach and the mouth of the Rio Grande. He didn't know until … Wednesday that the guy riding one elephant was not a birthday boy, or that the camera crew was not shooting a family video.

"These animals are treasures," he said. "To put them in jeopardy or use them that way -- that's not something we would be party to."
Dallas Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Additionally, after being detained by the Dept. of Agriculture, who were called in by Border Patrol agents once they got wind of Raj's little circus, the elephants needed to be sprayed down for ticks acquired in their little parade through the Texas brush.

Ironically, as explained by Bud Kennedy of the Dallas/Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Bhakta proved nothing with his little escapade.

But any Texan knows that we can go down and fish or wade freely from parks and private ranches along the Rio Grande, with or without an elephant.

We want most of the river kept that way, although a few crossings could use better Border Patrol roads or a mile or two of fence.

A few miles from the border, though, somebody always stops you and asks who you are, your citizenship status and other pertinent questions.

Such as, "Where did you get the elephant?"

That's what happened the moment Plunkett and his trailer hit the Border Patrol checkpoint, five miles from the ranch. If Bhakta wanted to prove how easy it is to sneak an elephant into the country, he wound up proving that the Border Patrol is on the job.

"It was amazing to me how many officers showed up when we hit the checkpoint," Plunkett said. "They had two guys, then four guys, then 50 guys in a matter of minutes. They gave us a thorough workover. I came away very impressed with the Border Patrol."

That was good news to Roy Cervantes, spokesman for the patrol's Valley headquarters in Edinburg. Officers there catch about 300 border crossers a day, half not from Mexico.

"It's apparent to me that [Bhakta] has no idea what we do down here on the southern border," Cervantes said. "We have always allowed ranchers to use the river for livestock and recreation. We don't normally go out and stop someone like that. We use sensors and cameras to watch the crossings where smugglers bring in human cargo or drugs. ... Officers stopped the truck at a checkpoint within minutes. Our enforcement worked."

Link

But like the myriad of other Republican congressional candidates from states far from the border, or from areas with little or no immigrant populations, he will continue to mislead the American people about the "immigration crisis" and the threats to our security. Raj will return to Philly with video of himself leading Hannibal's army across our "broken border" to demonstrate just how important it is to keep our country safe from the "invading hoard from the south."

Thankfully, like many of his Republican cohorts, Raj will get to hear this November the same words he heard two years ago from The Donald: "YOU"RE FIRED"

C'mon Russell. Didn't you learn in Boy Scouts that if you keep playing with fire, you'll eventually get burned?

A week after Rep. Russell Pearce drew fire for immigration remarks many called racially insensitive, the Mesa Republican sent an e-mail to supporters in which he copied an article from a white separatist group and a link to that group's Web site.

Pearce says he immediately sent two apologies to supporters after sending out the e-mail, claiming that he did not know what the group was and had not read the entire article before copying it into his e-mail.

"My heart is really hurt to think something like that would go out under my name," Pearce told The Republic today. "I was very embarrassed I didn't have better diligence and read the whole article."

linkage

Gotta love the pickles that the Republicans keep putting themselves in lately. Pearce has either revealed his true racist intentions behind his long-standing hard-right immigration tantrums or he's proven to be a lazy legislator who doesn't even take the time to read his correspondence before sending it out to his supporters as "proof" that he's on the right track.

The group Pearce endorsed was none other than the odious National Alliance. Here's a taste of the hate they spew

Disney was the last major studio to be seized by the Jews and Walt Disney fought them. Now a battle is being waged in the city that is the home to Disneyland in a way Walt Disney never imagined.

It’s not just the Mexican invasion that is the problem in California, the Jews are now fighting with the Arabs over the corpse of "the Golden State.".

For so many years, the Jews in California, Hollywood/Tel Aviv West, have had their way. But then the Arabs set up a place in Orange County referred to as "Little Gaza," which according to the 2000 Census has more than 24,000 Arabs.

linkage - click at your own risk

And speaking of endorsements, this little stunt by Russell "Bring Back Operation Wetback" Pearce has caused his list for re-election to lose at least one prominent name

JD Hayworth issued the following statement today:
Given the regrettable and disturbing nature of the email Russell Pearce circulated earlier today, I cannot in good conscience lend my endorsement to his candidacy for State Representative. While Russell has issued an apology for his email, I nonetheless will not be associated with any communication that contains anti-Semitic remarks.
linkage to AZCongressWatch

I echo the question asked by my fellow Az Blogger: Does Trent Franks feel it's politically prudent to remain on the endorsement page of Russell Pearce's re-election website?

And while we're at it, how many "macaca moments" are the Mesa voters going to take before they realize that Pearce is a divisive, immoral legislator who deserves to be retired permanently in exactly one month?

Enough is enough, people. The Minuteman Wing of the Republican Party, which includes Randy Graf (in the photo with Pearce) and JD Hayworth, regardless of his feeble attempts to distance himself from Pearce, has given cover to white separatist groups like National Alliance for far too long with their enforcement-only approach to immigration reform.

You might not be racist if you support things such as mass deportation, building the Great Wall of Arizona™ or the militarization of the backyards of Baja Arizonans, but how's your conscience treating you knowing that you hold the same political positions as true racist groups like National Alliance, Border Guardians and the KKK's David Duke?

We need comprehensive reform of our immigration reform. One that respects humanity regardless of which side of the border your citizenship lies and it must address the underlying economic issues that are plaguing the lower classes of all the nations involved.

John McCain(R-AZ) has obviously begun his 2008 presidential bid in earnest with a dive into a slime pool, hoping to gain favor with the bottom feeders that make up the most extreme element of his party. In just another demonstration of just how little real integrity and backbone the maverick "straight talking" Senator from Arizona has left, he formally announced his endorsement of beleaguered Minuteman congressional candidate, Randy Graf, running in his states eight district. Graf who has been shunned by party regulars due to his extremist positions is viewed as having little hope of capturing the seat left vacant by the outgoing Republican, Jim Kolbe. But apparently McCain is once again willing to "forgive and forget" in the name of political expediency.

Just as McCain was willing to forgive team Bush for their vicious attacks upon him in 2000 when they ran a smear campaign accusing him of fathering an illegitimate black baby when pictures of his adopted daughter from Bangladesh appeared, he's now willing to court the Neanderthal vote in hopes of getting a new mailing address at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. All this despite the fact that the Graf and his Minuteman cohorts have not been shy in their distain for the Senator.

But perhaps he's just unaware of exactly how Randy Graf and his minutemen friends really feel about him:

tags: immigration, Randy Graf , Gabrielle Giffords , AZ-8, John McCain

From the Minuteman website:

"John McCain is dead in my eyes. And he is delusional if he thinks -- after his asinine pro-illegal-alien stand -- that he has ANY chance of winning the presidency.

Or, maybe I'M delusional to think so. Maybe there ARE enough John McCain junkies out there who would stupidly vote him into office. Heaven help us if that happens."

Link

"John McCain has surely been a traitor to the Republican Party, and seems to be a representative of the Illegal Immigrants more that his constituents. I have wondered and hope that I am wrong when I wonder if Saint John like so many other political hopefuls such as John Murtha, John Kerry et al, went to Nam to get their ticket punched so they could come back and run for political office.

McCain has definite proof of what happened to him in Nam but many of the other members of congress who readily wave their hands as veterans and are called war heroes by their admirers I believe could not stand a close scrutiny of their military records.

I don't wish anyone dead but I wouldn't be disappointed if he and George Bush took adjoining condos on some Mexican Beach permanently, and then they would have easy access to that cheap labor."

Link

"I realize that McRhoid’s proof of what happened to him in Vietnam makes him out to be a hero. But that is his proof and the speculation of his admiral daddy’s influence on that proof should not be discounted. If his NVA records ever become available for comparison, I would like to review them to see how well he served our nation and to see if there are any embers of a fire that resulted in the smoke over his time as a POW.

Remember that Benedict Arnold himself was considered to be a ‘war hero’ up until he showed his true colors. McRhoid has shown us his and they aren’t ours."

Link

"All one has to do is note Mr. McCain's voting record in regards to the Second Amendment to realize he was turned in Hanoi. He's a commie underneath the facade. When seen in this light, everything else he does makes sense."
Link

Or maybe McCain is unaware of just how much of a minuteman Randy Graf really is.

From the Graf webpage:

Randy Graf is a Minuteman. He enthusiastically answered the call when the Minuteman roject was formed in April 2005. He was there on the first day in Tombstone, Arizona where he lent a hand to the Project’s organizers in ensuring that registration and orientation went off successfully. He was a part of the month-long event on the border.
And he was there as a featured speaker at the celebratory closing event of the Project.

Now is the time to take the Minuteman Project to the next level and it is time to send a Minuteman to Congress to represent American citizens who want something more done about illegal immigration and the lack of border security. The Minuteman Project can’t go on forever. We need to have the federal government take over and do the job that they are obligated to do.Randy Graf is ready and able, the target has been identified, and the goal is achievable. To do it, this Minuteman needs YOUR help and continuing support.

Imagine that...sending a Minuteman to Congress. You can help strike a blow against the powerful groups in Washington that continue to condone the massive violation of our national borders. You can be a part of taking Minuteman Project to the next level by helping Randy Graf get elected to Congress where he will serve alongside Rep. Tom Tancredo and work for you to stop the border invasion. You can’t vote for Randy Graf, but Randy Graf will vote for you. He knows the issues. He knows what needs to be done. He needs your continuing support now so that when he gets to Congress you will get his support.
votegraf.com

From the Minuteman website:

The #1 issue for Republican Randy Graf is stopping illegal immigration, defending our borders and protecting US national sovereignty. Randy is also a rock solid conservative on both economic and social issues and he is pro gun rights. Randy Graf needs your help! Randy Graf is just like Tom Tancredo and we need a lot more Tom Tancredos in Congress.
The number one race for conservatives in the USA is the Randy Graf campaign for Congress in Arizona, district #8. Nationwide grassroots conservatives can help Randy win by 1) sending money and 2) making GOTV phone calls from YOUR HOME to key precincts in AZ # 08. Please call the Graf HQ at xxx-xxx-xxxx and offer to volunteer no matter where you live in the USA. They will email phone lists to call the last 3 days of the election.
MinutemaHQ.com

Or perhaps even as the minutemen themselves have figured out; "it shows McCain for what he really is...a panderer."

If it wasn't clear when he was kissing and hugging Bush, or when he had a little birthday bash with the President just days after Katrina while Bush was hiding with his head in the sand, it certainly is clear now… even to those whose knuckles might scrape the ground while walking…McCain is now a man devoid of all backbone, one that will do anything and say anything in his attempt to gain higher office. All the "straight talk" in the world cannot hide McCain's utter lack of principles.

The nation has watched on over the last few years as a little bully of a man from Colorado has dragged our country to depths of intolerance and ignorance not seen since the days of nightriders and Jim Crow. In attempts to fulfill his insatiable appetite for power, tiny Tom Tancredo has chosen the preferred weapon of the small minded to further his cause; the politics of division and bigotry.

Leading what was originally a one-man crusade against immigrants and people of foreign extraction, this diminutive demagogue from south Denver has managed to turn a personal obsession into a national issue. Using a mixture of misinformation, exaggeration and untruths, he has attracted a national audience to his cause. Like-minded followers from all over the country have been drawn to Tiny Tom’s message of division. From California white supremacists and Michigan Militiamen to Arizona Minutemen, Tancredo’s message has received a hearty welcome from some of the most extreme fringe elements in American society.

While this little Napoleon spends most of his time campaigning around the nation for what he hopes to be his next job at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., or chasing all over the Arizona desert with groups of grown men playing army, a challenger has come up to contest Tancredo’s seat in Congress. A man who doesn’t need to dress in camouflage or wear night-vision goggles while stalking women and children as they make the life threatening journey through the desert to find a better life, just prove he’s a real man.

But I’ll let Bill Winter's words speak for themselves:

tags: immigration, Tom Tancredo , Bill Winter , CO-6

Yesterday morning I had the honor of having Senator Max Cleland speak on behalf of my campaign against Tom Tancredo. I want to share with you what I had to say after he spoke:

It's a real honor to be introduced today by somebody like Senator Max Cleland, who has given so much to his Country over and over and over again. And to me Senator Cleland stands out as an example of both what is good--and in some senses, what is wrong--about our Country right now.

Senator Cleland has given so much in service to his Country, and yet when he tried to serve his home state of Georgia, what did they come out and do? They accused him of not being patriotic. And I think that speaks to what is wrong with America today. We have more people trying to divide us than trying to unite us, and we need to get back to where we're trying to be united as a Nation again.

It's a real honor to have Max Cleland here, who is such a role model for a young man--although I'm not so young anymore--and there are many things he brought up that I want to speak to today.

I had an interview with Charley Able here from the Rocky Mountain News yesterday, and he asked me what is the craziest thing I've ever done, and the dumbest thing I've ever done. Senator Cleland's remarks today remind me that everywhere I go, I get folks from the Marines who tell me the dumbest thing I ever did was join the Navy, and folks from the Navy who say the dumbest thing I ever did was join the Marines.

What I know is that serving ten years in the military taught me things I never expected to learn going in. I had the opportunity to get to know people from all over the Country. I met people of different ethnic backgrounds, and skin colors, and genders, and I got the opportunity to grow from a young man who just knew the kind of people I went to high school with in Littleton to someone who knew people from all over the world. And I gained a whole lot of respect for all kinds of folks and that alone makes the ten years of service worthwhile.

Senator Cleland also talked about the VA, and there are two things I want to talk about there. First of all, we have seen cut after cut over the last five years in money made available to our veterans at the very same time we have them over there in harm's way in Iraq and Afghanistan. I get people coming up to me and they say, "I am so proud of you", and "you are so brave for what you're doing", and I have to tell you, it doesn't feel right to me.

I've said to a couple people, "You know, it's not brave running for public office. It's brave to get up in the morning and put on the body armor and go out in 100 degree heat and walk patrol in Fallujah and Najaf, and drive a truck down the road and not know if any given Coke can or any piece of garbage on the road might be a bomb that will blow you up. And you don't even have to be serving to be brave. You can be a single mother trying to raise kids in today's workplace and in today's economy and that takes great courage. Or to be a parent trying to send your kids to college when all they do in Washington is cut student loans and student grants.

These are things that are courageous, far more so than running for office.

Now when I look at veterans, I think to myself: I'm running against Tom Tancredo. And here's a guy, who at the same time he voted for his own pay raise--and these guys were already making, I believe, around $165,000 a year, and they had to vote themselves a pay raise. That's significantly more than I ever made in my whole life, and significantly more than anyone in the military makes, I'm guessing, short of the Joint Chiefs level. And now they're making $167,000 and this guy voted for it at the same time he voted down a pay raise for our troops and voted down increases in spending for our veterans, and didn't do anything--anything--to get a new VA hospital here in Denver.

And I think the upgraded VA hospital that is supposed to be across the street is just the beginning.

We have a great big huge state here. What about all the veterans who served who live over on the western slope or out on the plains? I think they ought to have one out in Grand Junction, too, so they don't have to drive 300 miles every time they need care.

My father was a Navy doctor. He got the Navy to pay for medical school and in return he served for six years on active duty. They were going to put him in a MASH hospital in Vietnam or Great Lakes Naval Hospital, and in their infinite wisdom, they decided to put him in Great Lakes Naval Hospital, putting folks back together when they came back from Vietnam. He was an orthopedic surgeon and they decided that was where he could do the most good.

After he did his six years of service with the Navy, my father, as an orthopedic surgeon, had all kinds of offers to go and work for these groups that fix up athletes' knees and shoulders and make seven figure salaries. But my father chose instead to teach at medical school and do his medical surgery at the Denver VA.

I asked him why one time when I got a little older, because that whole idea of making seven figures, that didn't seem so bad to me as a kid. But my dad told me, "I teach at that medical school because a whole generation of doctors will go out from here and will have influence that I gave them, that will carry on long after I'm gone."

And he was right. My dad died back in 1998. He was 59 years old. And as I go around on this campaign, I have met countless doctors who said, "Your dad trained me." In fact, I spoke to the Board of Directors of the Colorado Medical Society, and the president, Rick May, an orthopedist, told me "your dad is the reason I'm in orthopedic surgery." That's very powerful to me.

And my dad also told me, "I do my surgery at the VA because they need me so much there." And that was a real revelation to me and really had an impact on my life. And not just on me, but on my brother as well.

My older brother got his medical training paid for by the Air Force. My brother was an Air Force doctor, and he's a psychiatrist. And after he got out of the Air Force, he said, "I'm going to be like my dad." And instead of going out into private practice where there's a lot of money, my brother practices up at the Denver VA, and he's been practicing quite a few years now. And he does it for the same reason my father did, because they need him so much there.

And while I'm talking about my father and my brother, I should mention my mother, who worked her way through college and medical school in the late 1950's and early 1960's as a single mother from a poor family. She's the one who saw me as an orphan in a hospital when I was a toddler and thought "I can give him a better life." So she adopted me and she did.

That's what service is really all about, and that's the legacy I have to live up to in my family. And if you want to know why I'm running for Congress, that's a very big reason right there.

But my brother gives me a lot of insight on what it's like to work at the VA and particularly the Denver VA hospital. Now I said he works at the VA for the same reason my dad did, because they need him so much. And I'll tell you what, in his field of psychiatry, they need him more than probably anything else they have.

I asked my brother--and this is a year or so ago--what's really happening with the soldiers coming back from Iraq and the PTSD and emotional issues? And he said, "You don't even want to know." He said, "We'll have jobs there for the rest of our lives if we live to be 150 years old."

And I said, "What's the plan to deal with it?" And he said, "There is no plan. There's no money, there are no people looking forward."

I think we've had over a million people serve in the Iraqi theatre already, and there's no plan for what we're going to do with them for the next 30 or 40 years. I've seen these people at Walter Reed, and I'm sure you have, too, Senator. And some of these folks that we've kept alive, some of these injuries you can't believe. I saw a young man who has no face anymore, and is blind and deaf. We've gotten to the point in medical technology where we can keep people alive, but we can't give them their lives back. And because of their injuries, they may need care for 50, 60 years and we don't have any kind of plan or any money set aside to do that.

So when we talk about the Denver VA and funding for healthcare for veterans, this is a very personal issue to me, and I think it ought to be a personal issue to everyone in America.

We did polling in my district back in May and asked about 15 different issues, and every one of them came back over 50% positive, but the single biggest response came from restoring cuts to benefits for veterans. So Americans want to support the people who are over there fighting for us, but our elected "leaders" in Congress don't seem to agree.

That has to change!

And while I'm talking about the war, I think we also need to stand up and say to our President, "We need leadership, sir." And when I go around and say this, some people say to me, "stay the course." And I say, "'stay the course' is not a plan; `stay the course' is madness.

We've been there 3½ years and we're no closer to victory today than we were when we started. In fact, we still don't even have a definition of what victory in Iraq is.

`Stay the course' says to me that we're going to send our sons and daughters over there indefinitely to be killed for no benefit!

So give me a plan!

Do you want to put more troops in?

Do you want to put fewer troops in?

Tell us what you want to do, Mr. President, but don't tell us `stay the course'!

Then, of course, when John Murtha says, "Let's redeploy. Let's get other Countries in there to help us do this." they say "that's cut and run".

And you know what I say?

I carry around a set of dog tags from a young man who was killed over there, and his mother asked me to be his voice, because he doesn't have a voice anymore. And I'm darned tired of going to people with a dead man's dog tags and all I get in response are slogans like "stay the course" and "cut and run".

We have to ask better than that of our government. We have to ask better than that from our leadership.

And I'll tell you why. Because when I was in the military--and I'm sure this is true of all of you veterans in here too--everyone I knew in the Marine Corps and the Navy was willing to make that ultimate sacrifice. And all we asked for in return was that our Country take care of us when we came home, and that our sacrifice mean something.

I think right now we're failing on both counts and letting our troops down. If we really want to support the troops, we need to stand up and ask for a real plan for victory, and stand up and ask our government as part of our sacrifice to our veterans to make sure we provide the money to take care of them when they come home. As Abraham Lincoln said, "to care for him who shall have born the battle and for his widow, and his orphan." And I think that's a debt of honor we darn well better pay.

Before I wrap up, I want to talk about this race. Because the single biggest problem we have in this district is that they say, "You can't win. You're a heck of a candidate, but you can't win, and therefore we're not going to help you." And they are wrong!

Let me tell you what's going on. I went back to Washington D.C. last week, and it turns out there's polling out there--and I got this from three different sources--that has us dead even in this thing. I haven't seen the poll and we didn't run it, but let me tell you why I think it's true.

Some people in Washington may not believe it, but I'll tell you who does: Tom Tancredo. Because he has cancelled his entire schedule for the next three weeks, and all of a sudden he's back in Colorado and he's on the radio and running ads, and we have nailed him down to a debate on October 24th.

Now, he won't do a debate in front of a live audience. He won't let people in the room. This fellow doesn't want to actually face constituents. But we'll get him in there. We'll do a debate, and it will be on TV the next day.

But he's come back and he's actively campaigning. He's got his surrogates out there trying to dig up nasty stuff on me. We've seen what's happened with Bill Ritter and Angie Paccione and Ed Perlmutter, and they want to try to do that to me. But you all have looked me in the eye and you know the content of my character. You know what I'm about. When I've done something wrong, I'll stand up and say it and apologize. I'm not a perfect person, but I am a good person, and the whole point of this campaign is to make a difference and make people's lives better.

We can absolutely win this thing.

We're making a great radio buy now for next week. We've got some great stuff, and we're going to spend everything we have every Friday, then we'll go back and re-earn it and spend it again the next Friday.

So if you can make a donation over here, we need it. If you know people who can make a donation, ask them to do it. We need it. If we can get the money to stay up on radio and keep our direct mail going--maybe do a little TV--we will win this.

I guarantee we will win this. Because as I go around the district and I talk to Republicans and Unaffiliateds, they almost universally tell me, "we really like what you have to say." I was at a candidates' forum the other night, and Victor Mitchell is a Republican running for the State House down there, and darn near everybody in the room with a Victor Mitchell sticker on came up to me afterwards and said, "You're great; we really like what you have to say." Because they're looking for unity, and they believe in America the way I believe in America.

I'll finish up by talking about the Statue of Liberty, and the poem across the base of it. Emma Lazarus wrote this, and it goes like this:

`Send us your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shores.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me.
I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door.'

I love that poem for the last line, if nothing else: "I raise my lamp beside the Golden Door". Because I'll tell you what, that's the America I learned about in school; that's the America I believe in.

That's the America that understands that all these people who come from around the world can be a strength to us, and that we are a strong nation, and we can fold them in and make them part of our society.

And more importantly, the Golden Door. We used to call America the land of opportunity and we have to get that back. We have to give every child born in this country the opportunity to find that Golden Door and to achieve the American Dream.

And that's what this campaign is all about, taking back America the way we used to know it. We have had six years of folks trying to make America be just for the top 2%. And doggone it, it's time for the other 98% of us to stand up and fight back, and that's what we're going to do.

Thank you all....

Bill Winter
http://winterforcongress.com

It’s time for a change in Colorado and a time for a change in this country.

We’ve seen enough from leaders whose goal appears to be to divide us in order to maintain power. Leaders who have no regard for truth and honesty. Leaders whose loyalties are not to those who have elected them, but rather to self-interest and special interests. Leaders who refuse to see mistakes and make efforts to correct them. Leaders who refuse to do the hard work, and work together to make the hard decisions and choices that need to be made to move our nation forward. We’ve seen enough in the last six years… it’s time for a change.

Randy Graf, Republican candidate from Arizona's 8th congressional district, has been facing some tough times of late.

At first he was heralded by the extreme right as the golden boy of the anti-immigration movement. His primary victory in Sept. was viewed as a validation not only for the Minuteman Candidate, but the movement he had helped to start. The victory was all the more sweet for the minuteman types due to the strong opposition from party leadership. Fearing Graf's radical views would hurt the party, they had endorsed his opponent, Steve Huffman, to the tune of $200,000, but he still prevailed.

Yet, after a very brief honeymoon, Graf and the party hierarchy went their separate ways.

Two weeks ago, dismal poll numbers coupled with a new controversy revolving around Graf's possible ties to white supremacist David Duke, led the Republican National Congressional Committee to all but pull the plug on his campaign.

On Sept 21 they announced plans to cancel all scheduled funding for Graf advertising after October 3. With more than a month to go before the election, the pullout left Graf with a $1 million hole in his campaign budget.

Now it appears the Arizona bully-boy has been relegated to tagging along with the more popular kids in hopes of reviving his faltering campaign.

tags: immigration, Randy Graf , Gabrielle Giffords , AZ-8, KarlRove, NRCC

The campaign trail turned into the campaign caravan for Sen. Jon Kyl Monday.

Kyl spent the day trekking across Southern Arizona to meet with supporters at various campaign events.
Much to the surprise of Kyl's staffers, however, Republican congressional candidate Randy Graf tagged along.

Graf appeared at an event in Marana, then followed the senator to SaddleBrooke, where Kyl spoke to about 50 supporters. Graf was able to get a few words in at the event's closing, but many were clearly surprised he was there. In fact, by the time Graf got the microphone, about a third of the crowd had left.

Kyl has endorsed Graf, and Graf's campaign had asked if he could join Kyl at SaddleBrooke.
For whatever reason, Kyl staffers didn't get the memo.

"We were surprised," said Kyl spokeswoman Vicki Mata Myles.

She said Graf's campaign had contacted Kyl's Tucson office sometime last week.

In any event, Graf was supposed to speak at the beginning of the forum and not the end, throwing off some of the Saddle-Brooke residents, she said.

Graf's campaign spokesman, R.T. Gregg, insisted Graf didn't crash the forum."They knew we were coming," he said. "We were invited.

Arizona Daily Star

Even a visit from Karl Rove last Friday didn't turn out as expected for little Randy.

Head cheerleader Karl showed up showed up in Tuscon to lead a little pep-rally for Arizona candidates. Yet in the end Graf walked away empty handed.

Karl hammered away on the familiar Republican talking point; "Democrats can’t be trusted to fight the War on Terror" accusing the Democratic congressional leadership of a “cut-and-run philosophy on terror.”

Conspicuously absent from Rove's little speech was any mention of the one topic the single issue candidate needed him to talk about: immigration. No mention of building walls, the invasion from the south, closing the borders or any of the topics Graf has built his whole campaign upon.

The Bottom line…Karl did nothing to help the beleaguered Minutemen.

Graf now lags behind his opponent, Gabrielle Giffords, not only in the polls but in fund raising. Giffords, had raised nearly $1.2 million for the race even before the primary. Graf on the other hand had yet to surpass $500,000 in campaign funds according to the most recent Federal Election Commission filings of August 23. He also had just $82,000 cash on hand—Giffords had more than $300,000.

In the polls Graf's prospects look even worse. Although a just released Reuters poll puts him only eight points behind his Democratic challenger, a Tuscon Weekly/Wick poll done during the same period shows Gifford's lead at 18%. Either way you cut it Randy's in big trouble.

Who knows what Randy will do next.

Maybe he'll just continue to tag along with the big boy candidates – whether they want him to or not. That is until they tell him to go home…his mommy's calling him.

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