Colorado’s 6th Congressional District is the pulsing heart of state Republicans’ anger over illegal immigration. This is the political home from which Rep. Tom Tancredo launched a presidential run based almost solely on that issue.
Well, maybe not.
An internal Republican poll that examined the attitudes of independent and GOP voters in the district — a copy of which was obtained by The Denver Post — found opinions vastly at odds with that conventional wisdom.
They overwhelmingly support a guest worker program, reject the idea that most illegal immigrants should be deported, and even support the idea of amnesty, a dirty word for politicians of any stripe, but especially for the four Republican candidates now running for Tancredo’s seat.
Coming from what nationally has been thought of as a “symbolic district” on the issue, the poll has been circulating in party circles for weeks. It has helped fuel a debate within the GOP about how powerfully the issue will play for Republicans in 2008 races — and how hard a line the GOP candidates should actually take.
It comes just as Latino Republican leaders in the state have cast dire warnings in recent weeks that overheated rhetoric on immigration risks alienating Latino voters, and as some state legislators have pushed the party to take even a harder line.
“From a campaign standpoint, (the immigration issue) polls very high. But if you don’t address it in the right way, you find yourself in quicksand very quickly,” said state Rep. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs. A silver bullet for GOP?
The uncertainty comes as the ground seems to be shifting nationally under the subject. The top-tier presidential candidate most vocal on the issue, Mitt Romney, lost to a relative immigration dove, John McCain. Exit polls in Florida showed that Romney’s anti-immigrant rhetoric may have contributed to his loss there.
All that leaves Colorado Republicans struggling with what many expected to be a red-meat issue.
“This is an issue that is difficult to get your arms around,” said Dick Wadhams, the state party chairman.
“We need to secure our borders and develop a responsible guest worker program. And we need to find some way to deal with the 12 million illegal immigrants already here. How you do that exactly, I just don’t know,” Wadhams said. But “our rhetoric has to be respectful and thoughtful.”
State polls still consistently show that immigration is a pressing concern, especially among the party faithful. A Denver Post poll conducted in January showed that it ranked second, behind only the economy, as a key issue for GOP voters in the state. (It was fourth for unaffiliated voters and a distant fifth among Democrats.)
That’s led many Republicans to conclude that immigration could be the party’s silver bullet, especially with a souring U.S. economy and no end in sight in Iraq.
Some state party leaders said they simply didn’t believe the 6th CD poll accurately reflected the attitudes of the district’s voters. Critics noted that it was commissioned from a Virginia polling firm by Alex Cranberg, an oil executive and party power broker, but someone whose attitudes toward immigration tilt libertarian.
“There is a debate going on within the party, but the debate is basically being framed by those who want more amnesty and are afraid this issue will alienate Hispanic voters,” said state Sen. David Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs. Schultheis is also running for a slot on the National Republican Committee but has been criticized by Latino Republicans for his fiery stand on immigration.
The February survey of more than 500 Republicans and independents in the district found nearly 3-to-1 support for a guest worker program, as long as the foreigners paid taxes and had no criminal record.
As far as illegal immigrants already in the U.S. are concerned, 47 percent of potential independent and GOP voters in the district favored giving them temporary legal status and deporting only those with criminal records, while 27 percent wanted them all deported and 14 percent favored giving most permanent legal status.
Poll aligns with Bush plan
The most popular stances essentially line up with a 2004 proposal by President Bush, decried as amnesty by Tancredo. In fact, some Republicans said one of the most surprising things about the poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points, was that it showed a substantial gap between the positions of Tancredo and his constituents at home.
“I certainly expected the poll would be examined for methodology, so I hired a very well-known Republican pollster,” said Cranberg, chairman of Aspect Energy.
“This ‘the more extreme the better’ thing isn’t holding up nationally because most Republicans aren’t dissimilar to the Republicans in this district. . . . They want to eliminate illegality. They don’t want to eliminate illegality by kicking them all out,” he said.
Exactly how the poll — and the shifting national debate — will steer GOP candidates’ talk about the issue remains to be seen. Wadhams, who is also the campaign manager for Bob Schaffer, the party’s candidate for U.S. Senate, said his candidate wasn’t yet ready to talk about his immigration stance.
T.Q. Houlton, spokesman for Tancredo, said he didn’t think anyone would “base their opinion on illegal immigration, especially on the Republican side, on one poll.”
He pointed out that McCain has “taken heat” from conservatives for his prior immigration stances and has “come around” since securing the nomination.
“He’s actually said a couple of times that he ‘got the message’ ” that border security must be the top priority and that amnesty is a non-starter, Houlton said.
The poll results don’t seem to have held much sway among the Republicans running to replace Tancredo, either. The websites of Mike Coffman, Wil Armstrong, Ted Harvey and Steve Ward suggest all four will roughly follow Tancredo’s approach.
Cranberg said he believes those positions are mostly based on the shadow of the outgoing congressman: “They believe that a Tancredo endorsement of their opponent or, worse, a direct condemnation for not toeing the line, would be political suicide.”
