S P O N S O R E D B Y :
Immigration Ads a Problem for Campaigns
Compiled by the DiversityInc staff
August 29, 2006
Capturing
the immigration debate in political ads this campaign season—without upsetting
Latino voters—is proving tricky for candidates.
An ad criticizing Stephen
Laffey, who is challenging incumbent Sen. Lincoln Chafee for the Republican
nomination in Rhode
Island,
set off grumbling in the Latino community. The ad criticized Laffey, mayor of
Cranston,
for allowing city police to accept ID cards issued by the Mexican government as
identification.
Chafee's spokesperson had no comment about the ad.
Laffey's campaign called it an insensitive attack on the mayor's attempt to
empathize with "people who struggle and who try to make a better life for
themselves."
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The National Republican Senatorial Committee said the ad,
which it sponsored, raises legitimate questions. "This ad is about our national
security, and it speaks to concerns raised by the FBI," spokesperson Dan Ronayne
said Monday.
Polls have shown Laffey and Chafee running neck-and-neck in
a race that has gained national attention.
The winner of the Republican
primary will likely face Democratic former Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse
in the November election.
The immigration debate was left hanging when
Congress adjourned for the summer. Rather than negotiate a compromise on the
vastly different bills passed by the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats
have traded barbs over immigration at field hearings and in campaign
ads.
"Both parties are crossing the line," said Janet Murguia, president
of the National Council of La Raza, which is calling for an end to such ads.
"The issue of what to do about immigration is fair game for this election,
demonizing an entire community is not."
The Chafee-Laffey race is not the
only one bedeviled by this problem. In his first campaign ad, Sen. Rick
Santorum, R-Pa., boasted of his immigrant heritage but said some immigrants
today have sinister motives for entering and lists how he's tried to beef up
border security. The ad was intended to appeal to voters worried about losing
their jobs to immigrants.
Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., has an ad on his
re-election-campaign Web site praising his anti-terrorism work. The ad includes
an image of him standing in the desert near two white SUVs, similar to those
used by the Border Patrol. Critics say the scene looks like the U.S.-Mexican
border.
Republican Brian Bilbray is believed to have sealed his victory
in a June California runoff to fill the House seat of disgraced former Rep.
Randy "Duke" Cunningham with an immigration ad suggesting Democrat Francine
Busby was encouraging undocumented immigrants to vote.
Even Internet ads
have drawn ire. Without commenting, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
recently removed a Web ad that Republican and Democratic Latinos decried as
offensive because it squeezed images of two people trying to cross a border
fence between video of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and North Korean leader
Kim Jong Il.
The ad asked, "Feel Secure?"
Ads attacking immigrants
are worrisome because they foretell how a candidate will govern, said Marselo
Gaete, senior director of programs for the National Association of Latino
Elected and Appointed Officials.
"If you run with a slash and burn tactic
addressing the very serious problem of immigration reform, that's how you are
going to deal with it," Gaete said.
The Web ad so outraged Houston City
Councilwoman Carol Alvarado, who is Mexican American, that she fired off a
letter to committee chairman Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. Alvarado, who says
she's very loyal to the party, said likening undocumented immigrants to
bazooka-toting terrorists undermined Democrats' positive relationship with
Latinos.
"It's a slippery slope if not done carefully," she said. "If you
look at the 9/11 attacks those are not people who crossed the Mexican border.
Those are people who got through our
airports."
Rhode
Island
state Sen. Juan M. Pichardo, a Dominican American, was equally critical of the
NRSC ad attacking Laffey. "To me and the Latino community and the immigrant
community, it is an ad that is mean-spirited, divisive and has no place in
Rhode
Island,"
Pichardo said.
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Focusing on positive aspects of the Latino culture—family,
culture, future—is the best way to reach the community, even in negative ads,
said Lorena Chambers, founder of Chambers Lopez & Gaitan, an advertising
company.
For Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign,
Chambers created an award-winning ad that criticized President Bush's education
policies but featured a Latina
in cap and gown with her mother.
Frank Guerra, who helped produce an ad
for Bush's 2004 presidential campaign, said creating ads for Latinos is
complicated by the population's diversity. Their views on immigration are just
as varied.
"It's tricky and precarious no matter what you do because this
is an issue where the people are all over the map. You are going to make some
people happy and you are going to make some furious," said Guerra, founder of
Guerra DeBerry Coody marketing and communications.
His advice to
campaigns: "Tread carefully." (AP)
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