June 19, 2006 08:00 AM UTC

How Much of a Political Risk is Special Session?

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Denver Post?posed this question over the weekend regarding Republican threats to call a special session to address illegal immigration:

…the Colorado governor’s tack is a stark contrast to the approach taken by GOP officials in Arizona when a similar ballot proposition called “Protect Arizona Now” was passed two years ago. There, the Republican Party officially distanced itself from the measure, remembering the costs the California GOP paid after Prop. 187, which denied illegal immigrants access to schools and health care.

Though it was approved overwhelmingly by voters in 1994, Prop. 187 created a surge of Democratic support among California Latinos, affirming the power of Democrats in that state. But historical lessons may be hard to apply in today’s quickly changing and contentious debate.

There are key indications that Latino voters don’t necessarily see punitive immigration policies as targeting them. Exit polls in Arizona showed that about 45 percent of Latinos supported “Protect Arizona Now.”

“I know how my family thinks about it,” said Lora Villasenor, an immigration analyst with ThinkAZ, an Arizona think tank.

“These are people who have come here, worked hard, paid their dues, and they look at the new people who are coming over and they say they ask for all this stuff, they ask for more than they deserve. You hear a lot of that kind of stuff,” she said.

But a spate of recent national polls provides plenty for the state’s GOP to ponder as it seeks to make immigration a wedge issue in November.

A poll by the nonpartisan Latino Coalition shows that Hispanics approve of the way Democrats are handling the immigration issue by a 3-to-1 margin. Another by the Pew Research Center shows that only 33 percent of Latinos support denying social services to illegal immigrants, compared with 83 percent of conservative Republicans – voters who are likely to support the GOP anyway.