A long time Republican Party operative named Ralph Nader has a
study which purports to demonstrate that "comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) is an electoral winner and that "enforcement first" withing an amnesty is an electoral loser.
However, there are a number of serious flaws in his methodology which undermine his conclusions. WHat is his methodology?
1) He singles out three House seats for examination, based on the criteria that that were seats which Republicans lost and that they were held (or in one case, was an open seat) by people who rejected the idea of comprehensive immigration reform (CIR). The three Congressional races he focuses on are those of Henry Bonilla (TX-23), JD Hayworth (AZ-05), and Randy Graf (AZ
2) Within the Congressional districts he has singled out, he goes on to again single out specific counties. In some cases these are majority Hispanic counties, in other cases not.
3) He then contrasts the election returns from the selected counties in selected districts for the year 2006 to the results from the year 2004.
Most of my analysis will focus on this last point. That is, I’m going to make only passing remarks on points (1) and (2) and spend most effort reviewing the data he presents.
As for point (1), there is some evidence that a strong border security stance was not a liability for Republicans in 2006. According to NumbersUSA, only 9.6% of GOP House members with an “A” rating from that organization were defeated, compared to 25% of those with an “F” rating.
Now let's look at his data. Consider the case of Henry Bonilla.
According to Nadler, Bonilla saw his support among Hispanics "collapse" in the wake of his opposition to CIR. “The collapse of his support in Hispanic-majority counties, including Dimmit, Maverick, Presidio, Val Verde, and Zavala, was abrupt and drastic. In a single cycle, his vote share was halved.”
As evidence, he cites the election returns from five largely Hispanic counties in 2004, and then in the special runoff election in 2006. But this is deeply misleading for both years.
First, in 2004 Bonilla was running in his heavily Hispanic district against somebody with the wonderfully non-Hispanic surname of "Sullivan". And he was doing so in a year in which Republican turnout was at an all time high around the country.
If you look back to 2002, the last non-presidential year election in which Bonilla faced a credible Hispanic challenger, he barely scraped out a victory. (I'll have more on the results in the counties highlighted by Nadler in a bit)
In 2006 Bonilla was not in a regular race, but in a Special election called as a result of redistricting. This race occurred on 11/7/2006 and Bonilla won 49% of the vote, a large plurality but not enough for victory according to the rules of the Special election.
Accordingly he faced the leading Democratic challenger, Rodriguez, on 12/12/2006. But at this stage the Republicans had just been routed in the biggest massacre since 1994. Virtually no Republicans showed up the second time.
Bonilla received 60,175 votes in November, but only 32,217 a month later.
Yes, his vote collapsed. But it collapsed because of the heavy defeat suffered by the party in November. It collapsed in every demographic. If two thirds of the people who voted for him in November had done the same in December, Bonilla would still be in Congress. And clearly, that drop off had nothing to do with CIR.
Here is Bonilla's share of the vote in the five counties mentioned by Nadler in 2002, 2004, and the November 2006 elections.
Dimmit – 31%, 49%, 32%.
Maverick – 27%, 59%, 29%.
Presidio – 34%, 50%, 39%.
Val Verde – 54%, 68%, 46%
Zavala – 24%, 35%, 33%.
In other words, between 2002 and 2006 Bonilla INCREASED his vote share in four out of five of these largely Hispanic counties. If that is CIR in action then we need more of it.
Nadler also cites Hutchinson running (slightly) ahead of Bonilla in these districts. But Hutchinson was running against token opposition and won her race going away against a political rookie. And Bonilla actually ran ahead of her in Zavala and Presidio counties.
The Texas election data I have referenced can be found
here.
