Of all the gloomy outcomes that the Democrats have cause to fear in tomorrow's election, here's one that seems to have escaped wide notice: They're in trouble on the border -- the one with Mexico.
From Solomon Ortiz's district, where the Rio Grande flows into the Gulf of Mexico, to Raul Grijalva's district in southwest Arizona, five Democratic incumbents whose districts abut Mexico are facing the toughest challenges of their career. As of today, all nine districts on the U.S-Mexico border are represented by Democrats -- partly because all but one of these districts are majority Latino. That said, the level and character of Latino voting in these districts vary considerably, as do the voting habits of the Anglo voters in these districts. The entire California-Mexico border, for instance, marks the southern extreme of liberal Democrat Bob Filner's district -- which includes liberal areas of San Diego. Democrat Silvestre Reyes represents El Paso, an overwhelmingly Latino and Democratic city. But five of their border colleagues -- Ortiz, Grijalva, Ciro Rodriguez of Texas, Harry Teague of New Mexico, and Gabrielle Giffords of the Tucson area of Arizona -- enjoy no such advantage.
Arizona Democrats, and not just those on the border, are particularly embattled in this cycle; they could conceivably lose all but one of their four congressional seats. On the border, veteran member Grijalva, a staunch progressive in a very Latino district, encountered a major backlash when he backed the calls for a boycott of his state after it passed Senate bill 1070, requiring Latinos stopped by the police to have identification papers on them.
To his east, Giffords represents a more conservative district, has a more conservative voting record than Grijalva, and according to most political handicappers, is facing an even tougher challenge. Her opponent, former Marine Jesse Kelly, decrying the "trafficking and violence" in the district, has called for the deployment of 10,000 U.S. troops along the border and the completion of the border fence. Grijalva's opponent, engineer Ruth McClung, calls for using "new technologies," as well as more border guards, to stop the immigrant flow. Both Kelly and McClung call for ending all entitlements to undocumented immigrants. On their campaign websites, neither specifies whether that includes the right of immigrant children to attend school. Both oppose "amnesty" -- that is, a path to legalization.
A somewhat more hysterical tone is taken by Rodriguez' Republican challenger, businessman Quico Canseco. In a district that chiefly includes both Anglo and Latino sections of San Antonio but also covers more than half of Texas' border with Mexico, Canseco is sounding all the far-right themes common to Texas Republicans, and his rhetoric on immigration is accordingly alarmist, conflating al-Qaeda, Mexican drug cartels, and just plain undocumented immigrants.
America, Canseco proclaims on his campaign website is "a nation under siege from fanatics who want to harm civilians and do as much damage to our communities as possible. Our commitment to homeland security starts with: controlling who comes into our country, protecting our borders, ports, airways, and having top notch intelligence and law enforcement capable of stopping those who want to do us harm BEFORE they can attack on American soil again." That said, the 23rd is a district in which most voters live a good distance from the border, and Canseco's prospects, which are good, probably have more to do with the highly mobilized opposition to Obama within white, Republican San Antonio.
On the Gulf Coast, nine-term member Sol Ortiz would be re-elected handily in a normal year, and probably will squeak through this year as well. His opponent, Blake Farenthold -- an Anglo in a heavily Latino district -- is running more on Republican anti-government boilerplate than on immigration issues, but in a year like this, in Texas, anything is possible.
In New Mexico's 2nd District, Democrat Teague is running against Republican Steve Pearce, who represented the district until 2008, when he waged an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate. Immigration isn't quite the hot-button issue in New Mexico, the nation's most heavily Latino state and the one in which the Latino presence predates the Anglo, and the hysterical tone of Arizona Republicans is missing from Pearce's more nuanced stance. It's doubtful that a Democrat would have carried the district had 2008 not been a wave election for the Democrats; and it's doubtful that Teague can hold the district today.
How much of these Democrats' travails is a function of their border proximity in a year of major economic woes and their attendant anti-immigrant backlash? In the most heavily Latino districts, such as Grijalva's, the issue surely cuts both ways. Gifford's district, which was only 18 percent Latino in the 2000 census, is likely the one where the issue hurts most. In none of these districts, however, is there a level of Latino mobilization comparable to that in Southern California, where the labor movement -- chiefly the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) -- has a sterling track record of turning out the Latino vote for Democratic candidates and causes. Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, by contrast, are not homes to large or powerful unions, though SEIU, for the first time, is funding Latino mobilization efforts in Arizona and Texas. The Latino neighborhoods of San Antonio and the border -- key to Rodriguez's re-election -- have long been mobilized by organizations affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation, though these organizations have traditionally shunned electoral involvement. It's not clear that they can help Rodriguez survive on Tuesday.
Teague's New Mexico district looks likely to shift back into the Republican column less because of immigration than that it is a swing district swinging right. Teague, Gifford, and Rodriguez look to be the most embattled border Democrats, though Grijalva is in trouble as well. If Ortiz loses, it will signal a Republican tsunami.
Then again, the Democrats aren't doing all that well on the country's northern border, either -- Patti Murray is hanging on by her fingernails; North Dakota is gone in the Senate and perhaps the House, too; Bart Stupak's Upper Peninsula district in Michigan is likely to go Republican; Democrat Bill Owens is clinging to a narrow lead in New York 23, which extends along most of the Empire State's border with Canada. For that matter, the Democrats aren't doing so hot in those parts of America NOT abutting Canada and Mexico. Still, it's a bad thing for a party to lose control of its borders, and the Democratic lock on the border with Mexico looks to be broken come Tuesday.