Immigration big in Calif. race
Feinstein foe’s ad spot a hit in left-leaning state
LOS ANGELES — Sen. Dianne Feinstein was fighting for her political life in 1994, facing a tight election that was swinging on the issue of immigration.
Proposition 187, which would cut many public services to those in California illegally, was leading in the polls, and her Republican opponent for the U.S. Senate, Michael Huffington, had embraced it. Her own television campaign ad captured a shadowy image, presumably of immigrants streaming across the border from Mexico, and touted her efforts to secure the border. Yet with weeks to go before Election Day, the Democrat stood strong against Prop 187.
She won, despite the wave of support for the measure.
California is a much different state both politically and demographically 24 years later. And as Feinstein seeks re-election this year, she is facing another immigration challenge, this time from the left.
Her Democratic opponent, state Sen. Kevin de Leon, released a video last week attacking her stance on immigration and making parallels between comments Feinstein made in the 1990s about criminal immigrants and recent anti-immigrant quotes from President Donald Trump, whose crackdown is highly unpopular in California.
Feinstein has emerged as a foe of the president, having clashed with the administration on issues including gun control, immigration and women’s rights. But she also faces criticism from more liberal Democrats, who say she should be doing more to fight Trump’s agenda.
De Leon said in an interview Wednesday that he wants Californians to understand that Feinstein’s priority in Congress has not been protecting immigrants.
The video is an attempt by de
Leon to spark interest in a campaign that has gotten little attention and in a race where he trails in the polls. A survey released Wednesday by Reuters/ipsos/uva Center for Politics Poll showed Feinstein with a 20-point lead over de Leon.
De Leon has tried to position himself as a leader of the California resistance to Trump in a state that is home to a quarter of the country’s immigrants, including roughly 2.3 million living here without legal residency.
He was a key architect of California’s “sanctuary state” legislation, the most far-reaching of its kind in the country. It limits state and local law enforcement communication with federal immigration authorities, and prevents officers from questioning and holding people on immigration violations.
But the bill sent to Gov. Jerry Brown was a drastically scaled-back version of the first version of SB 54, the result of tough negotiations between Brown and de Leon in the last weeks of the legislative session.
In rejecting the notion that Feinstein hasn’t been a leader in protecting California’s immigrant communities, her supporters noted the parallels between what Feinstein is quoted saying in the video and what de Leon himself has supported.
Her supporters also pointed out that Feinstein authored legislation to stop Trump’s policy of separating children from their families at the border, and voted to preserve DACA many times.
However, de Leon’s ad struck a chord with several in the immigrant rights movement.