Black, Boyd use immigrant scare tactics on voters
The hunt for a bogeyman in the Tennessee Republican gubernatorial race must have sent all the leading candidates to the same dungeon.
They came away with the one issue — immigration — designed to scare voters toward their respective campaigns and away from their opponents.
The two top GOP hopefuls in particular, U.S. Rep. Diane Black and former Economic and Community Development commissioner Randy Boyd, have talked more about immigration recently than about education, job creation and health care.
The rhetoric seems aimed at turning undocumented immigrants — and by extension all immigrants who hail from south of the U.S. border — into scary figures from some lagoon created by liberals.
“Illegal is illegal”, Boyd boldly proclaims in one recent television ad in which he vows to “wipe out” dangerous immigrant gangs if elected governor.
As The Tennessean accurately pointed out, Boyd offers “no evidence (that) dangerous gangs of illegal immigrants are running rampant in the state.”
Not to be outdone, Black promises that if she’s elected, she will crack down on all immigrants who are in the state illegally, and will put an end to the federal government’s “catch and release” approach.
“There will be no sanctuary cities and no sanctuary policies on my watch,” she touts in one ad, in
which a narrator notes that the southern border is 760 miles from Tennessee. “Liberals won’t enforce our immigration laws, but our next governor (Black) will.”
Black then adds, “Deputies, police and state troopers will all help enforce the law, or else. No in-state tuition for illegal immigrants, and I will support the president’s efforts to build that wall.”
Never mind that no sanctuary cities exist in Tennessee, and the governor has nothing to do with whether a wall gets built on the border or not.
Gov. Bill Haslam, who opted to allow a new bill banning sanctuary cities to become law without his signature, was spot on when he lamented that the candidates seeking to replace him are discussing issues that have little to do with the job of governor.
“I hope the conversation goes to things that the governor’s job is really about,” he said.
Don’t count on it, sir. The GOP hopefuls have found their bogeyman and they are dead set on scaring voters with faux images of MS-13 gang members marauding through the streets from Union City to Johnson City.
In a way, it reminds me of a gubernatorial campaign from a different era. The 1963 race for governor in Mississippi featured candidates who found their bogeymen in President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert Kennedy.
Democrat Paul B. Johnson Jr., who survived a tough primary battle that year, went on to easily defeat upstart Republican Rubel Phillips in the general election. Both Johnson and Phillips made hatred of the Kennedys a main issue because of their pro-integration and civil rights stance.
Johnson repeatedly reminded voters that he defied the Kennedy brothers and worked closely with then-governor Ross Barnett in a failed attempt to keep African-American James Meredith from enrolling at the University of Mississippi. While Phillips kept telling voters if they hated the Kennedys, they should not vote for the party of Kennedy.
Of course, I’m not implying that today’s racial hatred rivals that of 1963. But the dog whistles that the top gubernatorial candidates are using regarding immigration are eerily similar.
Both Boyd and Black are hoping voters forget that they once supported initiatives designed to make life better for undocumented immigrants. Boyd once contributed $250,000 to a program to help create more culinary entrepreneurs, including immigrants.
In Black’s case, she voted for a bill in 2001, when she was a state lawmaker, to grant driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.
So perhaps the winner of the August GOP primary will soften the rhetoric in a general election campaign against a Democratic opponent. Perhaps the frightful image of a sinister immigrant won’t be needed in the fall.
Or perhaps I’m merely dreaming of a campaign full of relevant localized issues that, like the bogeyman, does not exist.
Otis Sanford holds the Hardin Chair of Excellence in Journalism and Strategic Media at the University of Memphis. Contact him at 901-678-3669 or at o.sanford@memphis.edu. Follow him on Twitter @otissanford and watch his commentaries on WATN Local 24 News weekdays at 5 p.m.