The story of the past week in immigration is the fact Republicans don’t want to solve the border “crisis,” because they want to run on it. And now, if Tuesday’s special election for New York’s 3rd District is any indication, it looks like voters are finally clueing in to how Republicans are refusing to actually tackle issues of governing.
On Tuesday night, recounting her discussions with voters in the lead-up to the special election, CNN’s Dana Bash said, “Several of [the voters] said to me that they don’t want to vote for the Republican, because it’s clearly impossible to get a solution on the issue of immigration. … And the fact that Republicans killed that bipartisan deal put them over the edge to vote for Tom Suozzi.”
The district’s newly elected Democrat, Tom Suozzi, definitely benefited from timing. The election was held days after Senate Republicans—goaded along by the MAGA House conference—rejected what is arguably the most conservative border and immigration policy bill in a generation, on the orders of Donald Trump.
It was a gift for Suozzi, and he ran with it, including hijacking his opponent’s press event at a Queens migrant shelter and making the point that she was trying to exploit the issue. Suozzi blamed Republicans for “political game-playing” on immigration and hammered on it in his victory speech. “Stop running around for Trump and start running the country,” Suozzi told Republicans.
This is the playbook for Democrats to go on offense on immigration. Sen. Chris Murphy, the lead Senate negotiator for the Democrats on that bipartisan bill, wrote a memo to his colleagues urging them to use it. “Suozzi messaged aggressively on the issue, running ads that highlighted his support for a secure border and legal pathways to citizenship,” Murphy wrote. “He flipped the script on his Republican opponent, successfully painting her as unserious about border security because of her opposition to the bipartisan border bill, and turned what could have been a devastating political liability into an advantage.”
It looks like President Joe Biden is going to run with it, too. White House spokesperson Andrew Bates issued this statement: “When President Biden worked with Republicans and Democrats in the Senate to deliver the toughest, fairest border security legislation in decades, Speaker Johnson killed it—choosing politics, Donald Trump and fentanyl traffickers over the Border Patrol Union and America’s national security.”
How handy is it for Democrats that Donald Trump has volunteered to take the blame?
RELATED STORIES:
Democrats flip George Santos’ seat, cutting GOP’s slim majority even further
Republicans would rather campaign on the border crisis than solve it
McConnell considers killing major immigration deal to help Trump
