Posted on 11/18/2002 6:23:24 PM PST by Mark Felton
November 18, 2002
Target: Tom Tancredo
Some Say GOPPrimary Challenge Likely
By Josh Kurtz He represents one of the most conservative districts in the nation. He just trounced his Democratic challenger by 37 points. Yet Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) may be one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the 2004 election cycle.
Tancredo, a controversial, outspoken voice for the Republican right who is entering his third term, has angered leading Republicans back home and in the White House.
The House Member's criticisms of President Bush's immigration policy bought him a 40-minute rebuke earlier this year from Bush adviser Karl Rove, who, in the Congressman's own words, warned him "never to darken the door of the White House again." And his decision to renounce his pledge to serve only three terms has infuriated powerful Colorado Republicans, including his political patron, former Sen. Bill Armstrong (R).
"I'll be surprised if he doesn't have a primary [in 2004]," said Floyd Ciruli, an independent Colorado pollster.
Several Republicans, including popular state Treasurer Mike Coffman, who just won a landslide re-election of his own, are considering taking on Tancredo in the '04 primary.
Other potential candidates include state Sen. Jim Dyer (R) and former Arapahoe County Commissioner Steve Ward. "It's a given" that someone will run against the 56-year-old lawmaker, Coffman said. "There are questions about his term-limit pledge. When you have someone like Senator Armstrong, who was his mentor, backing away from him - I think that resonates."
Armstrong was instrumental in getting Tancredo elected in the first place, endorsing him over four strong opponents in a competitive GOP primary to replace retiring Rep. Dan Schaefer (R) in 1998. By Tancredo's reckoning, Armstrong's blessing was worth 3 points at the polls - which just happened to be his margin of victory in the primary.
Even though he may not seek re-election in 2004 - and would consider running for Senate if Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R) retires - he has chucked the term-limit promise nevertheless.
"The term-limit pledge in and of itself is not the deciding factor if he will run again," said Tancredo spokeswoman Lara Kennedy.
Like all Members who change their minds on term limits, Tancredo has cast his decision as being in the best interests of his district and pet causes. Tancredo wants to preserve his seniority for his suburban district south of Denver and angle for better committee assignments. Plus, he does not want to lose the momentum he has built fighting the government's open immigration policies, Kennedy said. Tancredo is the founder of the House Immigration Reform Caucus.
While plenty of politicians have broken their term-limit pledges before, including Rep. Scott McInnis (R-Colo.), Tancredo's decision is more noteworthy because he once headed Colorado's term-limit organization.
"All too often you have terrific candidates who come to Washington with the best of intentions, but they get too comfortable, and when the time comes, they don't want to go home," lamented Stacie Rumenap, a spokeswoman for U.S.Term Limits.
Whether Tancredo suffers any political damage remains to be seen. So far, the handful of Members who have broken their pledges, including McInnis, have not suffered any consequences at the polls, Rumenap conceded. And U.S.Term Limits is not in the business of recruiting challengers to incumbents who have broken the pledge.
Tancredo has promised to return campaign contributions to donors who are dismayed at his decision to ignore the term-limits pledge. But Armstrong - who did not respond to several messages left at his Denver law office - called the refund offer "hollow," according to The Rocky Mountain News.
Armstrong, meanwhile, has offered some kind words about Coffman.
"Mike Coffman is someone the Republican Party and the people of Colorado will rally around,"he told the News. "There is no doubt in my mind that he will be on the short list for whatever comes along - it could be governor, it could be Senator, it could be Congress."
Coffman, in fact, began running for Congress last year - in the new 7th district, which adjoins Tancredo's. But when the final district lines were drawn, Coffman found himself in Tancredo's 6th district, just a few blocks from the 7th, and chose not to move or run.
Coffman said that while he has not given much thought to the 2004 election yet, he believes that Tancredo will be vulnerable. The three Republicans most frequently mentioned as challengers are all military veterans, while Tancredo is not, and that could make a difference in a district that values military service, political insiders said.
Coffman, a 47-year-old Marine Corps vet who served in Operation Desert Storm, said Tancredo's military deferments during the Vietnam War would hurt him as America prepares to attack Iraq, and could be linked to his decision to ignore the term-limit pledge.
"Here's a guy ordering young men off to war and he himself didn't serve," he said. "I think in this conservative district, something like that could resonate."
Certainly, Tancredo's record would contrast with Coffman's, or Dyer's, who is an Air Force veteran, or Ward's, who is a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps Reserves and is on active duty in Florida.
Dyer called it "highly unlikely" that he would challenge Tancredo, but said somebody else might, and predicted that the term-limit issue would sting the incumbent.
"I think a number of people that support Tom are not going to support him if he breaks the term-limit pledge,"said Dyer, who was a surrogate for Tancredo at a candidate forum this fall. "We can't say that situational ethics is bad for party A but not for party B."
Ward, a former mayor of suburban Glendale, could not be reached for comment, but is expected to return to Colorado next year. In an interview with the News after completing his one term on the Arapahoe County Commission, Ward made his opinion of politicians who stay in office too long perfectly clear.
"Any politician who can't find the bathrooms in the first week doesn't deserve to be in public office," he said.
It is unclear whether the White House would try to get involved in a primary challenge to Tancredo.
But it is fair to say that Tancredo is not one of the president's favorite people. Earlier this year, the Congressman accused Bush of pandering to Hispanic voters and trying to prop up Mexican President Vicente Fox by offering amnesty to certain undocumented immigrants. That declaration brought an angry 40-minute phone call from Rove, and Bush pointedly failed to introduce Tancredo to the crowd during a political rally in Colorado in September.
With his hard-line views on immigration, Tancredo is no stranger to controversy. In 1999, he gained publicity for reaffirming his support for gun owners' rights just days after the massacre at Columbine High School, which is six blocks from his house.
The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report last summer linking Tancredo to extremist groups, which the Congressman dismissed as "McCarthyism."
And he was embarrassed earlier this year when it was revealed that undocumented workers had been hired to do some construction work on his Littleton home.
But pollster Ciruli said Tancredo's views on immigration are in line with his constituents'.
"Nobody who's going to argue the soft side of immigration is going to beat him in the Republican primary, or even in the general," he said.
After seeing two fairly viable opponents get wiped out by Tancredo in 1998 and 2000, Democrats appear to have abandoned the 6th district - leaving Republicans there to decide whether they want him to remain in office.
Debo ir sigo abajo el parque del acoplado en donde usted vive, y le pelo de su hermana apenas bastante tiempo para golpear hacia fuera qué pocos dientes putrefactos todavía siguen siendo su boca.
Splain please?
Why haven't you addressed the failings of this persons own goverment instead of blaming ours? What are you a liberal?
Well, all I can say is you don't read many of the posts on this and other sites and you must not talk to many people in the real world. I do and many, many of all walks of life, and all ethnicity, and all ages, and all political persuasion believe it and are just as puzzled.
But I pray every day that I am totally wrong. Everyday I see or hear something else that reinforces what I fear. I would like to be proven wrong - can you do it. I mean that sincerely.
Well plenty of us do have doubts. I would bet Bush has spent more time telling V.Fox what his plans are for the borders than the American people on this side of the line.
How can he make promises to the American people and still be politically correct to the Hispanic Groups and the Immigration Lawyers, and the Immigration Groups, on and on. American Citizens should be the first and foremost group he speaks to per his oath of office.!!!!!
That's the Colombian government's department.
Why is this such a difficult concept for you?
Just a few borders laws - you know the laws that keep people from coming in illegally. You know the ones that allows anyone and everyone who wants to come in - including - well just about anything can come across our borders and bring just about anything with them. Even before 9/11 he encouraged this with his speeches about the 'hard-working, etc., etc., ' 'Just want a better life', speeches. That is not upholding the law. He has plenty of laws and plenty of people to do a pretty effective job of protecting the borders and protecting the people of the US - he has not done so. Why?
LOL!
The Republican party like the Democrat party is a team sport. One side has to have the house, the senate, the presidency and the courts working as a team to effect any change.
When some back bencher decides he wants to call the plays, he will be an ex player.
It does not matter how good the quarterback is, if he defies the coach he is on the bench watching the rest of the team play. And your boy is not a quarterback. He is a third string sub who has yet to ever get in a game. Go against any president and his play book, and he will take you out of the starting line up if you are on it,and put you on the bench if you are not already there. Idiots dumb enought to mouth off while sitting on the bench are thrown off the team. Your boy will get kicked off the team in 2004. Insubordination can not be tolerated on any team. Certainly not a political team.
Welcome to the real world. To change a system one has to work his way to the top. Any idiot at the bottom dumb enough to try to defy those at the top, will find those at the top will squash him like a bug.
Most bugs never even see the fly swatter coming until it is too late.
Well considering the drug cartels are using the mexican military we are going to have to give the border patrol alot of teeth. I wouldnt exactly say its a police officer's job to take on military units.
Thanks for the reply which was a bit more respectful than some others on this volatile subject... I will converse with you about it:
I, too, agree that the present iteration of our border guards is insufficient. That is obvious to all. We do need a new "Border Guard" which is a powerful force. I believe we actually ought to create a new division of the military. Recall that for about 30 years, our air units were "Army Air Force", and were split off to become the AF in (i believe) 1947. It appears time for us to do something similar now.
Using our (for argument purposes) Army to do border patrol really debases the purpose of our soldiers. They have very precious training time ... time that they need to use to prepare for WAR --- driving tanks and coordinating battle exercises and etc. Using this time preparing them for a job of glorified policemen is a dumb idea when they really need to be concerned about killing people and breaking things. I'm not well versed in exactly the dynamics of how our "peacekeeping" troops have worked in Bosnia, etc... but if the primary folks doing that job are not MP's we are wasting other soldiers' time. If we have expanded the MP proportion in the Army to accomodate the 'Toon's (and other) "peacekeeping", then fine. However, that is not the concept of our military fighting units.
The Border Guard service, joining the other services along with the Army/Navy/AirForce/Marines would be able to concentrate their efforts more precisely. Forget tanks and helicopter gunships... they would work with people detectors and sophisticated nets and control gasses and other capture techniques. Fences/IR/radar/etc. would be lead their budget requests, not Artillery pieces, and as such, those items would be able to garner more support. Their training time would be focussed on guarding population and catching illegals, instead of the conduct of war. They would not be trying to kill and maim people, though they would certainly be authorized to do so, as do our police. If they needed more firepower than they typically use, they can work a combined operation with the Army. They would not have to deal with present courts for US citizens, but would go to a military court for judgement of the status of an illegal who was caught instead, if that were necessary.
Our Army would benefit by freeing them from the overburdening demands of this extra task that they are not designed for. Our populace would benefit by having people trained for the task of guarding borders. The present border services can concentrate far more on vetting those who are crossing the border at legal checkpoints, and will be relieved of their additional duty of keeping some type of track of the open border areas. Our courts would be shielded from the idiotic burdens of non-citizens suits. In addition, we would have trained people who are much more suited for the tasks of "peacekeeping" should our country find it necessary to support another "peacekeeping force" after an Army operation.
Far more can be done to expand on this, but I think you can get the idea from this. The time has come for this.
FReegards.
Rep. Tancredo (R-CO), Chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus, and several Members of the Caucus called on the President to immediately deploy troops along the U.S. border and unveiled a major border protection initiative during a press conference on Capitol Hill |
Yeah, open borders to keep the cheap labor train rolling. I'm not questioning their consistency, only their naivete. We can't take in the world.
Are you saying, flat-out, that it was RIGHT for our government to put that Colombian family into a position where they had to choose between saving their son and obeying our laws?
Do you have any idea how many people are making bogus claims of asylum every year? If we investigated every single one of them as you think we should it would cost billions of dollars and thousands more agents would need to be hired.
I feel for his personal circumstances assuming they're true, but we have to look at the overall picture, which includes the citizens of the US. We come first don't we? The fact is we are being swamped, and it isn't possible for us to be concerned with everyone else's problems in the world.
And if you don't believe that, just go read his personal memoirs. If you can stand it, that is.
LOL!
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