Tuesday, September 9th, 2008...6:47 pm
Because He’s a Sensible Moderate, Probably…
Numbers USA, a anti-immigration group so far out there that they actually support the repeal of reconstruction amendments to the Constitution, has a list of endorsements in Arizona congressional races on their website.
The endorsements include, interestingly, Dwight Leister, who ended up not even filing. The endorsements also include Gene Chewning and Preston Korn, both of whom lost their primaries.
Their fourth endorsement is the one that is still standing: Tim Bee.
Bee voted with the Republican caucus on the more onerous anti-immigrant legislation that came before the State Senate, but he hasn’t staked out a particularly strident stance on immigration in this campaign yet. He, unlike Randy Graf (who Numbers USA endorsed in 2006), doesn’t seem to fit the profile of the sort of guy they like.
The endorsement, evidently, is based on a questionaire Bee filled out for the organization. I guess they know something about him the rest of us don’t.
NB – I’m not sure what exactly an endorsement from Numbers USA does anyhow. A study issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center a few years ago noted that not only does Numbers USA and the other groups in the anti-immigrant network have over inflated membership numbers, but they have fundraising bases that number around a dozen. So this gives a candidate hardly anything at all.
8 Comments
September 9th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
The first claim involves a topic too complex for a site like this, so let me just suggest looking at the thoughts of those who came up with the amendment. While I’m sure NumbersUSA doesn’t have as many members as the SPLC – or at least anywhere near the money that that group has – they do have one thing going for them at least: unlike the SPLC they don’t have an indirect link to the MexicanGovernment. Oh, and they also played a major role in blocking the legislation that the MexicanGovernment and all their useful idiots in the U.S. tried to ram through Congress.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
No idea what the first guy is talking about….
However, we should be aware that Numbers USA is one of the nation’s most reactionary, nativist anti-immigrant organizations. They are big fans of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s policy of using local law enforcement as immigration agents.
Congress will likely to be faced with the choice of endorsing those policies in the future — if this group has endorsed Bee we can make a pretty good guess about where he stands.
September 10th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Let’s be clear about the 14th Amendment. The language in the Amendment is so specific and far-reaching because it was intended to overturn the Dred Scott decision where the Supreme Court claimed that slaves or their descendents could not be citizens.
24ahead is right: some of the original supporters of the amendment did not want it to apply to those children born to immigrants and they also did not want it to apply to Native Americans.
But the Supreme Court ruled in subsequent years that the 14th does apply to Native Americans and to the children of immigrants. The 14th also formed the basis for the Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board and all of the cases that enshrined the right to privacy in this country.
The ramifications of the repeal of the 14th Amendment would be sweeping in scope and would undermine much of the progress that this country has made in the last century and a half.
For Bee to accept the endorsement of this group is astounding.
September 10th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I should have caught this earlier, but the claim in the post and the last comment that NumbersUSA wants to repeal the whole 14th amendment is false.
September 10th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Just keep in mind that last week in CD-1, a candidate (Sandra Livingstone) who openly supported legal work permits for all undocumented immigrants already here came much closer than anyone expected to winning in a Republican primary.
A lot of people are just plain sick of all the immigrant bashing that’s going on. With oil still on the other side of $100 a barrel, the Government having to take over two of the largest companies in the world and characters like Ahmadinejad and Putin to deal with, it’s amazing that some people are still more worried about what else we can do to make it tougher on Mexicans who are here looking for a job.
In fact, the anti-immigrant crowd makes a lot more noise than they can back up at the polls. Name me ONE single incumbent in either party who has lost because he or she wasn’t anti-immigrant enough. They bark plenty loud, but sooner or later somebody will look behind the partition and find out that the anti-immigrant so-called “movement” isn’t such a big dog as they sound like. More like a mouse with a megaphone.
September 10th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
WE’RE TALKING ABOUT HUMAN BEINGS HERE, not numbers or statistics. People who are afraid of these economic refugees need to calm down and remember that their relatives were most likely in the same boat, so to speak, at one time.
September 11th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Bridget, I call them economic refugees too. Because that’s what they are. Let’s face it, no one would voluntarily leave their family thousands of miles behind to do backbreaking labor for low wages if they had better options back home. This is the direct result of corporatism and policies that screw all workers, everywhere. The plutocrats want to turn the entire planet into a sweatshop. The people who resent immigrants are misdirecting their anger. The problem is in the boardrooms, not at the borders.
September 13th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Actually, Korn didn’t lose his primary — he withdrew after filing and endorsed Sandra Livingstone, and his name (I believe) did not appear on the ballot.
So two of the group’s endorsements were of people who weren’t even on the ballot come Election Day.