Yesterday we lifted up a Wall Street Journal article highlighting the DREAMers’ tireless efforts around the nation this election season, and one of the campaigns they’ve worked on the hardest is the Brian Bilbray – Scott Peters race in San Diego. They even recorded Spanish-language radio ads to to let Latino voters know where the two candidates stand, to be aired in Rep. Bilbray’s district.
The deadlocked San Diego race is one of the campaigns we profiled in our “House Races to Watch for Immigrant and Latino Voters” research doc, and it’s been gaining a lot of national attention. The incumbent, Rep. Bilbray, is a former lobbyist for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (which is a designated hate group) and chairs the extremist House Immigration Reform Caucus. He’s an anti-immigrant hardliner who opposes the DREAM Act and once said that you could identify an immigrant by the clothes he wears—“right down to the shoes” (see video below):
Challenger Scott Peters, on the other hand, supports the DREAM Act, and (according to today’s KPBS News) says that “massive deportations are an impractical way to deal with” immigrants.
According to KPBS, the difference between the two contenders on immigration has “emboldened immigrant activists to hit the streets and the airwaves.”
“On a recent afternoon,” the article continues, “about a dozen of those activists gathered outside Bilbray’s district office in Solana Beach, north of San Diego. Most were current or recently graduated undocumented students. They waved signs protesting Bilbray’s opposition to the DREAM Act. This sort of targeted mobilization by young immigrants is happening across the U.S. this election.”
With recent polling showing each candidate with 46 percent of the vote, the effort of the DREAMers could make a big difference.
