Facing a close Senate race in a changing state, Cornyn tries to con voters with his infamous two-faced two-step dance on Dreamers
New polling released by New York Times/Siena finds competitive presidential and Senate contests in Texas. Trump leads Biden by 46% – 43% in a state he won in 2016 by 9 points. GOP Senator John Cornyn is up 42-37% over Democratic challenger M.J. Hegar but well below the 50% margin every well known incumbent seeks.
As the accompanying New York Times article on the poll notes:
That a long-serving official such as Mr. Cornyn is not more firmly in control of the race illustrates the increasingly competitive nature of Texas elections and the G.O.P.’s struggles with suburban voters … he’s trailing significantly among those who live in cities and has just a two-point advantage with suburbanites, 17 percent of whom said they were still undecided.
A significant danger looming for Texas Republicans is that Mr. Trump’s hard-line immigration policies are increasingly out of step with where the state is today, and where it is heading. Three-quarters of the state’s voters support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants currently living in the country, including 98 percent of Texans under 30. Just 20 percent of Texans over all opposed such a process.
No wonder John Cornyn is now pretending he is a champion of Dreamers. In a recently-released Spanish-language ad, he claims that he “strongly supports the legalization of Dreamers.”
Say what?
As we highlighted, Cornyn’s voting record could not be clearer: he voted against bills that legalized Dreamers in 2006, 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2018.
Some champion.
No doubt stung by being called out, Cornyn is now arguing, in a Texas Tribune interview, that he has “evolved” on legislation for Dreamers: “I don’t think it’s fair to those young people to hold them hostage to a larger deal…I think we ought to do that on a standalone basis, and I’m for giving them a permanent status.”
According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
The House of Representatives passed a bill that legalizes Dreamers in 2019. It’s called the Dream and Promise Act, and it’s sitting on Mitch McConnell’s desk. Cornyn could prove he has ‘evolved’ by publicly demanding a standalone vote.
But we all know he won’t. He’s all hat and no cattle. He’s all talk and no action. He’s all promises-in-Texas and do-nothing-in-Washington.
Evidently, he’s seen the polling that shows Texans strongly support legislation that legalizes Dreamers. In fact, Texans support the legalization of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in America, including TPS holders, farm workers and other essential workers, and the many families that contribute so much to a nation that denies them citizenship. So Cornyn has an election-year conversion, says he for a solution, but does nothing to actually to make it happen.
We have seen this two-faced two-step for years. That’s why we dubbed it the Cornyn Con.
According to Mario Carrillo, Campaigns Manager of America’s Voice based in Austin, TX:
John Cornyn has been a senator for 18 years. There is currently a bill sitting in the Senate, passed by the House more than a year ago that would provide citizenship for Dreamers, as Cornyn says he wants to do. Why doesn’t John Cornyn just call on Senate Republicans to take the bill up now, and not wait until his reelection to vote on a bill the vast majority of Texans want? The answer is because he’s lying. And he’s been lying to Texas voters for almost two decades. He won’t vote for a standalone bill to protect Dreamers like my wife, who have had to withstand Trump’s attacks on DACA for almost four years. The truth is that Cornyn does not stand with our country’s young immigrants. He has enabled the worst of Trump on immigration and won’t do the right thing. We deserve better than John Cornyn.
