New York, Nevada Special Elections Produce Big Winner for Enforcement Advocates

The results of the two special Congressional elections held Tuesday hold good news for immigration enforcement advocates.

In Nevada, Republican Mark Amodei defeated Democrat Kate Marshall to win a House seat vacated after GOP Senator John Ensign resigned in May following an ugly ethics scandal. Governor Brian Sandoval appointed U.S. Rep. Dean Heller to fill Ensign’s Senate seat.

Amodei’s victory was widely anticipated. But it has the added advantage of putting Heller, strongly opposed to illegal immigration, into the Senate where we need more friends but still keeping a strong voice in the House. Amodei: "Illegal immigration is to Nevada and the Southwest what Hurricane Katrina was to Louisiana." Watch Amodei make his statement here.

The news from New York is even better. The 9th District in Queens will send Republican Bob Turner to Congress after his landslide victory over Democrat David Weprin. Turner, the first Republican elected in the 9^th District since 1920, campaigned on a strong immigration enforcement platform. At a pre-election candidates’ forum, Turner identified ending illegal immigration as a way to reduce U.S. unemployment. Turner also supports Arizona’s SB 1070 and ending automatic birthright citizenship for children born to illegal aliens. Turner replaces the disgraced Anthony Weiner who consistently voted in favor of amnesty and the DREAM Act.

Whether the Nevada and New York elections are another indication of growing dissatisfaction with President Obama that portends badly for him in 2012 or just low turnout, isolated cases that have no broad significance depends on who you ask.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said that in New York and Nevada, the elections were a "referendum on the failed policies of President Obama and congressional Democrats." Priebus noted that only a week after the president outlined his American Jobs Act, voters went to the polls and sent two new Republicans to Washington, "overwhelmingly rejecting Obama's Stimulus II." As Priebus sees it, the results "should be cause for concern for Democrats across the country."

Not surprisingly, Democrats dismiss the two losses. New York Rep. Steve Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee believes that Tuesday’s "are not reflective of what will happen in November 2012." [NV, NY Special Elections: A Big Victory or No Big Deal? by Paul Steinhauser, CNN, September 14, 2011]

Really, what else can Israel say? But Israel’s whistling past the graveyard aside, one thing is clear: the national trend toward more federal immigration enforcement continues to move ahead and that bodes poorly in 2012 for Democrats from Obama down who have aggressively encouraged illegal immigration and supported more entitlements for aliens.