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Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

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Friday, January 27, 2012

In Airport Run-In, Democrats See Help for Obama Among Hispanics

New York Times: Democrats see the chance that President Obama's heated exchange with Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona on the airport tarmac in Phoenix could help him with the Hispanic voters he came West to court this week.

The run-in, captured in a photograph of the governor wagging a finger at the president as they discussed her book, Scorpions for Breakfast, lit up Hispanic radio stations and blogs all over the state. While it is difficult to judge whether the moment will have any lasting impact, Hispanic leaders said that what is being dubbed by some as the dustup in the desert could play in the presidents favor given the unfavorable view many Hispanics have of the governor for her advocacy of tough immigration measures.

For that incident alone, Robert Meza, a Democratic state senator from Phoenix, said Thursday, 85 percent more Latin people will gravitate toward the president.

Republicans saw the incident in another light. Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, told the show Imus in the Morning on Fox Business Network that Ms. Brewer had very legitimate concerns about the states border and that her tarmac exchange with Mr. Obama was another display of the presidents prickly personality.

Appearing on Fox News on Thursday, Ms. Brewer said Mr. Obama had walked off while she was still talking. "You know me, when I talk, I am animated and I talk with my hands," she said, explaining her finger-wagging. I suppose that the picture was probably shot when I was moving my hands around.

In an interview with ABC News that was broadcast Thursday, Mr. Obama said the conflict was being blown out of proportion.

"I'm usually accused of not being intense enough, right?" he said, laughing. "Too relaxed."

The book, in which Ms. Brewer takes the federal government to task for what she calls lax enforcement of immigration laws, is, like Ms. Brewer herself, unpopular among Latinos, particularly in Arizona, a state Mr. Obama is hoping to put in play this election year.

The president, for his part, was doing all he could to build his standing among voters in this potentially crucial bloc. While his five-state tour is ostensibly meant to roll out the tax, manufacturing, energy, education and jobs proposals he unveiled in his State of the Union address this week, the White House made sure that three of the states on the high-profile itinerary were swing states where the Hispanic vote will be crucial.

Besides Arizona, the president traveled to Nevada, visiting a UPS plant on Thursday to talk about energy proposals, before heading to Colorado to give another speech. He took along with him Luis Miranda, his director of Hispanic media.

And he gave interviews to two Spanish-language television networks on the trip, one to Telemundo on Thursday in Las Vegas and one on Wednesday to Univision, which has increasingly been influencing the view of national politics among Hispanics.

During Mr. Obama's Univision interview, the anchor Maria Elena Salinas pressed the president on one of the few potential sore spots that could hurt his chances of winning large numbers of Hispanic voters: the record numbers of deportations since he took office.

"Over 1.2 million people have been deported under your administration," Ms. Salinas said. "More families separated under your administration than any other president. You couldn't do anything administratively for this?"

Mr. Obama sought to turn the question around to reflect his other efforts on behalf of immigrants, particularly those with no criminal background.

"That's the law that's on the books right now," he said, quickly adding: "What we have systematically done, is to use our administrative authority to prioritize and say, 'Let's not focus on Dream Act kids. Let's not focus on a law-abiding family that is out there trying to, you know, make their way. Let's focus on folks who are engaged in criminal activity."

While Mr. Obama acknowledged during the Univision interview that his Spanish is not very good, he still managed to delight the crowd during his speech in Chandler, Ariz. One man yelled, "Barack es mi hermano!" which means "Barack is my brother." Mr. Obama shouted back: "Mi hermano, mucho gusto," for "My brother, good to meet you."

As the Republican presidential candidates battle it out in Florida for Latino voters, Mr. Obama's Spanish-language outreach has been under way in other critical states, where his backers have been running Spanish-language advertisements. Seeking an edge in the Florida presidential primary, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have broadcast Spanish-language commercials in that state, and both men also gave interviews to Univision this week.

Publicly, the White House treated the confrontation with Ms. Brewer with a scripted, and bland, retelling. "Political theater," the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, told reporters aboard Air Force One to Denver.

But privately, one administration official, when asked on Thursday about the Wednesday confrontation, offered: "Let's just say I don't think yesterday was a bad day."

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