New York Times
By Jason Horowitz
February 27, 2016
A
few weeks after Senator Marco Rubio joined a bipartisan push for an
immigration overhaul in 2013, he arrived alongside Senator Chuck Schumer
at the executive dining
room of News Corporation’s Manhattan headquarters for dinner.
Their
mission was to persuade Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the media empire,
and Roger Ailes, the chairman and chief executive of its Fox News
division, to keep the network’s
on-air personalities from savaging the legislation and give it a
fighting chance at survival.
Mr.
Murdoch, an advocate of immigration reform, and Mr. Ailes, his top
lieutenant and the most powerful man in conservative television, agreed
at the Jan. 17, 2013, meeting
to give the senators some breathing room.
But
the media executives, highly attuned to the intensifying anger in the
Republican grass roots, warned that the senators also needed to make
their case to Rush Limbaugh,
the king of conservative talk radio, who held enormous sway with the
party’s largely anti-immigrant base.
So the senators supporting the legislation turned to Mr. Rubio, the Florida Republican, to reach out to Mr. Limbaugh.
The
dinner at News Corporation headquarters — which has not been previously
reported — and the subsequent outreach to Mr. Limbaugh illustrate the
degree to which Mr. Rubio
served as the chief envoy to the conservative media for the group
supporting the legislation. The bill would have provided a pathway to
American citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants along with
measures to secure the borders and ensure that foreigners
left the United States upon the expiration of their visas.
It
is a history that Mr. Rubio is not eager to highlight as he takes on
Donald J. Trump, his rival for the Republican presidential nomination,
who has made his vow to
crack down on illegal immigration a centerpiece of his campaign.
Those
discussions of just a few years ago now seem of a distant era, when,
after the re-election of President Obama, momentum was building to
overhaul the nation’s immigration
system.
The
senators embarked on a tour of editorial boards and newsrooms, and Mr.
Rubio was even featured as the “Republican savior” on the cover of Time
magazine for his efforts
to change immigration laws. He already was being mentioned as a 2016
presidential contender.
Now
Mr. Trump has become the Republican leader in national polls by picking
fights with Mr. Ailes and offending the Latino voters whom Mr. Rubio
had hoped to bring into
the Republican fold. And while Mr. Rubio ultimately abandoned the
bipartisan legislation in the face of growing grass-roots backlash and
the collapse of the conservative media truce, he, and to a certain
degree Fox News, are still paying for that dinner.
Fox’s
ratings remain strong, but its standing among Republican viewers,
influenced by Mr. Trump’s offensive, has dropped to a three-year low,
according to YouGov BrandIndex.
And Mr. Rubio’s opponents, for whom Mr. Schumer, a Democrat from New
York, has become the ultimate villain, continue to depict the Florida
Republican as a duplicitous establishment insider.
“If
you look at the ‘Gang of Eight,’ one individual on this stage broke his
promise to the men and women who elected him and wrote the amnesty
bill,” Senator Ted Cruz
said of Mr. Rubio during Thursday’s Republican debate. And as Mr. Rubio
defended himself, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski,
posted “MARCO ‘AMNESTY’ RUBIO” on Twitter.
The
so-called Gang of Eight was four Democrats and four Republicans,
including Mr. Rubio, who drafted an immigration bill in 2013. It passed
the Senate but was stymied
by conservative opposition in the House.
Details
of the dinner, and a previous one in 2011, were provided to The New
York Times by an attendee of one of the meetings and two people with
knowledge of what was
discussed at both get-togethers.
None of the attendees agreed to be identified for this article because the conversations were supposed to be confidential.
But
on Monday, Mr. Limbaugh shed light on his interactions with the
senators when he told a caller frustrated with his criticism of Mr.
Rubio that the immigration position
the senator had advocated “comes right out of the Gang of Eight bill.”
Mr. Limbaugh added, “I’ve had it explained to me by no less than Senator Schumer.”
Mr.
Schumer declined to comment for this article. But before Mr. Obama’s
re-election and soon afterward, he could hardly stop talking with
conservative senators and media
power brokers about the chance to pass comprehensive immigration
legislation.
As
early as March 9, 2011, Mr. Schumer joined Senator Lindsey Graham,
Republican of South Carolina and another eventual member of the Gang of
Eight, at the Palm restaurant
in Manhattan, where they made their case to Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Ailes and
Mr. Limbaugh in a private room. The senators argued how damaging the
word “amnesty” was to their efforts, and walked Mr. Limbaugh through
their vision for an immigration overhaul.
The
senators were especially eager to try to neutralize conservative media,
which proved lethal to a big push for immigration changes in 2007. A
study by the Pew Research
Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism showed that conservative
news shows had devoted about a quarter of their time to immigration.
In
late 2012, after Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, lost the
presidential election in part because of his dismal performance with
Latino voters, Mr. Rubio joined
the fight. On one Sunday alone in April 2013, he made an appearance on
seven talk shows to advocate the immigration overhaul, including on “Fox
News Sunday.”
Mr.
Rubio also reached out to other conservative power brokers, including
the radio hosts Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham, telling them that the
legislation did not amount
to amnesty. The Fox anchors Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly became more
supportive.
At
the time, The Washington Post reported that Mr. Rubio’s advisers were
monitoring to the minute how much time the hosts devoted to immigration,
and that “they are heartened
that the volume is much diminished.”
Mr.
Rubio publicly and privately worked to assuage the fears of Mr.
Limbaugh, who on air called him a “thoroughbred conservative” and
assured one wary listener that “Marco
Rubio is not out to hurt this country or change it the way the liberals
are.”
On
Jan. 29, 2013, the same day Mr. Obama highlighted immigration in Las
Vegas, Mr. Limbaugh had Mr. Rubio on as a guest to talk about
immigration and called him “admirable
and noteworthy” during a warm conversation about the bipartisan
immigration plan.
“I
know for you border security is the first and last — if that doesn’t
happen, none of the rest does, right?” Mr. Limbaugh lobbed.
“Well, not just that,” swung Mr. Rubio. “That alone is not enough.”
The conversation concluded with Mr. Rubio saying: “Thank you for the opportunity, Rush. I appreciate it.”
“You bet,” Mr. Limbaugh said.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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