'08 Candidates Avoid Immigration Talk

June 15, 2007— -- The effort to cobble together a bipartisan immigration bill has forged unlikely alliances among some of the most influential members of the Senate, including liberal Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and the chairman of the Republican Party, Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida.

With the exception of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who has been under fire within his party for his part in the bill, the Senate's six declared presidential candidates have not been among them.

As a bipartisan team of negotiators worked Thursday on a deal to resume the immigration debate later this month, the lesser roles played by the Senate's most ambitious members illustrates the hurdles the legislation faces.

All six of the Senate's declared presidential candidates voted for last year's bill. This year, though none has ruled out voting for the bill, several have offered amendments that sponsors said would unravel the compromise.

"It would be nice to see more leadership," said Tom Snyder, who directs the political action committee for UNITE HERE, one of the unions pressing for passage of the immigration bill.

Stephen Hess, a political science professor at George Washington University, said the battle to win their parties' presidential nominations is forcing the senators away from the political center.

"They start to think: how will this appear to the basic constituency of my party? How will this be played by my opponents?" Hess said. "They become exceptionally cautious."

The changed atmosphere was dramatized during a testy late-night floor exchange last week — one day before Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pulled the bill from the Senate agenda.

The antagonists were Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. In the last Congress, the two were co-sponsors of a bipartisan immigration bill.

As Obama offered an amendment that would have put a five-year expiration date on a key provision of this year's bill, Graham accused the Democratic presidential candidate of abandoning "everybody over here who has walked the plank" by defying political supporters on the right and left. Graham had kind words for Kennedy's leadership but told Obama: "You are going to destroy this deal."