Texas Gov. Rick Perry, eager to re-energize his struggling primary campaign for president, turned for support Tuesday to one of the country's most unapologetic crusaders against illegal immigration.
Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio -- the tough-talking, anti-illegal-immigrant sheriff from Maricopa County who is known for controversial immigration raids in Hispanic neighborhoods and for housing some inmates in tents -- gave Perry his endorsement and joined him on the campaign trail in New Hampshire.
"The federal government has failed on border crime and border enforcement, and no candidate for president has done more to secure the border than Governor Rick Perry," Arpaio said in a news release quickly distributed by the Perry campaign.
With Arpaio at his side, Perry told his New Hampshire audience that, if elected president, he would secure the border with Mexico within a year, deport all undocumented immigrants who are apprehended and stand against amnesty.
"My policy will be to detain and to deport every illegal alien that we apprehend," Perry said while in New Hampshire, according to the Texas Tribune.
Arpaio's endorsement provided Perry and his campaign the break they have been seeking as they try to reverse his steep drop in the polls after several poor debate performances. It is an opportunity that they hope will bolster Perry's appeal with conservative Republican voters, who see him as soft on border security because of his support of a Texas law that granted in-state tuition to qualifying undocumented immigrants at the state's colleges and universities.
But the traction that Perry could gain from the endorsement may still not be enough to revive his primary campaign, and he risks alienating Latino voters if he makes it to the general election, said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University.
"It's not a game changer," Jillson said.
Jillson added that Perry is primarily polling in single digits nationally, a tough fall for the governor who entered the race for the Republican nomination with front-runner status. He said Perry will have to try to hang on beyond the primary in New Hampshire, where he is polling at only 4 percent.
"New Hampshire is a very tough state for him," Jillson said. "He probably has to hope that he's still alive when the voting comes to South Carolina and that he can do much better there, but I think that's increasingly a long shot."
The endorsement and Perry's promise to "secure the border within a year" with more manpower, strategic fencing and aerial resources was competing for national attention alongside news of GOP candidate Herman Cain's decision to reassess his campaign, news of Europe's financial debt crisis and even stories of Perry's latest flub. Perry got the minimum voting age and the day of the general election wrong at a town hall meeting the same day he announced the Arpaio endorsement.
But the news did not slip past Lauro Garza, who is the Texas state director for Somos Republicans, the nation's largest conservative Latino group. Garza left the Republican Party after Cain floated the idea of an electrified fence along the border. The past Perry supporter said he became disillusioned with the governor when news first broke that he was courting Arpaio's endorsement.
"It is simply disgusting that Rick Perry would do this," Garza said about Perry's wholehearted acceptance of the endorsement. "Joe Arpaio is most certainly not America's sheriff. I am a veteran police officer and I am as qualified as he is and I can assure you that he is violating federal and state law and he is violating the rights of Americans in Arizona. He is a dreadful excuse for law enforcement and an even more dreadful excuse as a Republican."
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Rick Perry Embraces Anti-immigration Crusader Joe Arpaio
6:34 PM
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