Obama's tarmac tiff with Arizona governor yields unclear fallout
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President Barack Obama speaks about the importance of American workers developing American-made energy to an economy that is built to last at a UPS plant Thursday in Las Vegas.
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AURORA, Colo. -- Democrats see the chance that President Barack Obama's heated exchange with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on the airport tarmac in Phoenix could help him with the Hispanic voters he came West to court this week.
The Wednesday 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 blog sites 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 president's 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. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told the "Imus in the Morning" show on Fox Business Network that Ms. Brewer had "very legitimate" concerns about the state's border and that her tarmac exchange with Mr. Obama was another display of the president's "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."
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.
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 Mr. Obama 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, 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."
First Published January 27, 2012 12:00 am
