When Representative Yadira Caraveo, Democrat of Colorado, addressed a largely Latino crowd this week at an event to celebrate the Day of the Dead, she came with a message of compassion and solidarity with immigrants.
“The Democratic Party is here to celebrate the Latino future of the United States and to work together to elevate our community,” the Colorado Democrat said in Spanish, accusing Republicans of using “ugly words” to demonize immigrants like her parents, both of whom entered the United States illegally from Mexico.
But in debates with her Republican challenger and on the airwaves, Ms. Caraveo has been sending a very different message in a tough re-election race, criticizing the Biden administration for failing to crack down on illegal immigration and vowing to get tough on the border if she keeps her House seat in her state’s Eighth District.
“Yadira Caraveo knows how broken immigration is, just like we do,” a local county sheriff says in one of her campaign ads. It began airing just weeks after Ms. Caraveo was one of only six Democrats in the House to vote in support of a Republican-written measure condemning Vice President Kamala Harris for failing to secure the border.
Ms. Caraveo’s pivot is a matter of political necessity. The first-term congresswoman from Colorado’s newest swing district is facing a challenge from Gabe Evans, a Republican military veteran and former police officer endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, who has made border security problems — and blaming Ms. Caraveo for them — a centerpiece of his campaign.
The race is one of roughly two dozen competitive contests that will determine which party controls the House, where Republicans now hold a slim majority.
Ms. Caraveo’s approach is also part of a national trend, as Democrats in battleground House districts from Pennsylvania to Arizona adopt the sort of get-tough stance on immigration that has long been associated with Republicans, in a bid to win over independent voters who could determine which party controls Congress. It is not clear the strategy is working.
The tactic was inspired by the victory of Tom Suozzi, a New York Democrat who flipped a House seat in a special election early this year by promising to pursue stricter immigration enforcement and asylum laws. Republicans had just killed a bipartisan border security deal in Congress at Mr. Trump’s behest, and Democrats seized on Mr. Suozzi’s win as proof that they could prevail in tight races by portraying themselves as more trustworthy and practical than the G.O.P. on immigration.
So far, there is little evidence that is happening. Border security remains a top issue nationally, and in Ms. Caraveo’s race, a recent poll showed that 80 percent of voters who count it as one of their top two issues — which includes about a third of both undecided and likely voters — support Mr. Evans.
The district, which was created after the 2020 census, stretches from the north suburbs of Denver up through the agricultural areas around Greeley. Almost 40 percent of residents are Latino, a group that heavily favored Ms. Caraveo two years ago. But it also includes some of Colorado’s most staunchly Republican strongholds, where residents have been alarmed by the recent waves of Venezuelan migrants to the Denver area and a rise in affiliated gang activity and crime.
“She’s running as fast and as far away from her own record as she can,” Mr. Evans said of Ms. Caraveo in an interview this week at a coffee shop in Greeley, after telling about a dozen voters assembled there that the best way to improve public safety was to secure the border.
“She can say whatever she wants to try to pull the wool over the voters’ eyes, but the fact is, she voted to lower the penalty for drug dealers in Colorado, she voted for defund the police policies,” Mr. Evans said, adding: “She voted for sanctuary city and state laws.”
Nationally, Republican operatives see the Democrats’ rush to battle them on border security as confirmation that the center of the immigration debate has shifted rightward in recent years, as record waves of cross-border migration have strained public services not just in border states, but major American cities like New York and Denver.
Democratic Party leaders concede that their candidates are unlikely to win over voters whose biggest concern is immigration, but they insist that in swing districts like Ms. Caraveo’s, a pro-enforcement pitch can help broaden their appeal to the swing voters who will decide who wins.
“Single-issue voters, you know, might be a challenge,” said Representative Pete Aguilar of New Mexico, the chairman of the Democratic caucus, who was in Colorado this week to campaign with Ms. Caraveo. “But if someone just feels that we need to address this issue, I think they’re going to look at Yadira’s record and know that she’s addressing this issue.”
Other Democrats in competitive races around the country have tried the tactic as they work to distance themselves from others in their party in a bid to appeal to independents.
“There’s a crisis on the border. Too many Democrats deny it,” Janelle Stelson, a former television anchor running to unseat Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, says during a campaign ad that began airing over the last few weeks. In it, she accuses her opponent of playing politics with the border, and says: “Here’s what I’m for: Hire more border agents, kick out migrants here illegally and shut down the border when needed.”
In Arizona, Amish Shah, a doctor and state representative challenging Republican Representative David Schweikert says in an ad: “I worked with both parties to increase border security and took on my own party as the only Democrat to crack down on fentanyl traffickers.”
In an interview, Ms. Caraveo insisted that her new pro-enforcement focus was not incompatible with her pro-immigrant views, and in fact was in line with the views of Latinos who are dismayed by the dysfunction at the border.
“Latino constituents that I represent are telling me they didn’t have a way to immigrate legally, that they have not had a way to legalize their status in about 40 years, and they don’t understand why they don’t get that opportunity,” she said. “But then they see people coming over the border claiming asylum, and suddenly they’re at the front of the line.”
Mr. Evans has had his own balancing act to perform on immigration matters. He has tried to distance his border security message from the nativist statements of Mr. Trump, who stoked fear in the local community last month when he came to Aurora, Colo., — just south of the district — and promised, if elected, to begin a campaign of mass deportations there.
Mr. Evans, whose grandparents were Mexican immigrants, made a short speech at Mr. Trump’s Aurora event, but avoided the subject of immigration altogether. In the interview, he said he wasn’t interested in deporting anybody but criminals and members of gangs and cartels.
Undocumented immigrants who have been in the United States for a long time without running afoul of the law would have to get in line, he explained, but “a line that moves faster, and not necessarily a line that means they have to leave.”
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