Democrats think they’ve found a winning border message

Democrats are increasingly convinced they’ve found a winning message on the border after their big victory in New York’s special election this week.

The formula: Hit Republicans for tanking the Senate’s bipartisan border deal, while emphasizing that they themselves still support legal pathways to citizenship. Rep.-elect Tom Suozzi leaned heavily on that combo as he took back his old Long Island House District Tuesday in a contest dominated by the migrant crisis that has often bedeviled Democrats and dogged President Biden’s poll numbers.

In a memo to colleagues on Wednesday, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. called Suozzi’s campaign a “roadmap” other Democrats should follow on border politics.

“Historically, we’ve hoped this issue wouldn’t show up in our campaigns. And we were pretty unsure of how to talk about it when it did,” Murphy, who was the lead Democratic negotiator on the border bill, told Semafor. “I think what the special election showed is that, when we lead confidently on this issue, we at the very least can pull to a draw with Republicans.”

The Connecticut Democrat added he believed he and the White House were on the same page, citing a Valentines’ Day card addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson in a White House social media post. It read: “Roses are red, violets are blue, the border deal was crushed because of you.”

Suozzi’s decision to lean into the migrant crisis, and attack his opponent for opposing a possible bipartisan fix, helped him narrow the gap on an issue Republicans focused on throughout the race, with GOP county legislator Mazi Pilip repeatedly campaigning near tents for resettled migrants.

When Murphy released his bill with Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla. And Krysten Sinema, I-Ariz., Suozzi immediately endorsed it; Pilip opposed it. At their sole televised debate, Pilip said she’d tighten border security but did not specify how, while Suozzi said a deal to close it was on the table.

“We’re so close to getting this deal done, and then former President Trump came in and said, I don’t want you to give a victory to Biden,” he said.

At times, Suozzi’s rhetoric was surprisingly hard-edged, such as when he evoked rifle-toting gangs of migrants when he knocked Pilip for opposing both the border measure and gun control. “She’s taking this extreme position that will keep the border open,” he said. “So we’re gonna end up with more migrants coming to New York. And on top of that, they’ll have access to AR-15s.”

On Tuesday, Speaker Johnson suggested that tone was another sign the GOP was winning the political fight over the border. “He sounded like a Republican, talking about the border and immigration,” he told reporters. “Because, everybody knows, that’s the top issue.”

But Suozzi also distinguished himself from conservative border hawks by stressing his longstanding support for legalizing the undocumented. “Let’s bring them above ground and let them pay Social Security taxes and get a driver’s license and get insurance and live the American dream,” he told Semafor before the election. “Let’s move forward as a country. What’s happening is, the extremists are just trying to politicize this issue.”

In some ways, Suozzi’s strategy is simply pointing Democrats back to their old Obama-era comfort zone on immigration policy — a comprehensive overhaul that includes both beefed-up border security and a pathway to citizenship.

That approach, embodied by the failed 2013 bipartisan bill, turned more contested under Donald Trump’s presidency, when “Abolish ICE” briefly became a popular slogan on the left and 2020 presidential candidates discussed ”decriminalizing” the border. The old comprehensive framework also had less to say about how to handle the more recent wave of asylum seekers, children, and families, who fit into a different legal category.

The newer Lankford-Murphy bill — and Republicans’ decision to abandon it — has helped give the old security-and-legalization strategy a refresh for battleground members. It puts up new barriers to migrants seeking asylum and provides tools to more quickly process their claims, giving Democrats new enforcement credentials to tout beyond just more resources at the border. And because it’s no longer up for discussion with Republicans, Democrats are free to envision their own expanded alternative that includes their preferred policies as well — like granting citizenship to DREAMers, or expanding routes to legal immigration.

“I don’t necessarily agree [Lankford-Murphy] will become the template,” Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-NY., a senior member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, told Semafor. “I think we can build on top of that. That’s the floor because there’s certainly room for discussions, particularly if we have folks at the table.”

DCCC chair Suzan DelBene similarly told Semafor that there was no one House position on immigration, but that their candidates “stand ready to come to the table” while Republicans “walked away.”

In general, the individual policy details matter less to messaging than the story campaigns have to tell about Republicans sabotaging progress for political gain. Even progressive Democrats who were uncomfortable with the border deal during negotiations are eager to attack Republicans as hypocrites.

“Republicans have made it abundantly clear that they would rather use the immigration system as a political talking point to boost Trump’s chances than to act on sensible bipartisan solutions,” Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif, who criticized the border package as “failed, Trump-era immigration policy” earlier this month, told Semafor in a statement. “They deserve to be held accountable for playing politics at its worst.”

Some progressives are already wary of the party’s increasingly hawkish rhetoric on immigration, even if they support attacking Republicans over the border deal’s demise. “It’s a fine line to walk,” one Democratic Senate aide told Semafor. “I think it’s important for Dems to acknowledge the challenges at the border — they should do so without demonizing immigrants on the campaign trail or employing the anti-immigrant rhetoric that Republicans do.”

In response to Murphy’s memo, journalist Mehdi Hassan suggested Democrats may be taking the GOP’s bait by engaging on the border. “The Republicans would love for the presidential election to be about immigration,” he posted on X. “Instead of — I dunno — threats to democracy, threats to abortion rights, Trump’s indictments, Trump’s rape, healthcare, the economy… I could go on and on.”

— Kadia Goba contributed reporting