Pro-amnesty Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) loses in primary — open borders stance finally catches him

DEAR FRIENDS,

One of Pres. Bush’s most stalwart allies for illegal-alien amnesties was punished by voters yesterday, losing his Republican primary in a landslide.

First-time candidate Jason Chaffetz, 41, a former chief of staff for Utah’s governor, crushed Cannon by 60% to 40%.

Cannon’s immigration stance was virtually the only real policy difference in the race, and Chaffetz hammered him repeatedly on it. Go to our Candidate Comparison Page to view the many immigration policy differences between the two.

For a decade, Rep. Cannon’s open-borders friends at the Wall Street Journal, the White House and Grover Norquist’s conservative circles provided last-minute endorsements, visits, money and questionable advertising that enabled him to keep his congressional seat in the face of spirited but underfunded opposition from anti-amnesty Republican opponents.

His passionate embrace of illegal aliens won him honors from the National Council of La Raza and love notes from open-borders newspaper editorial writers across the nation.

But Cannon’s pro-amnesty crown finally became an albatross. No amount of advertising claiming that blue is red and that amnesties are not amnesties apparently could fool the voters this time.

Soon after Pres. Bush declared that passing an amnesty for illegal aliens was one of his top priorities, Cannon bragged to the press that he was the White House’s amnesty point man in the U.S. House.

He repeatedly sponsored and co-sponsored amnesties.

Whenever any of us on the Sensible Immigration side testified before the House Judiciary Committee, Cannon assumed the role of prosecutor and did his best Joseph McCarthy imitation demanding to know if we were now or had ever been friends with a list of people that he and the SPLC deemed unfit company. In his “cross-examinations” of me, he always avoided the policy issues of immigration and engaged in attempts at character assassination and innuendo.

Campaign help from Pres. Bush in the past helped save him when forced into Primary run-offs. But not this time.

Cannon’s immigration-reduction grades of C (overall career) and C (overall recent) are higher than might be expected because of an A-minus on Border issues and a B on Interior Enforcement. Nonetheless, he was still in the bottom 23 of House Republicans on Interior Enforcement.

And his overall grade placed him in the bottom 16 of House Republicans.

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