Veteran civil rights activist Dolores Huerta says Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) “is not the leader he claims to be,” endorsing his Senate challenger, Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick.
“McCain is just a political chameleon for whom it’s more important to save his political career than to do the right thing for Latino families,” Huerta wrote Friday in a scathing op-ed for Spanish-language La Voz newspaper.
{mosads}McCain was a member of the Senate’s bipartisan Gang of Eight that introduced and passed a Senate immigration reform bill in 2013, although it never made it to a floor vote in the House.
But the veteran senator voted against allowing full Senate consideration of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act in 2010, after it had passed the House of Representatives. The DREAM Act would have provided a legal path to citizenship for immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.
McCain also supported Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 immigration law, under pressure from a Tea Party primary challenger in the 2010 election.
McCain, also the co-author of earlier immigration reform proposals, said he supported the state law out of frustration with federal inaction on the issue.
“The Arizona law was born out of the state’s frustration with the burdens that illegal immigration and continued drug smuggling impose on its schools, hospitals, criminal justice system and fragile desert environment,” McCain wrote with then-Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) in 2012.
“He has said he is with our community, but he has also said ‘complete the danged fence’ and he even supports [Republican presidential nominee] Donald Trump for president,” Huerta said.
Although McCain endorsed Trump, he panned the nominee over racially tinged comments about federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s Mexican heritage.
Faced with Trump’s unpopularity with Latinos and the group’s growth in Arizona, McCain said in May, “If Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket, this may be the race of my life.”
In a 2010 campaign ad about border security, McCain walked the Mexican border with Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, saying, “Complete the danged fence.” Kirkpatrick re-released the ad this year, unedited, as an attack ad against McCain.
Babeu, a Trump supporter and immigration hard-liner, is running to replace Kirkpatrick in Congress.
Huerta, who has campaigned for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton since the primaries, touted Kirkpatrick’s consistent record on immigration.
“John McCain says what he thinks we want to hear, but Ann Kirkpatrick is listening to us, so let’s make our voices heard,” said Huerta.