Tancredo to change direction of his campaign

M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 5, 2007 at midnight

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Rep. Tom Tancredo plans to change direction in his long-shot presidential campaign so he can pressure fellow Republicans into rejecting an immigration reform plan he considers "amnesty."

Before a debate tonight on CNN, Tancredo, R-Littleton, told reporters he soon plans to scale back his weekly visits to the early caucus and primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

He's going ahead with previously scheduled events, including a four-day trip to Iowa starting Thursday.

But after that, Tancredo said he would spend more time traveling to Republican-held congressional districts around the country. There, he hopes to pressure GOP incumbents in their own back yards, threatening to work for their defeat unless they help block the immigration reform bill now pending in the U.S. Senate.

"This is the whole ballgame here to a large extent," Tancredo said.

Today he launched a "Save America" campaign, opposing the bill because he says it would "destroy our great nation" and open the floodgates to even more illegal immigration.

"We're going to continue to campaign, but I cannot devote as much time to the two states that we were focusing on," Tancredo said. "We'll still be there, but I can't do it as much because this bill has to be stopped, and it is immediate. This is for the country. I don't know any other way to do this."

Targeting fellow Republicans is nothing new for Tancredo. Team America, a political action committee he founded, aggressively targeted Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, in last year's GOP primary. Cannon eventually won re-election.

The committee also tried to influence races in California, Arizona and elsewhere. Cannon spokesman Fred Piccolo said Tancredo's efforts didn't work in 2006.

"If his poll numbers are any indication, then he's not catching fire with the Republican base on an issue that's front and center," Piccolo said.

Tancredo has been polling below the margin of error in polls around the country.

"Congressman Cannon is interested in solving the issue, as opposed to just demagoguing it," Piccolo said.

This week, the U.S. Senate is debating a bipartisan bill that could grant legal status to millions of people who are in the country illegally. If approved, it then would go to the House of Representatives, where opponents of the White House-backed plan hope to make a last stand.

Backers, including Republican presidential contender Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., say the legislation is a realistic way of dealing with the more than 12 million illegal immigrants estimated to be in the country. The legislation also includes border security and enforcement provisions.

Fighting illegal immigration and the White House-backed legislation has been the centerpiece of Tancredo's uphill presidential campaign. He has focused heavily on the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire in hopes of gaining momentum to win in later primaries.

But at a press conference in New Hampshire today, Tancredo told reporters he's shifting directions because the immigration issue is too important.

"He's going to devote more time going to different districts," spokesman Alan Moore said. "We haven't changed any plans we already have for Iowa and New Hampshire... The whole focus of him traveling is to stop this bill. He's going to go wherever he's needed to make the best case to kill this."

Thursday, Tancredo begins a four-day Iowa trip, with stops in Waukee, Denison, Sioux City, Le Mars, Orange City, Spencer, Clear Lake and Charles City.

Rocky Mountain News columnist Mike Littwin, who is in New Hampshire, contributed to this report.

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