Governor Brewer’s Victory Tour

Julianne Hing writes for Colorlines:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has staked her political career on the anti-immigrant law SB1070, and by all accounts, it’s already paved her way to election. Last week Brewer won her gubernatorial primary handily against two other Republican challengers whose names most election watchers could barely be bothered to remember. And Monday, the Tucson Sentinel reported that Brewer leads her Democratic challenger, Arizona attorney general Terry Goddard, by 19 points.

Last week, Brewer also filed her state’s opening brief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where the courts are hearing the federal government’s legal challenge against SB 1070. The federal government maintains that it alone has the power to create and enforce immigration law, while Arizona says that it is not overstepping its legal rights to create a new class of crimes that target immigrants in the state.

And, in a sign of Brewer’s sure-footedness, last Friday the AP reported that Brewer decided to take on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The State Department included its lawsuit against Arizona in a greatest hits list of ways the United States is protecting human rights. Click here for more.

Brewer wants mention of the DOJ’s lawsuit against SB1070 taken out of the report, which will be sent to the United Nations Human Rights Council. “The idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a state of the United States to ‘review’ by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional,” Brewer wrote in her letter to Clinton.

Last week, one of the seven legal challenges to SB1070 was thrown out of court. Some have the dismissal a victory, but it was the weakest of the seven lawsuits to be let go. Washington, D.C. researcher Roberto Frisancho charged that he would be racially profiled if he went to the state later this year; he filed his lawsuit just four days after SB1070 became law, and was representing himself. Six other lawsuits, including one from a coalition of civil and immigrant rights groups, continue to plug along.

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