The Herald-News from Passaic, New Jersey • A13

Sunday, November 11, 2007 CONTINUED FROM A1 HERALD NEWS A13 POLITICS Elections Immigration's role in '08 race debated GOP hopes to leverage discontent into votes ON THE NET Log on to northjersey.com election2007 for full election results, multimedia and blogging from election night. Suspects sought in early morning shooting PATERS0N Police were looking for suspects in the shooting of a 32-year-old Paterson man early Saturday. At 2:45 a.m., police responded to a reported shooting at 150 Ellison St. in front of Club Aydan, a dance club, said Paterson police Sgt. Patrick Murray.

Police arrived at the scene and found the victim on the ground with multiple gunshot wounds to the abdomen. He was taken to St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center, where he was listed in critical condition. Police said they believe the shooting may have stemmed from an earlier altercation inside the club, Murray said. The department's Cease Fire Unit was handling the case.

Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call Paterson police Detective Adore Flores or Detective Ed Lugo at 973-321-1342. Meredith Mandell Accident disrupts traffic on Route 23 WAYNE Route 23 was partially closed for more than an hour Saturday morning after a vehicle crashed into a utility pole, causing live wires to fall onto the road, authorities said. The accident occurred about 10 a.m., when a work van slammed into a utility pole near Ratzer Road after a two-vehicle collision. The pole toppled, and live wires fell onto the road, trapping two occupants in a Volkswagen Beetle, Sgt. Keith Mc-Dermott said.

Workers cut the circuit breaker and rescued the occupants in the Volkswagen. One person was taken to Chilton Memorial Hospital in Pequannock, authorities said. All northbound lanes and all but one southbound lane were closed for about 90 minutes, McDermott said. The highway reopened about noon. Carolyn Salazar talk as "amnesty" for lawbreakers, insist that sealing the border is what matters most along with denying rights and privileges to "illegal aliens." "You know the Democrats are going to be perceived as more pro-immigration, almost regardless of what they say," said Rogers Smith, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

"Republicans might want to mobilize voters locally for candidates who represent getting tough with immigrants." In polls, it tends to be Republicans who call immigration very important, said Pew Research Center President Andrew Kohut. But he has found a similar tilt toward Giuliani among independent voters who comprise a powerful swing force in close elections. "If you base the analysis on independents Giuliani leads by 56-33 on immigration," Kohut said. "The way you have to think about it is, people who are interested in this issue, they are a stronger (force) for Giuliani. Conversely, she is weaker." Yet, Kohut questioned the election-driving power of the issue at a time when the economy and the war dominate the stage.

"The history of this particular issue is that it is so spotty in terms of where it has an impact," he said. It plays "in only some areas of the country, the areas where people are overwhelmed by immigrants, or where they are not overwhelmed and there is a lot of na-tivist sentiment. As a national issue, this doesn't rank very high because it is focused in a relatively small set of places." By MARKSILVA Chicago Tribune WASHINGTON Rudolph Giuliani, the front-running Republican candidate for president, has at least two good reasons for proposing a ban against driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. One is Sen. Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic contender for president.

In a recent debate, she stumbled over a question about driver's licenses for "undocumented workers" and eventually endorsed the idea, providing a clear line of attack for Giuliani. The other is the political landscape of the 2008 presidential contest, where immigration could drive votes in key states the way gay marriage did in 2004. Among voters who call immigration a "very important" issue in the next election, polling shows that Giuliani holds an advantage over Clinton in a theoretical match-up. And for most of the Republican field, being against any form of illegal immigration has been a winner. The senator from New York easily trumps the former mayor of New York on all of the most important issues that voters cite the economy, health care and the war in Iraq, but not immigration.

Among Republicans, Giuliani has been criticized for not being tough on illegal immigrants when he was mayor. The volatility of how to deal with the more than 12 million undocumented immigrants already living in the U.S. has led Democrats like Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois to call immigration "the new third rail of politics." On state and local levels, there is ample evidence of a backlash against illegal immigration, and Republicans are hoping to leverage that discontent into votes next November. Issues like the war in Iraq are certain to be pivotal as well, and might trump immigration.

But immigration can be driven hard in strategic states like Ohio, where gay marriage on the ballot helped President Bush carry the state in 2004. In Arizona, activists are attempting to place measures on the November 2008 ballot making it a crime to knowingly hire illegal immigrants and criminalizing their presence. HOLIDAY, MOM Continued from A1 The minority of Passaic County voters who voted on Tuesday set some changes in leadership in motion. Elease Evans said she would step down as freeholder director sometime in 2008 to concentrate on her duties as assemblywoman in the 35th District. Scott Rumana said that his election to the state Assembly would mean he would eventually resign as Wayne's mayor, although not until the Township Council approves an energy co-generation project Rumana said was environmentally sound and would save taxpayers millions.

"That's got to be voted on before I move anywhere," Rumana said on Thursday. Rumana said he isn't going to budge from his chairmanship of the county Republican organization even though state Sen. John A. Girgenti, D-Hawthorne, Sheriff Jerry Speziale and Wayne Township Councilman Chris Mclntyre were among the Democrats who sailed to re-election on Tuesday unopposed. Not to mention the Passaic County Regular Republican Organization reported it had $21,572 on hand in mid-October, painfully outweighed by the Democrats' war chest of $589,834.

But the presidential candidacy of Rudy Giuliani, currently New Jersey's Republican front runner, could make 2008 a different year for GOP candidates for local offices, Rumana said. "We're going to be in a very good position in the freeholder race next year," Rumana said. It doesn't hurt that Giuliani's campaign manager, Michael DuHaime, is the son of former Bloomingdale Mayor Anne DuHaime and former Passaic County Freeholder Richard DuHaime, Rumana added. Rumana also said that his new office could lead to more campaign funds next year. "As an assemblyman, I'll be intimately involved on a daily basis with more towns in the county of Passaic," he said.

"That is going to make my ability to continue to rebuild the party a lot better." The Democrats who were sent back to the Board of Chosen Freeholders for another three years will have their own fundraising to do but in terms of raising revenues for the 2008 budget. The lawsuit challenging the pending sale of the Passaic County Golf Course has been referred to a state Appellate Court, with a hearing scheduled for Nov. 16, said Bill Pascrell III, Passaic County's lead counsel. As county officials wait to apply the golf course sale's revenues to the 2007 and 2008 budgets, newly re-elected Freeholder Pat Lepore said he would support selling additional county-owned properties. The old administration building at Pennsylvania Avenue in Pa-terson tops Lepore's list of what he called "surplus properties." Birth what's One Illinois lawmaker is calling immigration the new third rail of politics.

And the failure of Congress to act on immigration reform is likely to inspire similar ballot initiatives in other states. Still, skeptical analysts point to local and state election results last week in states from Virginia to Arizona. Republican attempts to tar Democrats as soft on immigration often were countered by debates over local initiatives for slower residential growth. Indeed, some say, the focus that many Republicans place on tougher immigration laws could hurt the GOP among the fastest-growing segment of the electorate Latino voters already tending to favor Democrats in Republican-leaning states in the Southwest. The emotional appeal of the immigration issue already has torn Congress and the public alike.

It is tied, some say, to the deep unease that many Americans feel about the economy with voters overwhelmingly telling pollsters the nation is on the wrong track. "Every issue leads back to illegal immigration," said Bob Dane of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "There's this middle-stream, middle-class anxiety about what's happening. Why are our wages not going up? Why are we having problems finding work? Jobs are being outsourced. There are plant layoffs.

If you're at the bottom of the scale, you have to compete against people who snuck into the country." In Washington, the immigration reform debate pits an alliance of mostly Democratic and moderate Republican lawmakers and President Bush against a deeply conservative opposition, mostly Republican. The Democratic camp and Bush call "comprehensive immigration reform" a question of not only controlling the borders, but also finding some accommodation for millions of undocumented immigrants already working in the U.S. Opponents, denouncing such MATTRESS LEEPY'S Mattress Professionals weight, and improve your mm sn "We're not using it anymore, and it's just draining our budget," Lepore said. "Getting rid of property you don't need anymore is a no-brainer." Both Lepore and his re-elected running mate, Freeholder Terry Duffy, will resume reviewing the findings of a publicly funded, and unflattering, management study report by a private consulting firm that provided numerous recommendations for better fiscal efficiency in the county. While the re-elected freeholders conceded the report was valid, with Lepore saying "tough decisions are going to have to be made" in the next term, there was little willingness to consider the report's most challenging recommendation: that the freeholders take over the jail to provide better oversight of the Sheriffs Department and its budget.

"How do you take over the jail?" Duffy asked. "That's a process I just don't know." And there was little more than hope from the re-elected freeholders that Passaic County taxpayers would be spared having one of the largest tax increases in northern New Jersey, as they have in the past two years. "I'd like to shoot for lower," Duffy said. "I'm fairly confident that we're going to continue progressing forward in 2008," Lepore said. Meanwhile, both freeholders are bracing for greater expenses from the Sheriffs Department.

Both the Sheriffs Department and the freeholders cited a need for replacing or renovating the current jail, the conditions of which were recently called shameful by a federal judge. And binding arbitration with the department's unions for a five-year contract is under way after negotiations failed. Bill Maer, Sheriffs Department spokesman, said on Thursday that Sheriff Speziale would build on the "successes" of his past two terms. "Certainly, he's going to move toward continuing to do what is right for the citizens of Passaic County to continue preventing crime, educating the public," Maer said, "and (he) will be working toward educating the Freeholders Board on the realities for the new jail." Maer reiterated the department's position that the management study's report "did not have its facts straight" when it recommended greater transparency of the department's budget to the freeholders. "I think there's significant transparency now," Maer said.

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