A camouflage-clad mannequin sat on a table where Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met with officials about recent home invasions in Orange County.

The prop was intended to draw attention to claims that Chileans entering the United States through an immigration loophole don specialized suits that resemble foliage, hide near houses, and usually break in from a second-story balcony before making off with cash, jewelry, and other high-value goods.

“There are no consequences for these people if they get caught,” McCarthy said during a

press news

conference Friday in the Orange County District Attorney’s office, where he was joined by several Southern California Republican congressmen.

It was a rare public appearance for McCarthy

in California only

outside

the capital of the country and

are Bakersfield

-based

neighbourhood. And it showed that, with the Republicans’ narrow control of Congress under threat next year, party leaders are emphasizing border control and public safety as they try to appeal to affluent suburbs in traditional conservative strongholds like Orange County, who have become more moderate and are critical to their path to victory.

GOP representatives appeared alongside McCarthy. Seal Beach’s Michelle Steel, La Habra’s Young Kim, and Corona’s Ken Calvert, all facing competitive races in 2024 to hang onto Southern California rocking chairs that will help determine control of Congress.

While polls show economic concerns are at the forefront of the minds of voters in California and across the country, reports of crime and immigration helped GOP candidates win competitive congressional districts in the 2022 midterm elections and garner support among some liberal-leaning voter blocs, particularly Asian Americans in former President Donald Trump’s failed re-election bid two years earlier.

Such messages could be especially effective in traditionally Republican regions that voted for Democratic presidential candidates when Trump was the GOP nominee, said David Wasserman, a congressional forecaster for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which rates nine of California’s 52 congressional districts as competitive in the Elections of 2024, the most of any state in the country.

“It’s a strategic overture to influence suburban voters, especially women, who may personally dislike Trump but could be open to voting Republican on other issues, including illegal immigration and crime,” he said. Republicans “know they need these seats to keep the House.”

The event highlighting the Orange County home invasions took place hours before McCarthy headlined a fundraiser aimed at protecting vulnerable California members of Congress, including Steel and Calvert. Donors contributed up to $100,000 to attend the meeting at the exclusive Pacific Club in Newport Beach, which was closed to news media.

In front of the cameras, McCarthy focused on a niche issue that

has raised bipartisan concern and

enabled him to highlight both immigration and crime: the problems Orange County prosecutors are facing with a visa waiver program that allows people from participating countries to travel to the United States for 90 days or less without obtaining a visa.

distance attentive Todd Spitzer said the Chilean government has refused to provide criminal histories of their citizens entering the country under the program, making it difficult to prosecute members of the alleged crime gang he blamed for recent home invasions . McCarthy threatened to block money for the visa waiver program unless the Biden administration

prevents Chileans from entering the country through the no background check visa program.

While concerns about the Chilean visa situation have raised concerns from Democrats and Republicans alike,

F

ears about immigrants and crime have long been at the center of GOP campaigns across the country, often with success. Years of polling show that voters view Republicans as stricter on justice. But polls in California also show that voters are not as focused on these issues as their counterparts in other parts of the country.

While crime was one of the top five priorities listed by Californians in a survey by the Public Policy Institute of California published earlier this month, it lagged far behind economics, homelessness and housing.

Still, crime scares play out particularly well in Orange County.

During last year’s race for district attorney, incumbent

todd

Spitzer labeled himself a candidate for law and order early in his campaign. His messages, tagged #NoLAinOC, focused on punishing criminals to prevent Orange County from becoming like Los Angeles. He beat his progressive challenger in the primary and avoided a November runoff. Spitzer warned McCarthy about the home invasion robberies linked to Chilean crime gangs and appeared alongside members of Congress on Friday.

Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College, said public safety had been a major problem since the late 1960s as violent crime had doubled. Since then, crime has reached an all-time low, although there has been an increase in certain categories. Therefore, such arguments rely more on “individual horror stories than general trends”.

The same goes for immigration, added Pitney, who was a Republican for decades until Trump’s election in 2016. An influx expected from a recent border policy change never materialized, but photos of undocumented migrants crossing the border, still resonate with voters.

“It takes time for observation to catch up with the data,” Pitney said. “People are in the suburbs because they fear the cities. I say that as a suburb. Orange County and the surrounding areas are generally quite conservative on this matter, despite their votes in recent presidential elections.”

Some of these messages are aimed at Asian Americans, a burgeoning electoral bloc that

could tip California races, especially in Orange County critical rocking chairs.

Provincial prosecutors have begun charging some defendants arrested in residential burglaries for hate crimes for allegedly targeting wealthy Asians. Such sentencing improvements could lead to longer prison sentences. Spitzer called the move an aggressive legal theory that he hopes will catch lawmakers’ attention.

Karthick Ramakrishnan, a political science professor at UC Riverside who studies Asian American voters, said this is a novel approach as attacks on Asian Americans increased in the wake of the pandemic, Democrats labeled the incidents hate crimes while Republicans described them as matters of law and order. . He added that the tactic can be successful.

“Fear works,” he said. “While the truth may be complicated in terms of what’s responsible for an increase in crime, even if crimes are rising from historic lows, it almost doesn’t matter. Perception matters.”