It was late on a Thursday afternoon in the marble halls of the Senate, and a small group of negotiators — a Republican, a Democrat and an independent — had just finalized a painstaking border security compromise that took them months to craft.
But what should have been a triumphant moment felt more like an ordeal for the only Republican in the trio.
“I feel like the guy standing in the middle of the field in a thunderstorm holding up the metal rod,” Sen. James Lankford, the Oklahoma Republican and his party’s chief broker on the deal, told reporters last week.
The plight of Mr. Lankford, a slim, unassuming Baptist minister with a neatly combed shock of red hair and a baritone voice who regularly delivers deadpan jokes, reflects the extraordinary rise and fall of the border and Ukraine deal, which is expected to fail in a test vote in the Senate on Wednesday — and the political forces within the Republican Party that brought her down.
For months, Mr. Lankford, a staunch conservative, worked with Senators Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, and Kyrsten Sinema, an independent from Arizona, on the package, calling for tough immigration policies that his party insisted should be part of each The bill passed must be a new aid delivery for Ukraine. But when Mr. Lankford managed to get them out, he found that his fellow Republicans were unwilling to embrace the plan, a vivid example of how the political ground for any compromise on immigration has disappeared for one party that decided has that the issue is too valuable a political weapon to solve.
Mr. Lankford, who previously ran the country’s largest Christian youth camp and has often spoken about how his faith determines his political positions, must pick up the pieces, a process he wryly described on Tuesday as being run over by a bus – and then over again him away.
The reserved Republican, who has generally refrained from seeking the political spotlight in his second term, did not agree to lead border negotiations when they began in the fall. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and minority leader, represented him as the top Republican on the Senate border security subcommittee. Or as Mr. Lankford put it, “He lost out when it came time to negotiate all of this.”
His Republican colleagues urged him to be careful.
“I told him weeks ago that he would be like a goalie on a darts team,” said Sen. John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, who supported the talks but opposed the bill this week. “He knew this was a treacherous path, but I have nothing but praise for Senator Lankford. I think he did the best job that could be done under the circumstances. It’s just a very, very, very difficult and complex situation.”
Just as Mr. Lankford and his negotiating partners were nearing a deal, former President Donald J. Trump stepped in, scrapping the bill both before and after its release on Sunday, opening the floodgates of Republican opposition. That left Mr. Lankford struggling to keep the deal alive while coming under attack from members of his own party, including in his home state, where the Republican Party late last month tried to censure him for “in playing fast and loose with the Democrats on our border policy.” .” (The decision was later repealed.)
Mr. Lankford said he was just the latest in a long line of lawmakers burned by failed efforts to push through a bipartisan immigration deal.
“This only happens about every decade — trying to work on border security — because it’s so controversial and it takes people a decade to forget what happened to these individuals,” he said Monday, “and “We can also take the risk again.”
The bill he helped draft would impose the most significant border restrictions Congress has considered in decades, including measures to raise the bar for asylum applications, expand detention capacity and close the border if more than an average of 5,000 migrants attempt to cross the border per day per week or more than 8,500 attempt to cross the border on any given day. It reflects a paradigm shift in the way Congress views modern immigration and border policy, with no mention of options for legalizing undocumented immigrants currently in the country, previously a cornerstone of any immigration policy Democrats might negotiate .
Still, Republicans have rejected the plan, with the far right calling it too weak and more mainstream members, including McConnell, saying they were simply bowing to the political reality that there was no path through Congress.
The irony is not lost on Mr. Lankford.
Republicans “actually banded together and said, ‘We’re not going to give you any money for this.’ “We want a change in the law,” Mr. Lankford said on “Fox News Sunday” late last month. “Now it’s interesting, a few months later – when we finally get to the end – they say, ‘Oh, just kidding.’ I don’t actually want the law changed because it’s a presidential election year.'”
Both Democrats and Republicans view Mr. Lankford as serious, policy-oriented, trustworthy and staunchly conservative.
“I chose this because James would be my partner,” said Mr. Murphy, who spent countless hours with Mr. Lankford in a room at the Capitol poring over the details of the package. “He comes into politics out of a desire to bring about change, not because he loves the hustle and bustle of political life. In some ways it’s a bit of a step backwards. That’s probably going to cause him some problems when you’re in the middle of one of the most difficult and contentious issues in American politics.”
Mr. Lankford is “a well-respected and conservative member of our conference who is willing to do the hard things,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican.
His attention to detail is one of the reasons it took so long to close a deal, Murphy said.
“James was committed to knowing every single part of this bill inside and out so that he could ultimately defend it,” he said. “Obviously Trump made his life difficult.”
On Monday, as Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, declared the bill “even worse than we expected,” Trump praised Mr. Lankford for his disdain and told conservative commentator Dan Bongino on his show that the deal was “very bad.” bad reckoning” for Mr. Lankford’s career – “and especially in Oklahoma.”
Mr. Lankford, who won re-election in 2022 with 64 percent of the vote, will not face voters again until 2028, and it was not clear whether his involvement in the deal would hurt him in a state where he has a reservoir of good will.
Mr. Lankford “had honorable intentions, but he took on a Herculean task,” Chad Alexander, the former chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party, said in an interview. “The atmosphere has become even more intense since he started four months ago. And now it’s a powder keg.”
In some ways, Mr. Lankford’s involvement in the effort is reminiscent of a very different political moment decades ago, when evangelical Christians were influential voices on the right advocating humane immigration policies, including admitting refugees and a path to citizenship for people undocumented.
“He is absolutely guided by his faith and the value he places on every life,” Pat McFerron, an Oklahoma pollster and political consultant, said in a text message. “Every person is created in God’s image. The passion he has here is no different than his passion for helping the unborn.”
Mr. Lankford has previously been caught up in the crosscurrents of Republican politics. After the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, Mr. Lankford apologized to Black voters in Oklahoma for supporting Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the election in Congress, saying he did not recognize his stance would be seen as an attack on their right to vote.
He has taken on other tough political issues before. He worked closely with Senator Tim Scott, the only Black senator in the GOP, on Republican legislation to combat systemic racism in law enforcement and sought to address racial disparities and attitudes within the GOP during the widespread racial justice protests in 2020 to bridge.
None of this was more difficult than the border effort. On Monday, as the bill’s prospects looked increasingly bleak, he launched a media campaign trying to explain away a provision of the package that Republicans had mischaracterized as allowing 5,000 undocumented immigrants into the country each day. He noted that Republicans have repeatedly suggested that there is a crisis at the border and that Congress needs to pass new laws – a message that Democrats are already spreading against Republicans
“Are we going to hold press conferences as Republicans and complain that the border is bad and then intentionally leave it open after the worst month in American history, December?” Mr. Lankford said on “Fox & Friends,” adding , few would have thought that the Republicans could win such significant policy concessions from the Democrats.
“No one would have believed it,” Mr. Lankford said. “And now no one really wants to fix it.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Lankford refused to give in even as his colleagues declared the compromise dead.
“The scriptures say to work while there is daylight, so I will continue to work until we know there is no chance of moving because I really think the problem needs to be solved,” said he.
This was not the prevailing attitude among Republicans, particularly among far-right lawmakers who rejoiced at the failure of his efforts.
In response to a lengthy thread that Mr. Lankford posted on social media defending the bill, Rep. Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, responded bluntly: “Just take the L.”
Karoun Demirjian and Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.
Source link
2024-02-07 10:03:00
www.nytimes.com
