Rep. Chris Cannon -- who lost in a 60%-40% Primary election landslide yesterday -- had survived several previous Primary challenges by fooling enough people into believing that he was not really an amnesty champion.

The seven-term incumbent lost to Jason Chaffetz, 41, a former chief of staff for Utah's governor who was running for public office for the first time and who was outspent 7-1. Chaffetz ran as a True Immigration Reformer, favoring deep cuts in legal immigration and vigorous Attrition Through Enforcement measures.

Will Pro-Amnesty Incumbents Be Able To Hide Their Records This Fall?

Cannon's loss should strike some fear into the 362 Members of Congress (68%) who have Amnesty grades of D+ or worse but who nearly all claim to voters that they do NOT support amnesties for illegal aliens.

These amnesty supporters say that they oppose amnesty. When asked to define amnesty, they usually say it would be the granting of AUTOMATIC BLANKET citizenship WITHOUT ANY PENALTIES, FINES OR REQUIREMENTS.

Cannon usually tried to claim that the amnesty bills he championed were really just GUESTWORKER bills that allowed illegal aliens to become guest workers. He conveniently left out that nearly all the "guests" would be allowed to remain in the U.S. permanently and eventually to apply for citizenship.

Cannon and the rest of the amnesty supporters have been quite successful in getting the news media to go along with this charade. Even the Associated Press story on Cannon's election loss refers to his bills as being about guestworkers!

With the help of the news media, the amnesty champions have been able to confuse enough voters with their deceptive ads and speeches to survive most challenges to their pro-amnesty record.

But not this time for Cannon.

All anti-amnesty Americans should take great hope out of this and multiply their efforts in their own Congressional Districts to force the truth out about their own pro-amnesty Members of Congress this year.

Immigration Key Issue In Cannon's Loss

Cannon was one of Pres. Bush's most stalwart allies for illegal-alien amnesties.

Cannon's immigration stance was virtually the only real policy difference in the race, and Chaffetz hammered him repeatedly on it. Go to our Candidate Comparison Page to view the many immigration policy differences between the two.

For a decade, Rep. Cannon's open-borders friends at the Wall Street Journal, the White House and Grover Norquist's conservative circles provided last-minute endorsements, visits, money and questionable advertising that enabled him to keep his congressional seat in the face of spirited but underfunded opposition from anti-amnesty Republican opponents.

His passionate embrace of illegal aliens won him honors from the National Council of La Raza and love notes from open-borders newspaper editorial writers across the nation.
But Cannon's pro-amnesty crown finally became an albatross. No amount of advertising claiming that blue is red and that amnesties are not amnesties apparently could fool the voters this time.

Soon after Pres. Bush declared that passing an amnesty for illegal aliens was one of his top priorities, Cannon bragged to the press that he was the White House's amnesty point man in the U.S. House.

He repeatedly sponsored and co-sponsored amnesties.

Whenever any of us on the Sensible Immigration side testified before the House Judiciary Committee, Cannon assumed the role of prosecutor and did his best Joseph McCarthy imitation demanding to know if we were now or had ever been friends with a list of people that he and the SPLC deemed unfit company. In his "cross-examinations" of me, he always avoided the policy issues of immigration and engaged in attempts at character assassination and innuendo.

Campaign help from Pres. Bush in the past helped save him when forced into Primary run-offs. But not this time.
Cannon's immigration-reduction grades of C (overall career) and C (overall recent) are higher than might be expected because of an A-minus on Border issues and a B on Interior Enforcement. Nonetheless, he was still in the bottom 23 of House Republicans on Interior Enforcement.

And his overall grade placed him in the bottom 16 of House Republicans.