He said he also supports efforts to push English-only legislation and making it easier to immigrate to the country legally. "So the principles that I'm trying to support is trying to make these people succeed," he said. "I want them to succeed here in this country."
Democrats pounced on his reference to "these people," setting up a conference call with Latino leaders for the next morning; Latino leaders said they were insulted.
Some of Berkley's sharpest attacks on Heller came on online poker, on which Reid has blamed Heller for failing to get votes in the Senate. "My opponent is failing the people of the state of Nevada," she said, saying online poker legislation could mean up to 1,200 jobs in Nevada. "My opponent is not doing his job. Either he does not have an understanding of how important this is to the state of Nevada, or he's not caring."
Heller waived away the attacks as political. He said he believes he has two opponents in the race--Berkley and Reid. Reid saw online poker "as his last best chance to get involved in the U.S. Senate race," Heller continued. "26 days from now, Sen. Reid and myself will put aside our differences and get something passed."
Heller denied it outright, though press reports from the time confirm that he did indeed draw the correlation between unemployment benefits and "hobos."
"Look, the fact of the matter is my opponent actually did call unemployed people hobos and that puts him very much in line with what Mitt Romney said about the 47 percent," Berkley said.
Not only did they tell the Hispanic group that they remained opposed to the DREAM Act, a federal proposal that would provide a pathway to citizenship for certain undocumented college students and soldiers, they said the 14th Amendment to U.S. Constitution--which provides citizenship to anyone born in the United States--needed overhauling to prevent the children of undocumented immigrants from gaining citizenship.
The above quotations are from 2012 Nevada Senate Debate.
Click here for other excerpts from 2012 Nevada Senate Debate. Click here for other excerpts by Dean Heller. Click here for a profile of Dean Heller.
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