Yesterday the National Council of La Raza issued a statement expressing approval of a meeting between President Obama and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which NCLR president Janet Murguía called “a step in the right direction toward immigration reform.” The group's previous statement, issued Monday, was a completely different story, however. Murguía then “expressed profound disappointment” that the White House had apparently dropped Thomas Saenz from consideration for heading the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. Instead, the post went to Thomas Perez, a Maryland official and first-generation Dominican American.

Saenz, Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's chief legal advisor and ethics czar, is a former Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund vice president and was widely seen as an immigrant-rights advocate. His removal from the short list is being viewed as a sign the Obama administration might be shying away from a fight with conservative Senators. Today's L.A. Times carries a report that Saenz could be in line for another position in the Obama administration — one presumably that comes with a lower profile.

Since his election, Obama has made a number of decisions that have

mystified — if not mortified — his liberal base. There was not only

the kerfuffle over his choice of anti-gay-marriage Pastor Rick Warren to deliver Obama's Inauguration Day invocation, but his continuing search for

a center-right preacher to replace Jeremiah Wright as his spiritual

advisor; his plans to expand military operations in Afghanistan and

refusal to give up “rendition” as a counter-terrorism tool. La Raza and

others in the immigration-rights wars clearly worry that  immigration

reform, which went from a top-of-the-fold story to forgotten issue

within two years, is something Obama will be willing to sacrifice in

order to move forward other parts of his domestic agenda, which is

headlined by health-care reform and braking the economy's freefall.

Had

Obama nominated Saenz, one possible point of contention in confirmation

hearings might have been the latter's uncompromising opposition on

behalf of MALDEF to then-California Gray Davis' proposal to mediate an

end to the state's appeal of the anti-undocumented alien law passed as

Proposition 187. In this he was joined by Villaraigosa, then the

Assembly Speaker. When Saenz was also at MALDEF he had threatened to

file a lawsuit restoring then-L.A. school superintendent Ruben

Zacarias'  authority over district staff, which had been stripped by

school board. Later, as Villaraigosa's legal advisor, he had signed off

on the appointment of businessman Bill Burke to both a DWP commission

while at the same time serving as chairman of the South

Coast Air Quality Management District's board of directors — even

though Burkre was married to a county supervisor and had been hit by

serious ethics fines when operating the L.A. Marathon.

Still,

none of this rises above the level of provincial politicking, causing

continued speculation about why the White House dumped Saenz's

nomination after it had seemed on the verge of announcing it. Perhaps,

in the end, Obama figured the potentially volatile mix of California

identity politics with the potential revival of acrimony over

immigration reform was not worth spending political capital now needed

elsewhere.

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