MANY of the desperate souls who cross America's southern border each year pass through Cochise county in southern Arizona. They drain farmers' water tanks, drop rubbish and, it is said, assault and rob with abandon. Not surprisingly, voters in the mostly Anglophone district were keenly courted this year by Randy Graf, a Republican would-be-congressman who promised to evict illegal immigrants and build a fence to keep others out. On November 7th though, the people of Cochise rejected him in favour of his Democratic opponent.

AP

The soft underbelly

Illegal immigration was expected to be a burning issue in the mid-term elections. It was, though not in the way that many Republicans hoped. J.D. Hayworth, author of “Whatever it Takes”, a scorching tome on the matter, was ousted by voters from his sprawling district east of Phoenix. In Indiana, the uncompromising head of the congressional subcommittee on immigration lost his seat. “It was said that illegal immigration was going to be our magic-carpet ride to power,” says Jeff Flake, a moderate Arizona Republican. “It turned out to be quite the opposite.”

The fact that nativist appeals failed to rouse voters does not mean that the people of Arizona are sanguine about illegal immigration. Nor does it suggest the issue is politically inert, either in the state or the country. The mid-term elections showed illegal immigration to be not so much a magic carpet as a rusty grenade—explosive and tricky to handle.

Mexicans flock to Arizona because some routes through California and Texas have been closed. They stay for the jobs. Migration from other parts of America means that the state's population is growing at the second-fastest rate in America. A construction boom has sucked in workers and transformed Arizona's towns. In 1980, Phoenix was one of the more homogenous cities in America, with few blacks and Hispanics accounting for just 15% of its population. By 2005, it was 42% Hispanic.

The influx—or, as Russell Pearce, a Republican state legislator, calls it, the invasion—of illicit migrants rankles. On November 7th slightly more Arizonans told pollsters for CNN that illegal immigration was “extremely important” than said the same of terrorism, the Iraq war or the economy. They overwhelmingly supported ballot initiatives that would make English the state's official language, deny bail to illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes and cut them off from education spending.

Why then did they reject Republican candidates who supported such measures? The defeated Mr Graf believes that congressional scandals and the Iraq war drowned out his message on illegal immigration. He is probably right, but it is also likely that his appeal was off-key: one of his ads closed with a woman stroking her pregnant belly and imploring voters to support Mr Graf “for the safety of our children and all Americans”.

Such crude appeals, combined with tough talk from congressional Republicans, turned off many Hispanic voters. That is more difficult than it might sound. American-born Hispanics tend to resent illegal immigrants for the same reason others do—but they also have reasons of their own. New arrivals tend to settle in their neighbourhoods, crowding their children's schools and crashing, uninsured, into their cars. Edmundo Hidalgo of Chicanos Por La Causa, a pressure group, says Hispanics are often keen on laws intended to curb their fellows' most offensive behaviour, since they lose most if Hispanics become a pariah group. Last week, though, Hispanic voters plumped for Democratic candidates by an overwhelming margin—seven to three, up from six to four in the 2004 presidential election.

The other reason why tough talk from Republicans failed to motivate voters has to do with their opponents' tactics. In Arizona, no serious candidate ran a pro-immigrant campaign. Democrats opposed an amnesty for illegal immigrants. They asserted that the border must be fixed, and blamed Republican-controlled Washington for failing to do so. Then they stuck the knife in: they fully agreed with George Bush and John McCain, Arizona's popular senator, that immigration reform must provide a route out of the shadows for illegal workers. Some of their Republican opponents, they pointed out, did not, which is why Mr Bush's proposals came to nothing last year.

By diverting fury over illegal immigration into frustration at Republican division and incompetence, the Democrats bought themselves a pass to Washington. It expires soon. And, while the Democratic capture of Congress has removed the biggest roadblock to reform, new obstacles have emerged. Not the least are the unions, which dislike the idea of allowing people into the country to work temporarily. As some Republicans note with glee, any failure to deal with illegal immigration in the next two years is likely to hurt the other side at the polls.