Although 'Save Our State' Supporters Failed To Make The November Ballot, Their Toned-Down Racist Campaign Won't Go Away. By J.E. Relly ALTHOUGH THE initiative plugged "Save Our State," hauntingly similar to California's Proposition 187, recently failed to draw enough signatures to go on the November ballot, supporters intentions haven't dried up and splinter groups are waiting in the wings. Since the April launching of the initiative, numerous reports have critically dissected key provisions. But little attention centered on the diversity among supporters behind the Arizona anti-immigrant movement. Contrast Don Franklin Barrington's racially bombastic overtures in his 1994 Arizona campaign for an Arizona version of Prop 187 to the smooth-speaking, "moderate" terms employed by Dan Dahlstedt heading "Save Our State." Barrington, for example, made acrimoniously insulting remarks to The Skinny (Dec. 14, 1994) on the state providing emergency health care to illegal immigrants: "Take for example, a prostitute in Nogales who's pregnant and ready to pop. All she has to do (is) wander away from her trash heap, cross the border and step in an emergency room in Arizona... ." Dahlstedt, on the other hand, often speaks in terms of the illegals' human rights. Yet the moderate rhetoric coming from SOS activists often rings suspicious. Dahlstedt, an enigmatic Scottsdale businessman who operates a mail-order business, boasts of his teenage job of picking melons for minimum wage in Yuma. He says--oddly--that none of the SOS committee members owned businesses affected by undocumented workers. So why are they ardently supporting an initiative designed to discourage employers from hiring people who are in Arizona illegally? Dahlstedt's group of some 30 supporters is taking the politically popular line of fighting to reduce millions in tax dollars spent on benefits for illegal entrants. Their proposed initiative included extreme provisions that allowed companies to file suit and recover damages when competitors hired illegal entrants. A parallel provision allowed anyone losing a job to an illegal entrant the right to sue the employer. But the congenial Dahlstedt waxes altruistic, insisting the employers are the problem and that's why the initiative language included lawsuits. "People wouldn't be lured across the desert unless there was promise of employment in the U.S. The only way you can stop the inhumanity of that is by putting pressure on those who knowingly hire them." He laces his interview with anecdotes about "illegals" abused in the fields or exposed to occupational hazards--reproaching companies for not providing training, protective clothing or health care. Interestingly, even though the stated purpose of the initiative was to preserve jobs for permanent residents, Dahlstedt and supporters are in favor of a "guest worker" program, which would allow companies through agreements with the Mexican government to hire workers for U.S. minimum wage and health benefits for a limited number of months. Dahlstedt paints a diverse picture of prime participants in the Arizona anti-immigration movement, with groups pitted against each other on whether to yank students out of school if they can't prove U.S. citizenship. Organizers decided to leave out such an education section, one of the most controversial portions of California's Prop. 187. It cost SOS the participation of California organizers, who Dahlstedt says, want more extreme measures. "(The initiative) wasn't racist enough" for hardliners, he says. After the committee softened the language in the initiative, financial sources shriveled and the committee was unable to hire paid circulators. But the group managed to network and corral 600 state-wide volunteers, who were unable to gather the required 112,961 signatures. While Dahlstedt denies recognizing anti-immigrant activist Barrington's name, he says the committee initially organized by inviting everyone interested to their meetings. But those with "racist proposals" weren't asked back. He calls such people "elitists" who treat illegal entrants as "slaves or subhuman species. Some of the people I've received comments from made me want to puke." But even though Dahlstedt exhibits a silver-tongued tolerance toward workers and illegal-immigrant school children, he reveals an unsympathetic preoccupation with their parents. "I keep thinking if I were Hispanic, I'd be so ticked off at these illegals. You drive down the road and every time you see someone who's Hispanic, you think they're here illegally, and that's not the case." He and initiative supporters are in favor of the federal immigrant legislation that's passed in both the House and Senate and which is now sitting in conference committee. Dahlstedt says depending on the final language, the federal plan might suffice for his group's failed state initiative. He says extremist groups may emerge with their own plan before November. Meanwhile Save Our State supporters are pressuring the Phoenix City Council to adopt a proposed ordinance requiring the Phoenix Police Department to alert the Immigration and Naturalization Service if they arrest anyone who is illegally in the country. Supporters also have lobbied Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who now is considering a "specially trained posse" to check citizenship status of county jail inmates. While supporters of Save Our State say that controlling illegal immigration is about economics and not racial division, they add they'd like to see triple-fence barriers at our borders. Dahlstedt might call antagonistic anti-immigration groups "racist," but Save Our State seems like the same old thing in a prettier package.

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