Running out of options to avoid a collision course with a 1994-like Congressional disaster, left-of-center Democrats are desperately challenging Republicans over the volatile issue of illegal immigration.  The puzzle piece fitting most prominently into their strategy at this point is California, where immigration is the hottest issue since the era of Pete Wilson and Proposition 187.

At the forefront of the heat is gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, who is currently being accused by liberal attorney Gloria Allred of knowingly harboring an illegal alien as a maid, according to a document the attorney holds as the smoking gun of Meg Whitman’s hypocrisy and dishonesty.  In a press conference devoted to answering Allred’s charges, who is now representing the Whitman’s former maid, Whitman denied them and called them a smear campaign.  Allred’s timing and motives for coming out at the height of the California gubernatorial campaign are subject to suspicion. After all, Allred’s purported letter is around seven years old.   Allred denied being a political operative for the Jerry Brown campaign, even though Allred has contributed to Jerry Brown during his previous run as governor.  While Allred may not be a blatant operative for the Jerry Brown campaign, the fact that she injected the issue into public discourse will certainly be fodder for those on the more liberal side of immigration reform, and will certainly impact the Whitman campaign this fall.

While the illegal immigration issue has made some headway into the California Senate campaign between incumbent Barbara Boxer and newcomer Carly Fiorina, it has also made its way to the House level, an area where Democrats are already predicted to lose heavily.   One example of this is in the race between incumbent Loretta Sanchez in Orange County against Van Tran. In a call to her Hispanic Democratic base to not be apathetic, the immigration card was very much a part of the Congresswoman’s exhortation to show up in November, in a recent Spanish language television commercial.

“..the Vietnamese and the Republicans are- with an intensity...trying to take this seat, this seat that we have done so much for our community...take away this seat from us and give it to this Van Tran, who is very anti-immigrant...and very anti-Latino,” she said in an exclusive interview with Spanish language station Univision.

Coincidentally, the Republican Tran has been identified as a member of his party’s Young Guns, a program which equips rising Republican stars in highly competitive races this November.

Democrats will have a chance to use the immigration issue as an impetus for rallying their troops, as will likely be witnessed at this weekend’s One Nation Rally in Washington, DC.  The rally, which is an answer to Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor Rally, will be attended by some of the party’s most valiant supporters, predominantly within the labor movement.