Hotline reports:

It's official... AP has called TX 23. Ex-Dem Rep. Ciro Rodriguez is coming back to Congress. With 94% of precincts reporting, Rodriguez leads GOP Rep. Henry Bonilla 55-45%…. Frankly, not only is Rodriguez's victory a mild surprise (Bonilla fell just 2 points short of avoiding the runoff in November), the size is a shock…. Bonilla was a strong supporter of the tough-on-immigration measures sponsored by the Republicans. He voted for the construction of the 700-mile border fence, and supported Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner's bill penalizing workers who hire illegal immigrants. Based on the election results, it appears Latino voters - even among his previous supporters - turned on him and supported ex-Rep. Ciro Rodriguez (D). In Maverick County (95% Hispanic), Bonilla won a miniscule 14% of the vote. By contrast, Bonilla carried the county in his comfortable 2004 win, and President Bush even performed respectably here in 2004 when he won 40%. Val Verde County (76% Hispanic) has traditionally been a solidly pro-Bush, pro-Bonilla county. Bush carried it with 59% of the vote in 2004. But Bonilla barely carried it, only winning 51% there against Rodriguez….

Here's what George Will had to say a few months back on the possible long-term political damage to the GOP:

So, safely assuming that the House-Senate conference fails to produce a compromise acceptable to both houses, when Congress returns to Washington after the Labor Day recess, the House may again pass essentially what it passed in December…. The cost of this, paid in the coin of lost support among Latinos, the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority, may be reckoned later, for years. Remember this: Out West, feelings of all sorts about immigration policy are particularly intense, and if John Kerry had won a total of 127,014 more votes in New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado, states with burgeoning Latino populations, he would have carried those states and won the election. But for now, the minds of Republican candidates are concentrated on a shorter time horizon -- the next 4 1/2 months.

Will also wrote:

[C]onservatives should favor reducing illegality by putting illegal immigrants on a path out of society's crevices and into citizenship by paying fines and back taxes and learning English…. [I]t would prevent the emergence of a sullen, simmering subculture of the permanently marginalized, akin to the Arab ghettos in France. The House-passed bill, making it a felony to be in the country illegally, would make 11 million people permanently ineligible for legal status. To what end?

I support tough border security, but the House GOP's immigration stance was a mistake - on political and policy grounds - in my view. They would have had a lot of leverage going into conference with the Senate on immigration to get something done. I suspect they would have even won a phased comprehensive bill where border security would have come first followed by the phasing in of the other measures contained in the Senate bill. It was a missed opportunity.