California voters may soon decide on an SB-1070-like bill if Tea Party activist Michael Erickson gathers enough signatures for his Support Federal Immigration Law (FIL) Act. But the state’s Republicans are not that excited about the idea of bringing even more ugly anti-immigrant attacks to the state.

"It’s completely counterproductive to the future of the party as well as counterproductive to the immigration debate and coming to a real solution," Rob Stutzman told the Los Angeles Times. "It allows those who make a living off the demagoguing of immigrants to continue to do so."

Stutzman, the L.A. Times pointed out, is a GOP strategist who advised Meg Whitman in her failed gubernatorial campaign. Wonder why more of his views never made it into Whitman’s immigration platform? Or perhaps his is hard-won wisdom–the overwhelming majority of Latino voters turned out for Whitman’s opponent, Democrat Jerry Brown.

Republicans worry that an SB-1070-like ballot measure would further alienate the state’s growing Latino electorate. Already, one in five California voters is Latino, and those numbers will only increase over time.

Arizona’s SB 1070 allows police to detain anyone if in the course of enforcing state or local law, or even civil code, they come to believe that someone is undocumented. It remains the harshest anti-immigrant law in the country. Police officers would be allowed to investigate a person’s immigration status, and detain them while doing so. It’s currently tied up in the courts and winding its way up to the Supreme Court, but that hasn’t stopped other states from considering similar laws.

Erickson needs 433,971 valid signatures by April of next year for his bill to be put on the California ballot.