Obama meets business leaders to shift focus of debate to immigration Barack Obama's meeting on Tuesday with an array of senior business leaders to press his case for an overhaul of US immigration policy was much more than just another staged public relations event in the White House. Mr Obama's authority and credibility, and perhaps his legacy, are being corroded by cascading failures in the implementation of the biggest reform of his presidency in healthcare. The website designed to allow a large slice of the American working population to sign up for health insurance for the first time is barely working. At the same time, millions are receiving notices cancelling their existing plans because they do not comply with the new law. "If the government can't even run a website that it had three years and hundreds of millions of dollars to create, can Americans really entrust the same bureaucracy with even more power over their healthcare?" said Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader. Mr Obama's meeting on Tuesday allowed him to refocus public attention on his strongest advantage at a time when he is politically weak: the deep divisions within conservatives which are alienating large sections of the electorate from the Republican party. "We have a great thing going with "ObamaCare" but we keep fighting among ourselves," said a senior Republican strategist, who asked not be named. For Mr Obama, immigration reform represents a marriage of good policy and good politics, grappling with an issue which has defeated successive presidents while drawing key voter populations to the Democrats. The Senate has already passed an immigration bill but the Republican-controlled House has not taken it up. Even if it does, it is likely to break the bill down into pieces which will drain it of Democratic support. This is something that has strong bipartisan support. Keep in mind that my predecessor, George W. Bush, was a strong supporter of this," Mr Obama said at the business meeting. Mr Bush tried, and failed, twice in his eight years in office to reform the law to find a pathway for the 11m-odd undocumented immigrants, about half from Mexico, to normalise their status in the US. The business leaders at Mr Obama's side included people who have never been high-profile supporters of his, including Arne Sorenson, the CEO of Marriott, the hotel chain, and Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of Blackstone, the private equity group. "We have a fascinating cross-section of people - some unlikely bedfellows, some very liberal folks, some very conservative folks - who all believe that now is the time to get this done," Mr Obama said. Mr Schwarzman once called the Obama administration's push to lift taxes on the earnings of private equity executives a warlike gesture, likening it to Hitler invading Poland. He later apologised. On Monday evening, the Senate, where partisan tensions are dimmer than in the House, passed another bill which exacerbates the Republican divide, banning employment discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. John Boehner, the Republican house speaker, said he would oppose the bill, as it would "increase frivolous litigation and cost American jobs." The same electoral trends Mr Obama is trying to entrench - declining support for Republicans among young people, minorities and women, alienated by the Tea Party and social conservatives - are being played out in gubernatorial elections held on Tuesday, in Virginia and New Jersey. In blue-collar New Jersey, Chris Christie, the Republican governor, was well ahead in public opinion surveys going into polling day; conversely in Virginia, the Democrats" Terry McAuliffe, is widely tipped to easily win what is usually a closely contested state. Mr McAuliffe, a controversial longtime moneyman for Bill and Hillary Clinton, has outspent his opponent, Republican Ken Cuccinelli, hammering him about his strong opposition to abortion and no-fault divorce. "An under-noticed fact of the Virginia race is the use in advertising of women's health issues ranging from abortion, birth control and transvaginal probes to sex trafficking and violence against women," said Elizabeth Wilner, in the Cook Political Report. Mr Christie opposes abortion and same-sex marriage, but unlike Mr Cuccinelli, has never emphasised the issue. "He checks the boxes," Howard Wolfson, a New York deputy mayor, told MSNBC. Mr Cuccinelli's views, by contrast, have been targeted by the McAuliffe campaign with images "of birth control pills and an ultrasound instrument to jar and ick voters into seeing these issues as symbols of unwanted government intrusion," said Ms Wilner.