Candidates for the Orange County Board of Supervisors in California have made illegal immigration a central issue although the board has no power over it.

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The candidates, who will face off in Tuesday's election, are seeking jobs that hold little power over the immigration issues they are discussing on the campaign trail, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.

Tom Umberg, a Democrat seeking a position on the board in the nonpartisan race, is using his past as an assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting traffickers of illegal immigrants as part of his platform.

Janet Nguyen, a Republican, is using campaign mailers to advertise the "right way" to immigrate, explained by a picture of immigrants taking an oath of citizenship, and the "wrong way," displaying people scaling a fence.

Experts say the focus on immigration may be an attempt to bring conservatives, which generally vote more in this type of special elections, to their side.

"This issue, in effect, becomes a kind of proxy to mobilize people," said Mark Petracca, chairman of the political science department at University of California, Irvine, who called it "strategic politics."