AURORA, Colo. – Democrats see the chance that President Barack Obama's heated exchange with Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona on the airport tarmac in Phoenix could help him with the Latino voters he came West to court this week.

The run-in, captured in a photograph of the governor wagging a finger at the president as they discussed her book, "Scorpions for Breakfast," lit up Latino radio stations and blog sites all over the state.

While it is difficult to judge whether the moment will have any lasting impact, Latino leaders said that what is being dubbed by some as the "dust-up in the desert" could play in the president's favor given the unfavorable view many Latinos have of the governor for her advocacy of tough immigration measures.

"For that incident alone," Robert Meza, a Democratic state senator from Phoenix said Thursday, "85 percent more Latin people will gravitate toward the president."

Republicans saw the incident in another light. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told the "Imus in the Morning" show on Fox Business Network that Brewer had "very legitimate" concerns about the state's border and that her tarmac exchange with Obama was another display of the president's "prickly personality."

Appearing on Fox News on Thursday, Brewer said Obama had walked off while she was still talking.

"You know me, when I talk, I am animated and I talk with my hands," she said, explaining her finger-wagging. "I suppose that the picture was probably shot when I was moving my hands around."

In an interview with ABC News that was broadcast Thursday, Obama said the conflict was being blown out of proportion. "I'm usually accused of not being intense enough, right?" he said, laughing. "Too relaxed."

The book, in which Brewer takes the federal government to task for what she calls lax enforcement of immigration laws, is, like Brewer herself, unpopular among Latinos, particularly in Arizona, a state Obama is hoping to put in play this election year.

The president, for his part, was doing all he could to build his standing among voters in this potentially crucial bloc.

While his five-state tour is ostensibly meant to roll out the tax, manufacturing, energy, education and jobs proposals he unveiled in his State of the Union address this week, the White House made sure that three of the states on the high-profile itinerary were swing states where the Latino vote will be crucial.

Besides Arizona, the president traveled to Nevada, visiting a UPS plant on Thursday to talk about energy proposals, before heading to Colorado to give another speech. He took along with him Luis Miranda, his director of Hispanic Media.

And he gave interviews to two Spanish-language television networks on the trip, one to Telemundo on Thursday in Las Vegas and one on Wednesday to Univision, which has increasingly been influencing the view of national politics among Latinos.

During Obama's Univision interview, the anchor Maria Elena Salinas pressed the president on one of the few potential sore spots that could hurt his chances of winning large numbers of Latino voters: the record numbers of deportations since he took office.

"Over 1.2 million people have been deported under your administration," Salinas said.

"More families separated under your administration than any other president. You couldn't do anything administratively for this?"

Obama sought to turn the question around to reflect his other efforts on behalf of immigrants, particularly those with no criminal background.

"That's the law that's on the books right now," he said, quickly adding: "What we have systematically done, is to use our administrative authority to prioritize and say: Let's not focus on Dream Act kids. Let's not focus on a law-abiding family that is out there trying to, you know, make their way. Let's focus on folks who are engaged in criminal activity."

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