Abortion absent in Iowa campaigns
Many say pressing unpopular views risks losing votes
DES MOINES, Iowa — A man in Iowa stood up at a recent town hall and told Ron DeSantis he had an “easy” question: How would the Florida governor address abortion when it’s sure to be a big issue in the 2024 presidential election?
DeSantis said he’d talk about it “the same way I did in Florida. I just articulated kind of, you know, where we were, what we do.”
He continued for nearly four minutes without using the word “abortion.” He instead criticized Donald Trump for failing to appear in debates and Nikki Haley for her campaign-trail gaffes.
Abortion has largely been absent as an issue in the lead-up to this year’s Iowa Republican caucuses, a remarkable change in a state that has long backed religious conservatives vowing to restrict the procedure. Part of the change is because Republicans achieved a generational goal when the Supreme Court overturned a federally guaranteed right to abortion. But it also underscores a pervasive fear among Republican candidates and voters that vocalizing their desire to further restrict abortion rights has become politically dangerous in 2024.
Democrats outperformed expectations in the 2022 midterms and several state races last year campaigning on the issue. And President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign plans to make abortion rights central to its strategy this year.
“At this stage, if we’re going to continually lose elections because of that issue, I’d say dump the whole damn thing and let God be the judge,” said Greg Jennings, a 68-year-old retired painting contractor from Clear Lake, Iowa, who was attending a rally for Trump.
In interviews with more than two dozen GOP voters around the state in the past week, almost none cited abortion as one of their top issues this election year, instead pointing to concerns about the border, the economy or America’s standing in the world. That’s not to say there aren’t strong exceptions among some evangelical voters who represent a core segment of the Republican base.
Brian Downes, a Winterset, Iowa, resident, said abortion is a “huge” issue for him. He said he would only change his plans to caucus for Trump on Monday if the former president reversed course and embraced the pro-choice movement.
Downes urged his party not to ignore their opposition to abortion rights.
“Pro-life presidents have won going, let’s say, going back to Ronald Reagan. Always pro-life. The Bushes, pro-life. Trump, pro-life,” he said. “They won. That didn’t cancel any of them. So that’s just an old story that just won’t die.”
But Downes appears to be in the minority.
Cindy Leonhart, a 68year-old wearing a DeSantis button on her shirt after she heard the governor speak last Friday, said she doesn’t believe that abortion should be legal but “it’s not a decisive issue for me.”
Earlier in the Iowa campaign, DeSantis and some others in the primary criticized Trump for refusing to endorse a national abortion ban. Trump has at times highlighted his role as president in appointing the Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade.
But he’s also said that Republicans shouldn’t lock themselves into positions that are unpopular with a majority of the public and argued that the Supreme Court gave abortion opponents the right to “negotiate” restrictions where they live.
DeSantis and other GOP hopefuls now increasingly speak of a need for “compassion” for women. Asked last week on Fox News about a six-week ban he signed in Florida, DeSantis defended the law as protecting life and that it was “compassionate to be able to respect that and to be able to protect that going forward.”
Haley, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor, has repeatedly said she would sign any national abortion restrictions passed by Congress if elected president, but that Republicans are unlikely to have enough seats or supportive members in their ranks to pass them.
“The fellas just don’t know how to talk about it. Instead of demonizing this issue, you have to humanize this issue,” she said in a separate Fox News event last week. Haley is the only woman in the Republican primary field.
Trump, in his Fox News town hall Wednesday night, took credit for having “terminated” Roe and told a woman who opposed abortion and asked about the issue that he “loved” where she was coming from but “we still have to win elections.”
He blamed DeSantis’ ban at six weeks for the governor’s stagnant poll numbers: “If you talk five or six weeks, a lot of women don’t know that they’re pregnant in five or six weeks. I want to get something where people are happy.”
Dan Corbin of Cedar Falls, the voter who put DeSantis on the spot at his town hall, said afterward that Democrats have made it clear they will press the issue in 2024.
Corbin, who plans to caucus for Haley, said he likes the way she speaks about the issue and that Republicans overall “need to have a strategic approach. I don’t believe in abortion in any way, shape or form. But I think it’s going to make the Republicans less attractive.”