Dem candidates for House quiet about abortion
Democratic Party leaders and progressive groups portray Judge Brett Kavanaugh as a threat to abortion rights, and they hope the fight over President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee will energize voters in California races that could decide who controls the House next year.
Those races, however, are playing out in districts where support for abortion rights isn’t the given that it is in the bluest parts of California, such as the Bay Area. Democrats running in the more conservative House districts that the party is trying to seize from Republicans aren’t rushing to make abortion their issue.
For the party’s base, the prospect that Kavanaugh could swing the Supreme Court away from Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion, is a major cause for concern. The liberal hub MoveOn told its members in an email blast that with Kavanaugh, the court could
“criminalize women and doctors in a radical rollback of women’s basic rights and equality.”
But most of the Democrats running in nine GOP-held House districts that the party thinks are in play aren’t taking their cues from the left, even though they all support abortion rights. Three of them were silent about abortion rights on their Twitter accounts throughout last week, and several others declined to be interviewed about the issue when contacted by The Chronicle, preferring to issue prepared statements instead.
Among those who didn’t tweet about abortion or otherwise raise the subject was Jessica Morse, a first-time candidate who is taking on five-term GOP Rep. Tom McClintock of Elk Grove (Sacramento County). Republicans hold a double-digit registration advantage over Democrats in the district, which lies largely in the Sierra, running from north of Lake Tahoe southward to Sequoia National Park. Trump beat Hillary Clinton there in 2016, and McClintock — who has a 100 percent rating from the National Right to Life Committee — won nearly 52 percent of the vote in the June primary.
Morse, a former State Department employee, will talk about abortion rights when voters ask. But she says she is focusing on “front-yard issues.”
Abortion “is an issue that is targeting base voters,” Morse said. “Whereas fire prevention, or whether we have a ski industry in this district or better watershed management — that is something that people can see every day. When I take a community approach on issues, that’s where I can find common ground with everyone.”
Instead of talking about abortion the day after Kavanaugh’s nomination, Morse tweeted, “Our neighbors in #CA04 don’t want to just scrape by. We want opportunities to have goodpaying jobs, quality healthcare & a clean environment. And that’s what we deserve.”
Morse’s approach is an acknowledgment that preserving abortion rights isn’t a top priority to many independent voters in California. Those are the people the Democrats running in GOP-held districts in historically conservative areas such as the Central Valley and Orange County need on their side to win.
Only 19 percent of independent voters in California said abortion “is one of the most important issues in how I vote,” according to a January survey of 2,313 state voters conducted by NARAL Pro-Choice California, which supports abortion rights. The survey found that 54 percent of independents said access to abortion, birth control and prenatal care were “important to how I vote,” but that it was “not one of the most important issues.”
Katie Hill was one Democratic House candidate in a battleground district who did speak pointedly about reproductive rights after Kavanaugh was nominated. The first-time candidate, who is challenging Rep. Steve Knight, R-Lancaster (Los Angeles County), posted a 45second video on Facebook of her standing with hundreds of other protesters in front of the Supreme Court on the night Trump introduced his nominee.
“This is the most profound appointment Donald Trump has made,” Hill said as she looked into the camera with a crowd chanting behind her. “We have to make this stop. We cannot despair. We have to vote.”
But a more common response among Democrats running in competitive districts was the written statement that a spokeswoman for Josh Harder produced when The Chronicle requested an interview. Harder is trying to unseat Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock, in a Central Valley district that Clinton won in 2016. Denham won the June primary with 38 percent of the vote, while Harder finished second with 17 percent.
Trump’s Supreme Court pick means that “women’s ability to make their own decisions on abortion is at risk — along with affordable birth control, rural health care, and coverage for people with preexisting conditions,” Harder’s statement read.
Other Democrats didn’t even offer a statement. “No comment works for me,” said a spokeswoman for Andrew Janz, a Fresno County prosecutor who has raised more than $1.4 million in his long-shot campaign to unseat Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare. Nunes won 58 percent of the primary vote in June, to 32 percent for Janz.
Nunes and the other Republicans seeking to keep competitive seats in the GOP column also largely steered clear of what Kavanaugh might mean for abortion rights. While Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the high court last year remains one of his most popular moves among conservatives, social issues aren’t what California Republicans will focus on, said Jack Pandol, state spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. They will be touting the strong economy, he said.
“People are feeling it. They’re seeing their friends and neighbors with new jobs and getting raises,” Pandol said. Abortion, he added, “is pretty much a base issue for both sides.”
Rallying voters around a Supreme Court nominee isn’t a sure-fire bet, either, particularly for Democrats. In the 2016 presidential election, only 21 percent of people said the makeup of the Supreme Court was their top priority when they voted for president, according to exit polls. Of those for whom it was a big factor, most were Trump voters.
Still, Democrats “shouldn’t shy away” from the abortion issue, said John Whaley, a senior research director with the Goodwin Simon Strategic Research firm, which polls mainly for Democratic candidates and causes.
“There are ways to talk about abortion and other reproductive health issues that really resonate for people in the middle,” Whaley said. He said Democrats can cast abortion rights as part of a larger economic narrative, pointing out that abortion restrictions in other states tend to affect poor women more than others.
In California, where there is greater protection for abortion access than in many other states, Whaley said polling shows there is more agreement on the issue than people realize.
“You don’t have to make it a red-meat issue here,” he said.
“Fire prevention, or whether we have a ski industry ... or better watershed management — that is something that people can see.”
Jessica Morse, challenger to GOP incumbent Tom McClintock