Elections likely to show if abortion still potent issue
‘We know that there are places … where Republicans have learned from the midterms, and they’re working very, very strategically around how they approach these issues.’ KARA TURRENTINE, a Democratic strategist
‘I think when you highlight government getting in between the parent-child relationship, the parents react adversely to that.’
DEVIN O’MALLEY, a Republican strategist
A series of off-cycle elections on Tuesday will test whether abortion access remains a key motivator for voters and is expected to yield insights that could help define campaign and party strategies ahead of 2024.
The most closely watched contests include an Ohio constitutional amendment that would protect access to abortion; Kentucky’s gubernatorial race, in which a Democratic incumbent is running heavily on the issue for reelection in a red state; and state Legislature races in Virginia, where the Republican governor has expressed support for limiting abortion rights.
“The vast majority of Republicans are still trying to figure out how to message on this issue, so this will certainly be a test to see what message was effective,” said Sarah Matthews, a Republican strategist and former Trump administration spokesperson. “It’s going to be concerning for Republicans if next Tuesday doesn’t go our way, and I think it will just show the kind of passion that there is behind this issue and that it’s not something that’s going away.”
In Ohio, voters will decide whether to amend their constitution to protect access to abortion.
‘When abortion’s on the ballot, we win, and I don’t see why on Nov. 7 we’re going to be an exception to that rule.’
TARA GIBSON, executive director of Roe Your Vote Virginia
Last year after Roe v. Wade protections fell, an abortion ban briefly went into effect there, but it was blocked in court.
The vote on that ballot initiative, known as Issue 1, follows a Republican-led push to raise the threshold for constitutional amendments in a special election over the summer that would have made it harder to pass the abortion constitutional amendment.
But that effort failed. The Ohio constitutional amendment is a measure that, like others in states including Kansas, Kentucky, and Michigan, addresses abortion rights directly. So far, since the Supreme Court ruling undermining Roe v. Wade, abortion rights advocates have established a perfect winning streak at the ballot box. Similar citizenled ballot initiatives are being planned in states including Florida and Arizona to circumvent Republican state legislatures and protect access.
A win in Ohio, Democrats hope, could also carry over to the 2024 elections, when incumbent Senator Sherrod Brown faces a steep path to reelection — a race that could play a key role in which party controls the Senate. They hope that Brown, an abortion rights supporter, might be able to tap into the energy generated by the ballot question.
Democrats said they feel optimistic about their odds on Issue 1, confident they have the backing of a broad coalition of voters.
Anti-abortion advocates there have also cast the issue as a matter of parental rights, a strategy that Republicans have found effective elsewhere, including on education issues.
“Folks in Ohio are talking about this the right way. I think they recognize that there’s a renewed sense of parents needing to be involved in their children’s lives,” said Devin O’Malley, a Republican strategist with past experience working in Ohio and Virginia elections, who most recently served as a spokesperson for former vice president Mike Pence’s presidential campaign. “As we saw in Virginia [when the Republican candidate won the gubernatorial race] in 2021, I think when you highlight government getting in between the parent-child relationship, the parents react adversely to that.”
Ohio, like the other closely watched abortion-related contests this November, has received a massive influx of money from interested parties on both sides of the issue, much of it going to advertising.
In Virginia, another battleground in which millions are being spent, all of the state Legislature seats are up for grabs, and abortion has become a central issue in determining control of both chambers.
Republican Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has endorsed several candidates in hopes of Republicans taking full control of the state. He has engaged on the issue of abortion, arguing that Republicans need to maintain control of the House and gain control of the Senate to pass legislation he supports that would outlaw abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions.
If he is successful in Virginia, the rest of the Republican Party would likely try to implement some of the same messaging in 2024. In the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court decision that overturned the federal right to an abortion, Republican candidates have struggled to address the issue in a way that’s resonated with voters.
“When there’s a powerful issue, there needs to be a counter message, and so that’s what we’ve sought to do in Virginia,” said Zack Roday, a spokesperson for Youngkin. “I’d expect a lot of the tactics to be copied [by other Republicans], but that’s not anything new. I think that any of these races, we’re always looking for clues ahead of midterms … and clues ahead of presidential years.”
Youngkin’s PAC paid for a seven-figure ad casting Democrats as extremists and highlighting that state Republicans want a 15-week proposal, which the ad describes as a “commonsense position.”
Roe Your Vote Virginia, a PAC urging voters to cast their ballots for Democrats to protect abortion access, has sought to tap into some of the cultural moments that involved largely women audiences this year. “Look what you made us do,” says the ad, a nod to Taylor Swift.
“When abortion’s on the ballot, we win, and I don’t see why on Nov. 7 we’re going to be an exception to that rule,” Tara Gibson, executive director of Roe Your Vote Virginia, told the Globe.
In Kentucky, Democratic Governor Andy Beshear’s reelection campaign has used the issue of abortion access against Republican challenger and Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who is running as a “pro-life candidate.”
In the past, a Democratic candidate in a red state like Beshear’s may have shied away from abortion access as a campaign focus. But Kentucky voters rejected an amendment last year that would have clarified abortion rights were not protected by the state constitution, giving Democrats a data point suggesting the public is on their side of the debate.
“Since the Dobbs decision, you’ve seen that who your governor is matters in terms of what rights you have,” said Sam Newton, a spokesperson for the Democratic Governors Association.
Democrats attributed surprise wins in the 2022 midterms, which allowed them to keep control of the Senate and limit the losses in the House, to backlash created by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe.
“We know that there are places … where Republicans have learned from the midterms, and they’re working very, very strategically around how they approach these issues,” said Kara Turrentine, a Democratic strategist who has done work in Ohio politics, including helping to defeat the measure this summer on the threshold for passing constitutional amendments. “Democrats understand the consistency that has to happen from 2023 to 2024. … We’ve got to keep the pressure going … and I think the party understands that and is working harder and earlier to do that work.”