Leak throws abortion to the voters
A divided nation is now suddenly divided on how deeply it is divided.
Activist Democrats consider the leak of the U.S. Supreme Court draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade a call to arms, an awakening akin to the Trump election in 2016, an assault on a freedom most Americans thought was secure until the day in 2020 when former SCOTUS Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.
“Friend, this is a dark moment for our nation,” the Democratic Governors Association texted widely Tuesday afternoon, hoping to use an image common in war — think Pearl Harbor or 9/11 — to charge up a base uninspired by an elderly president.
Republicans? Nothing to see here, move right along. Issue? What issue?
Public opinion clearly favors abortion rights. With or without a leak, Democrats planned to use the court’s expected Roe v. Wade decision to gain at the polls in blue
and purple states, maybe even pick off a race in a pale red state.
The only question now is how that wave will break and whether the court deletes or only dilutes Roe.
Will the post-leak, post-decision wave hurt even moderate Republicans such as former state Rep. Themis Klarides, an unvarnished supporter of abortion rights who's vying for the GOP nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal?
How about anti-abortion Republicans such as Leora Levy, Klarides' opponent in a likely Republican primary for Senate? Levy has flipped from abortion rights ten years ago to her current position as a “very principled Republican,” as she described herself to the CT Mirror at an anti-abortion rally at the state Capitol in March.
Yes and yes, Dems say. They see the divide as a way for a party falsely blamed for inflation — former President Donald Trump is far more the cause of price hikes than President Joe Biden — to fight back.
“This is no longer a theoretical threat,” said Roy Occhiogrosso, a Democratic strategist and consultant in Connecticut. “Their party is now branded as the party of Donald Trump and taking away a woman's right to choose. Good luck with that in November.”
Is that unfair to blue-state Republicans who either take no position on reproductive rights or support women's right to choose? Oh, well. Republicans brand Democrats as the party of overspending, softness on crime and now, inflation — all debatable charges.
Abortion is different, Occhiogrosso said. “This is an emotional issue in a way that financial issues are not.”
Punished in blue states
In blue states such as Connecticut, Republicans correctly point out that reproductive rights remain safe and growing safer until and unless the Supremes not only allow states to ban abortion but outlaw it.
“It doesn't affect anything in the state of Connecticut,” state Rep. Laura Devlin, R-Fairfield, told reporters including my colleague Ken Dixon outside the House chamber Tuesday morning.
Legally, that may be true. But if the Supreme Court's decision this spring in the Mississippi case challenging Roe drives Dems and unaffilialteds to the polls in November, those voters might not bother to sort out which Republicans do and which do not support abortion rights.
Devlin, the likely Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in this year's election, was one of seven House GOP members who voted for a bill on April 20 that would protect people in Connecticut against legal charges related to abortions stemming from conservative states; and expand the number of people who can perform abortions beyond medical doctors.
When asked whether she had spoken with Bob Stefanowski, the party's likely nominee for governor, Devlin shook her head no, and said she had not discussed her vote with the Madison Republican who picked her. But some in the GOP have disagreed with her, she said.
“The individuals I have had conversations with, I think, appreciate somebody willing to have a discussion and listen. Listening I think is very important.”
‘There’s no story’
Stefanowski, for his part, tweeted “Today is National Teacher Appreciation Day!” on Tuesday and issued no statements on the leak. He has said he favors women's right to choose abortion but not with what I'd call gusto, perhaps for fear of alienating a conservative base — every bit of which he will need in his rematch of the 2018 election against Gov. Ned Lamont.
Likewise, George Logan, the Republican former state senator challenging U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5, didn't respond to my query, nor issue any statements. He tweeted, “On this day, and every day, thank you to our teachers for dedicating so much to our students!”
Those silent treatments — against a backdrop of virtually every Democratic elected official decrying the leak and the threat to freedom — make sense to Ben Proto, the GOP state chairman.
“I don't know what the story is, there's no story,” Proto said to me, downplaying both the political effects of the leak and its legal significance — at least until we hear more from the Supreme Court.
Proto sees a muted abortion effect at the polls in part because voters who feel strongly about it already support their respective parties; and in part because the myth of the one-issue voter is just that.
“Most voters have multiple issues they look at,” he said. “People look at candidates far more holistically than they do myopically.”
Stark choice: Klarides vs. Levy
Without a doubt we can add abortion rights to the list of issues in 2022, nowhere more than in the U.S. Senate race. Klarides and Levy (and far-right extremist Peter Lumaj, who will hurt Levy if he qualifies for a primary), present a question to Republican voters: Who can unseat Blumenthal?
Klarides and Levy both issued statements decrying the leak. “I am pro-choice and have been consistent in that belief during my time in the state legislature,” Klarides added — perhaps a shot at Levy, who was the Connecticut chair for then-GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012.
“I believe in a woman's right to make that decision for herself,” Levy told Hearst CT Media at the Republican National Convention that year.
“I am a pro-life Republican,” Levy told Mark Pazniokas at the CT Mirror on March 23 of this year. “I'm a very principled Republican.”
Front-door logic says Klarides would neutralize the issue against Blumenthal, gaining an advantage Levy would not have.
Not so, a Levy adviser argued when we spoke. First, the adviser said, Blumenthal is so far out front on abortion rights, all the way to birth, that he's out of touch with voters on the issue. And second, abortion rights voters would would line up with Blumenthal over Klarides on other issues.
I don't buy it. That old saw about late-term abortions is a red herring. And there aren't enough anti-abortion voters in Connecticut to offset the abortion-rights wave that would drown a flipflopping Levy in a general election.
Either way, the leak throws abortion onto the already divided electoral battles, helping Democrats in any state that isn't solid red. Whether the divide cuts wide enough to sway a critical mass of casual abortion-rights voters in a year of inflation and war in Ukraine remains a mystery.