‘Your Bedroom Is on the Ballot’: How Democrats
See Abortion Politics After Kansas
Aug. 3,
2022, 7:33 p.m. ET Aug. 3, 2022
Aug. 3,
2022
Katie
Glueck and Shane Goldmacher
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/03/us/politics/democrats-abortion-kansas.html
A decisive vote to defend abortion rights in deeply
conservative Kansas reverberated across the midterm campaign landscape on
Wednesday, galvanizing Democrats and underscoring for Republicans the risks of
overreaching on one of the most emotionally charged matters in American
politics.
In a state
where Republicans far outnumber Democrats, Kansans delivered a clear message in
the first major vote testing the potency of abortion politics since the Supreme
Court overturned Roe v. Wade: Abortion opponents are going too far.
The
overwhelming defeat of a measure that would have removed abortion protections
from the state constitution quickly emboldened Democrats to run more
assertively on abortion rights and even to reclaim some of the language long
deployed by conservatives against government overreach, using it to cast
abortion bans as infringing on personal freedoms. (As of Wednesday, the margin
was 58.8 percent to 41.2 percent.)
“The court
practically dared women in this country to go to the ballot box to restore the
right to choose,” President Biden said by video Wednesday, as he signed an
executive order aimed at helping Americans cross state lines for abortions.
“They don’t have a clue about the power of American women.”
In
interviews, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, urged
Democrats to be “full-throated” in their support of abortion access, and
Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the House Democratic
campaign arm, said the Kansas vote offered a “preview of coming attractions”
for Republicans. Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat in a highly
competitive district, issued a statement saying that abortion access “hits at
the core of preserving personal freedom, and of ensuring that women, and not
the government, can decide their own fate.”
Republicans
said the midterm campaigns would be defined by Mr. Biden’s disastrous approval
ratings and economic concerns.
Both
Republicans and Democrats caution against conflating the results of an
up-or-down ballot question with how Americans will vote in November, when they
will be weighing a long list of issues, personalities and their views of
Democratic control of Washington.
“Add in
candidates and a much more robust conversation about lots of other issues, this
single issue isn’t going to drive the full national narrative that the
Democrats are hoping for,” said David Kochel, a veteran of Republican politics
in nearby Iowa. Still, Mr. Kochel acknowledged the risks of Republicans’
overstepping, as social conservatives push for abortion bans with few
exceptions that polls generally show to be unpopular.
“The base
of the G.O.P. is definitely ahead of where the voters are in wanting to
restrict abortion,” he said. “That’s the main lesson of Kansas.”
Polls have
long shown most Americans support at least some abortion rights. But abortion
opponents have been far more likely to let the issue determine their vote,
leading to a passion gap between the two sides of the issue. Democrats hoped
the Supreme Court decision this summer erasing the constitutional right to an
abortion would change that, as Republican-led states rushed to enact new
restrictions, and outright bans on the procedure took hold.
The Kansas
vote was the most concrete evidence yet that a broad swath of voters —
including some Republicans who still support their party in November — were
ready to push back. Kansans voted down the amendment in Johnson County — home
to the populous, moderate suburbs outside Kansas City — rejecting the measure
with about 70 percent of the vote, a sign of the power of this issue in
suburban battlegrounds nationwide. But the amendment was also defeated in more
conservative counties, as abortion rights support outpaced Mr. Biden’s showing
in 2020 nearly everywhere.
After
months of struggling with their own disengaged if not demoralized base,
Democratic strategists and officials hoped the results signaled a sort of
awakening. They argued that abortion rights are a powerful part of the effort
to cast Republicans as extremists and turn the 2022 elections into a choice
between two parties, rather than a referendum just on Democrats.
“The
Republicans who are running for office are quite open about their support for
banning abortion,” said Senator Warren. “It’s critical that Democrats make
equally clear that this is a key difference, and Democrats will stand up for
letting the pregnant person make the decision, not the government.”
A
Kansas-style referendum will be a rarity this election year, with only four
other states expected to put abortion rights directly to voters in November
with measures to amend their constitutions: California, Michigan, Vermont and
Kentucky. However, the issue has already emerged as a defining debate in some
key races, including in Michigan and Pennsylvania, where Democratic candidates
for governor have cast themselves as bulwarks against far-reaching abortion
restrictions or bans. On Tuesday, Michigan Republicans nominated Tudor Dixon, a
former conservative commentator, for governor, who has opposed abortion in
cases of rape and incest.
Voting in
the primary election in Topeka, Kan., on Tuesday.Credit...Katie Currid for The
New York Times
And in
Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano, the far-right Republican nominee for governor,
said, “I don’t give a way for exceptions” when asked whether he believes in
exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. Governor’s contests in
states including Wisconsin and Georgia could also directly affect abortion
rights.
Other tests
of the impact of abortion on races are coming sooner. North of New York City, a
Democrat running in a special House election this month, Pat Ryan, has made
abortion rights a centerpiece of his campaign, casting the race as another
measure of the issue’s power this year.
“We have to
step up and make sure our core freedoms are protected and defended,” said Mr.
Ryan, the Ulster County executive in New York, who had closely watched the
Kansas results.
Opponents
of the Kansas referendum leaned into that “freedom” message, with advertising
that cast the effort as nothing short of a government mandate — anathema to
voters long mistrustful of too much intervention from Topeka and Washington —
and sometimes without using the word “abortion” at all.
Some of the
messaging was aimed at moderate, often suburban voters who have toggled between
the parties in recent elections. Strategists in both parties agreed that
abortion rights could be salient with those voters, particularly women, in the
fall. Democrats also pointed to evidence that the issue may also drive up
turnout among their base voters.
After the
Supreme Court’s decision, Democrats registered to vote at a faster rate than
Republicans in Kansas, according a memo from Tom Bonier, the chief executive of
TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm. Mr. Bonier said his analysis found roughly
70 percent of Kansans who registered after the court’s decision were women.
“It is
malpractice to not continue to center this issue for the remainder of this
election season — and beyond,” said Tracy Sefl, a Democratic strategist. “What
Democrats should say is that for Americans your bedroom is on the ballot this
November.”
Inside the
Democratic Party, there has been a fierce debate since Roe was overturned over
how much to talk about abortion rights at a time of rising prices and a rocky
economy — and that is likely to intensify. There is always the risk, some
longtime strategists warn, of getting distracted from the issues that polls
show are still driving most Americans.
Senator
Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said he understood the hesitancy from party
stalwarts.
“The energy
is on the side of abortion rights,” he said. “For decades that hasn’t been true
so it’s difficult for some people who have been through lots of tough battles
and lots of tough states to recognize that the ground has shifted under them.
But it has.”
He urged
Democrats to ignore polling that showed abortion was not a top-tier issue,
adding that “voters take their cues from leaders” and Democrats need to discuss
abortion access more. “When your pollster or your strategist says, ‘Take an
abortion question and pivot away from it’ you should probably resist,” he said.
A Kaiser
Family Foundation poll released this week showed that the issue of abortion
access had become more salient for women 18 to 49 years old, with a
14-percentage-point jump since February for those who say it will be very
important to their vote in midterm elections, up to 73 percent.
That is
roughly equal to the share of voters overall who said inflation would be very
important this fall — and a sign of how animating abortion has become for many
women.
Still,
Republicans said they would not let their focus veer from the issues they have
been hammering for months.
“This fall,
voters will consider abortion alongside of inflation, education, crime,
national security and a feeling that no one in Democrat-controlled Washington
listens to them or cares about them,” said Kellyanne Conway, the Republican
pollster and former senior Trump White House adviser.
Michael
McAdams, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional
Committee, said that if Democrats focused the fall campaign on abortion they
would be ignoring the economy and record-high prices: “the No. 1 issue in every
competitive district.”
One of the
most endangered Democrats in the House, Representative Tom Malinowski of New
Jersey, agreed that “the economy is the defining issue for people.”
“But there
is a relationship here, because voters want leaders to be focused on fighting
inflation, not banning abortion,” he said. Mr. Malinowski, who said he was
planning to advertise on abortion rights, said the results in Kansas had
affirmed for him the significance of abortion and the public’s desire to keep
government out of such personal decisions.
“There is
enormous energy among voters and potential voters this fall to make that
point,” he said.
Peter Baker
contributed reporting from Washington.
Katie
Glueck is a national political reporter. Previously, she was chief Metro
political correspondent, and a lead reporter for The Times covering the Biden
campaign. She also covered politics for McClatchy’s Washington bureau and for
Politico. @katieglueck
Shane
Goldmacher is a national political reporter and was previously the chief
political correspondent for the Metro desk. Before joining The Times, he worked
at Politico, where he covered national Republican politics and the 2016
presidential campaign. @ShaneGoldmacher
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