In swing states with Democratic senators vulnerable for re-election in 2024, the party is already criticizing likely abortion-rights opponents, though most of those Republicans have yet to decide whether to run.
The Democrats’ early attacks on the issue indicate the party is ready to go ahead with what, in the year since the US Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, has been a clear winner for the match. And even at this early stage in the cycle, he has kept attention on the struggles Republicans have faced to determine how to talk to voters on the divisive issue.
The strategy could lend a hand to Senate Democrats who face a brutal map in 2024: they must defend 23 seats, compared to 10 for Republicans.
The issue will be particularly hard for Republicans to avoid in the perennial battleground of Wisconsin, where a deeply unpopular the abortion ban will work its way through the state court system. The law — enacted in 1849 (just months after Wisconsin was admitted to the union) — prohibits abortions in almost all cases.
“What we see in Wisconsin is also playing out nationally, which is that the Republican Party has built a machine to stoke anger over Roe v. Wade, but he’s never been able to do anything about it,” Wisconsin president Ben Wikler said. Democratic Party, he said in an interview. “But now that the dog has gotten the car, they have no message and no answers for tens of millions of Americans who don’t believe politicians should come between them and their doctor as they make their most intimate relationship and personal decisions.”
The state’s Democrats have wasted no time in bringing the issue to the fore. Incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin has already begun speaking out about her support for abortion rights. Last month, the Democratic National Committee, as part of a multi-battlefield campaign, put forward a huge billboard in milwaukee and began running digital ads in the state, all focused on Democratic support for reproductive rights.
The state Democratic Party has also been aggressive on social media, criticizing the records of a growing list of potential Republican contenders, including Rep. Tom Tiffany, businessmen Eric Hovde and Scott Mayer, and former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke. (Rep. Mike Gallagher, who had been encouraged by many national Republicans to challenge Baldwin, opted out of running last month.)
The four would face an uphill climb in reconciling their positions on the issue in a state where poll released last week found that 66% of registered voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
Tiffany, for example, cosponsored a House bill of 2021 that proposed implementing a ban on almost all abortions around six weeks into a pregnancy, before most women know they are pregnant.
Clarke has compared abortion to slavery and “genocideand has characterized the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision as “similar to a stay of execution.” Clarke has called on the government to prohibition abortion.
Hovde, who ran for the Senate in 2012, has saying he is “100% pro-life”.
However, Mayer told NBC News in April that he was “absolutely pro-life” but also supported “what people want … some access to abortion.”
As was the case for Republican candidates in races across the country in the 2022 midterm elections, the issue was a liability for the party’s candidates in Wisconsin and figured prominently in the strategy that helped Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to win re-election last year and the liberals win. a state Supreme Court seat in April, a race his candidate won by 11 percentage points, compared to Biden who won the state in 2020 by just 0.6 percentage points.
A lawsuit filed by the state’s Democratic attorney general that finds the 1849 ban unenforceable is currently being heard in state court. Conservative groups have vowed to appeal a ruling that goes against them, and the case is likely to end up being heard by the state Supreme Court during the heart of the Senate campaign, giving the issue ever-increasing importance. . State Republicans have continued to back the ban; On Wednesday, Republicans in the GOP-controlled state Senate voted unanimously against repeal it.
Interviews with Republicans in the state revealed that they still do not have a concrete strategy on how to deal with the problem, although most agreed that the party has failed on its messages in the year since the Dobbs ruling.
Tiffany, who said she would make the decision to run in August, said Republicans need to talk more about opposing abortion in the way she thought independent and undecided voters would identify.
“We need to lean on the issue and say: ‘We are the party that wants to protect life, both for babies and mothers, we want to do that and that is where we are as a party,’” he said, adding that the message could be based in the “faith”.
“We can do a better job of saying, this is why we are pro-life. He has a vision of the future, he does it in a positive way”, added Tiffany.
He noted that another important play would be to strike back at Democrats, especially Baldwin, who he and other Republicans say have not adequately defined at what point in pregnancy they believe abortion should no longer be legal.
“The other side has taken the most extreme position,” he said. “We have to show people all over the United States and Wisconsin where the other side stands, and I think the public will find that untenable.”
Tiffany was referring to Baldwin’s sponsorship of the Women’s Health Protection Law, a failed Democratic measure in Congress that sought to codify abortion rights protections into federal law. The 2023 bill proposed allowing abortion care after a fetus was viable in cases where the mother’s life was at risk, though many Republicans say the legislation failed to adequately define other circumstances that would allow care for the fetus. post-viability abortion.
Wisconsin Republican Party executive director Mark Jefferson said the ambiguity “it presented opportunities” for the eventual Republican nominee in Wisconsin and other states “to neutralize the problem.”
“I think we haven’t done a very good job of explaining how radical the Democrats’ point of view is,” Jefferson said.
National Republicans suggested that they might take the same approach.
“If Senate Democrats want to follow their record of supporting abortion without limits, a radical position that is out of step with voters across the country, that is their prerogative,” said Tate Mitchell, a spokesman for the Senate Republican National Committee. .
However, Democrats in other battleground states are already on the offensive, just like in Wisconsin.
In recent weeks, Democrats in Montana, Snowfall and Ohio held events designed to highlight the abortion rights records of Republicans who have expressed interest in running or announcing a run for the Senate.
Democrats have also pounced on the issue in Pennsylvania, where the state party is already running digital ads against David McCormick, whom Republicans are encouraging to run against incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Casey. They point to McCormick’s position that life begins at conception and his statements during his failed 2022 Senate primary race that he supported exceptions for abortion care only in “very rare cases.”
A McCormick spokesperson told NBC News that he “supports exceptions in cases of rape, incest and saving the mother’s life.”
“In 2022, voters rejected the GOP agenda taking away women’s right to make their own health care decisions and outlawing abortion with no exceptions, and we know this will continue to be a decisive issue in Senate races. 2024,” said Democratic Senate Campaign Committee spokeswoman Nora. Keefe said in a statement.
It’s a strategy that Wikler also continues to bet on in Wisconsin, where he says any possible countermessage from Republicans won’t reconcile public attitudes on reproductive care.
“The debate about who should make those decisions, women and their doctors or Republican politicians, is a debate that Senator Baldwin is ready to have,” he said.
