Can Abortion Rights Save Red State Democrats in the Senate?

In the opening minutes of a debate during Sherrod Brown’s successful 2006 Senate campaign, the Republican incumbent attacked him for “partial-birth abortion,” a phrase often used by conservatives at the time to portray Democrats as somewhere between immoral and murderous.

Mr. Brown, then a Democrat from northeastern Ohio in the House of Representatives, glanced at his notes. He was against “late-term abortion,” he said in a measured voice. He denounced the very idea that Congress would restrict any procedure that could “save a woman’s health.”

That makes him fast turned. Mr. Brown spent the rest of his time building his political brand as an economic populist.

Nearly 18 years later, abortion will once again be a central point of contention as Senator Brown fights for re-election against one of the three Republicans seeking to unseat him next year. One difference, aside from the fact that his shaggy dark hair is now gray, is that he is preparing to go all out in his defense of abortion rights.

“This problem is not going away,” Mr. Brown said in an interview. “Women don’t trust Republicans on abortion, and they won’t in the near future — and they won’t trust these guys standing up to me.”

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, abortion rights have become an invaluable political asset for Democrats. They have used the issue to maintain control of the Senate, limit losses in the House of Representatives and fuel victories in key state races in the Midwest and South this month.

But perhaps the toughest test of the issue’s power will come in Senate contests like Mr. Brown in Ohio and that of Senator Jon Tester in Montana. The fate of the House’s razor-thin Democratic majority could very well be sealed in these two places by the same voters who installed Republicans in every other state office.

So far, voters, even in conservative states, have consistently prioritized abortion protections over their partisanship. That was the case last year in Kansas, where 59 percent of voters rejected a measure to remove abortion rights protections from the state constitution, and again this month in Ohio, where 57 percent of voters agreed to include such rights in their constitution. anchor.

The open question is whether Mr. Brown, 71, and Mr. Tester, 67, can maintain their inestimable political personas while convincing — for the first time in their long careers in public office — their voters to put abortion rights front and center when voting. next year.

Both Democrats have long supported abortion rights, but their electoral successes can be traced to carefully tailored campaigns that focused on local issues rather than dominant national issues like abortion. That individuality was why both men won reelection in 2018, even though their states voted for Donald J. Trump in 2016 and 2020.

For Mr. Tester, that meant campaigning for the policies he has focused on in the Senate, where he serves on committees overseeing agricultural, Native American and veterans issues.

His first television ads in this campaign sound in the same tone. One is Mr. Tester — a pot-bellied former teacher with a flat haircut and a left hand missing three fingers from a meat grinder accident in his youth — who describes himself as both physically and philosophically different from his congressional colleagues.

“I may not look like the other senators,” Mr. Tester says, “but that doesn’t stop me from helping Washington understand what makes Montana so special.”

In Ohio, Mr. Brown built his reputation on middle-class economic issues, including the fight against corporate tax breaks and the high cost of health care. In a 2004 book, “Myths of Free Trade: Why America Trade Policy Has Failed,” he argued that unregulated trade deals had reopened the country’s class divide.

Already this year, Mr. Brown’s campaign has released a video attacking his three potential Republican challengers as extreme on abortion. In Montana, the Democratic Party has taken a similar approach on Mr. Tester’s behalf.

“What I think a lot of people miss about Sherrod is that he knows Abortion is an economic issue” says Nan Whaley, a Democratic former mayor of Dayton, Ohio, who ran for governor last year. “Abortion rights and abortion access may not have been discussed as much in previous campaigns, but that’s because it was before the fall of Roe.”

The task for the two Democrats will be complicated by a political headwind that neither senator has faced: seeking re-election on a ballot initiative topped by an unpopular president of their own party.

Both first won Senate elections by unseating incumbents in 2006, when discontent over the Iraq war and Republican corruption scandals helped Democrats make gains in Congress.

Both were re-elected in 2012, when Democrats won a large majority among black and Hispanic voters as President Barack Obama won a second term. They won again in 2018, a Democratic surge year driven by opposition to Mr. Trump.

Republicans are already trying to get their message across on abortion. The National Republican Senatorial Committee is coaching candidates to oppose a national abortion ban and to clearly state their support for exceptions when it comes to rape, incest or a woman’s health.

But not all Republicans are on board, as evidenced by the party’s Senate primary in Ohio. One top candidate, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, has supported a national ban and opposed exceptions for rape and incest — and has also campaigned unsuccessfully against the abortion ballot question.

Another candidate, Bernie Moreno, a businessman seeking his first elected office, has said he supports exceptions for rape, incest and women’s lives, but he told a Breitbart News reporter last year that he didn’t. He has also expressed support for a 15-week federal ban.

The third leading candidate, Matt Dolan, a state senator, opposed the state constitutional amendment this month, but he has a more moderate record on the issue than his opponents. Mr. Dolan opposes a national ban and has criticized proposals for an abortion ban in Ohio that do not include the three major exceptions.

“Most Americans agree that there should be reasonable limits on abortion and that abortion policy will be made primarily at the state level,” Mr. Dolan said in a statement, adding that Mr. Brown had “extreme” views on the issue .

Some Republicans have said the referendum in Ohio means the abortion issue will be less pressing in the state next year. But Democrats argue that Republican support for a federal ban would help keep the issue alive, arguing that such a measure would undermine the will of Ohio voters.

A poll commissioned by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee recommended that reporting focus on Republican Party support for a “national abortion ban” and that politicians should not be involved in “personal medical decisions.” Abortion rights groups have encouraged candidates to simultaneously adopt a “proactive” platform that calls for expanding access to contraception and maternal health care while highlighting Republican commitment to abortion restrictions.

“Campaigns must quickly define who the villains are here: Republicans overturned Roe, Republicans have been campaigning against Roe for decades, Republicans have promised to create a court that would overturn Roe,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All. , one of the nation’s largest abortion rights groups. ‘They understood it, they did it, they are responsible. Pin it on them. Don’t flinch.”

Neither Mr. Brown nor Mr. Tester has been shy about supporting abortion rights.

Mr. Tester campaigned in 2018 with Cecile Richards, who had recently resigned as president of Planned Parenthood. He recently said abortion rights had a clear resonance in Montana, where libertarian-leaning voters tend to reject perceived government interference.

Yet Mr. Tester has largely tailored his campaigns to issues closer to his state’s Continental Divide than to Washington’s partisan divide.

Mr. Brown won his first political office in 1974, the year after Roe v. Wade was decided. He proudly put his own in the spotlight 100 percent voting score from Planned Parenthood Action Fund and Reproductive Freedom for All.

“My focus has always been on civil rights and women’s rights,” he said. “That also leads to a better economy – when women have better access to child care and can make decisions for their families.”

Mr Brown was involved in this year’s campaign in support of the constitutional amendment on abortion. telephone banking alongside the Democratic Party of Ohio and regularly raised the measure at campaign events.

Hours after Ohioans voted, Mr. Brown said posted a video on social media that framed his three potential Republican challengers as people on the wrong side of the issue. “All my opponents would support a national abortion ban,” the caption read.

If there was any doubt, Mr. Brown made it clear in the interview that he saw the political benefit of the issue.

Abortion, he said, “will certainly be talked about more than in my other races.”