Democrats use $20 million of equal rights to support NY housing bids in 2024
The New York Democrats’ underperformance in last year’s midterm elections helped their party lose control of the House of Representatives, threatened the national agenda and angered national Democrats.
In an effort not to repeat the same mistake, New York Democrats will announce Thursday their support for a statewide effort to pass a women’s rights amendment that they hope will also boost voter turnout in 2024, when President Biden and members of the House will have to appear again. election.
Their strategy: get Democrats to the polls by drawing attention to a statewide referendum in 2024, the New York Equal Rights Amendment, which will explicitly prohibit New York from using its power and resources to punish those who have abortions.
The campaign, backed by Governor Kathy Hochul and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, among others, plans to raise at least $20 million to spend on television advertising, direct mail and organization in support of the initiative. The effort is intended to complement the $45 million bid by the House Democrats’ main super-PAC to win six New York swing districts next year, including four that just turned Republican.
The campaign is launched a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which struck down the constitutional right to abortion and enacted a near-total ban on abortion in 14 states. It is in step with a national democratic strategy highlighting the Republican Party’s abortion record — a game plan Governor Hochul embraced last year with mixed results, beating her Republican opponent, Lee Zeldin, by just six points.
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In an interview Monday, Ms. Hochul argued that the threat to women’s reproductive rights represents “a very mobilizing force” that is a proven electoral strategy in New York, despite its own history. She pointed to the victory last year by Representative Pat Ryan, a Democrat from Hudson Valley, over Marc Molinaro, a Republican who favored giving states the freedom to regulate the legality of abortion.
The New York Equal Rights Amendment campaign is supported by numerous left-wing groups, including Planned Parenthood, the New York Immigration Coalition, the New York Civil Liberties Union, NAACP New York, and Make the Road New York.
Ms. Hochul added that the campaign chose to put the amendment to a statewide vote in 2024, rather than this year as the state is legally entitled, to create space for its message to get through. The timing, during a presidential election year, should maximize campaign efforts
“Having a ballot initiative in our state will boost voter turnout overall, which will certainly help Democrats,” said New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. “The biggest reason we lost seats in the House was voter turnout.”
Mr. Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, took a slightly different approach. “This has nothing to do with voter turnout and everything to do with ensuring that a woman’s freedom to make her own reproductive health care decisions is protected in New York State,” he said.
In 2019, New York passed the Reproductive Health Act, which protected abortion rights in New York State. Andrew M. Cuomo, then governor, viewed the law as necessary in case a more conservative Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
That law and others make the ballot change “largely unnecessary and symbolic,” said Dennis Poust, the executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference.
“The reality is that abortion is already widely available and accessible in New York,” Mr Poust said. He urged New York to “make at least as much effort to help women who would want to keep their babies if only they had the necessary resources and support.”
But Ms. Hochul argues that the Reproductive Health Act is no longer enough.
“Laws can be repealed,” she said. “There is a much higher threshold to amend the constitution.”
Voters’ sentiments about abortion are beginning to shift nationally, in step with a drumbeat of stories about pregnant women deprived of medical care and experiencing near-death experiences. Polls have shown that Democratic voters faced with the choice are more motivated to vote on the issue, and Republicans less so. Democratic leaders have noticed.
“Let’s be honest,” said Letitia James, the attorney general. “As I travel, reproductive rights are an issue that keeps popping up.”
Apart from the electoral strategy, the campaign’s supporters also support the initiative fundamentally. Other states have passed their own versions of an equal rights amendment, but many generally only prohibit gender discrimination, the organizers said. New York’s ballot initiative would go further.
It would prohibit discrimination not only on the basis of sex, but also on the basis of “pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, reproductive health care and autonomy”. It would prohibit government discrimination based on age, ethnicity, national origin, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity.
Sasha Neha Ahuja, the former national director for strategic partnerships at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, who is leading the new campaign, said the change would mean “for the first time discrimination against people based on their reproductive health decisions will be categorized as explicit sex discrimination.”