After an unlikely landslide win last week in Ohio, pro-abortion activists believe they have a huge advantage with voters in the coming year, particularly in suburban swing areas, and Democrats are planning to run strongly on the issue in 2024 and beyond in hopes it can help them retake control of Congress and keep the White House.
“Abortion is going to be just as big an issue in 2024 if not bigger,” said J. Miles Coleman, a University of Virginia political analyst. “Every time it gets on the ballot, the pro-choice side wins. It’s not clear what would change that dynamic.”
Until recently, most political analysts and candidates from both parties considered the biggest impact of abortion to be in red states where Republicans have moved to ban abortion since the conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
The abortion issue is spreading to swing states and even deep blue states like New York as pro-choice majorities push back against GOP proposals for nationwide restrictions.
“This is an issue that has turbocharged the entire electorate,” Ben Rhodes, a former adviser to President Obama said Thursday on MSNBC. “The antenna is up among American voters. They don’t like Republicans taking away abortion rights.”
Polls consistently show that about 60% or more of American voters believe abortion should be mostly legal.
The most recent boost to the pro-abortion cause came last week when voters in red-leaning Ohio turned out in record numbers and voted 57% to 43% to reject an effort by Republicans to make it more difficult to amend the state constitution by referendum.
Ohio voters are now favored to back a constitutional amendment enshrining abortion rights in the November general election — a sharp rebuke to the state’s ruling Republican lawmakers who want to implement a near-total ban.
The Ohio vote comes on the heels of similar votes in the past year in red states like Kansas and Kentucky, swing states like Michigan and blue states like California.
Democrats in Arizona and New York are trying to put similar measures on the 2024 ballot that would protect abortion rights.
The goal, according to some political experts, is to juice liberal turnout to help President Biden win reelection and to put moderate Republican lawmakers, almost all of whom hold anti-abortion views, between a rock and a general-election hard place.
“This is going to be a motivating and mobilizing effort for Democrats for the next couple of decades,” said Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist and Hunter College public policy professor. “If you’re talking about 2024, the goal is to make it a vote on reproductive rights and also democracy itself.”
Exhibit A is Rep. Pat Ryan, a moderate Democrat who represents a Hudson Valley swing district. Ryan won an upset victory special election last summer in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s anti-abortion decision.
Now Ryan’s gearing up to use the same tactics to win reelection in a neighboring district next year, trashing “extremist Republican” plans to “rip away a woman’s right to choose.”
Nonpartisan analysts say that’s a no-brainer in deep blue New York.
In last year’s midterms, Republicans got New York voters to focus on GOP-friendly issues like crime and inflation, steering clear of abortion. They flipped four House seats.
Democrats want voters to think about Republican presidential candidates’ support for a nationwide ban on abortion and potential threats to medication abortion or even to contraception.
“If I were advising Democrats, I’d tell them to go talk to Pat Ryan,” Coleman said.
On Long Island, former Hempstead Town Supervisor Laura Gillen lost to Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, a Republican, in a South Shore district that voted for Biden by more than 10%. She says she’s determined to make abortion a difference maker in a possible 2024 rematch.
Republicans, meanwhile, know they are on the defensive on the issue, especially in suburban swing districts that overwhelmingly support abortion rights.
Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican who won a Westchester-based district in an upset last year, says he opposes a national abortion ban like the one congressional Republicans have proposed even though he concedes the stance goes against his own anti-abortion views.
The freshman Republican is not happy about the idea of having New Yorkers vote on abortion rights at the same time they are deciding whether to send him back to Washington for a second term.
“Democrats [are] desperate to distract voters from Albany’s epic failures on taxes, crime and corruption,” said Chris Russell, a Lawler reelection campaign spokesman.
