Even as Biden hopscotches the country talking of factory openings and bridge repairs, abortion politics has become a rare consistent source of electoral victories for his party over the past year. The result in Ohio, coming after voters in other Republican-leaning states like Kentucky and Kansas also rejected GOP efforts to restrict abortion, underscores how the issue has already reshaped the political landscape for 2024, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said.
“There had been some question about whether abortion had waned as a motivator — it certainly has not,” said Lake, who worked on Biden’s campaign in 2020 and helped advise groups aiming to defeat the Ohio referendum. “I think this is a road map for 2024. It’s a road map to how we energize our voters.”
Democrats also hope the push for abortion rights helps them minimize losses in the Senate, where they hold a narrow 51-49 majority with several vulnerable incumbents. Among them are Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Jacky Rosen (Nev.) and Jon Tester (Mont.), all of whom could now step up their focus on abortion rights.
Democrats are strategizing on the best way to sustain the energy that led them to the 14-point victory in Ohio. The vote came nine months after strong midterm results in places like Michigan, where a constitutional measure to protect abortion rights propelled Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to reelection and helped her party win control of both the state House and Senate for the first time in nearly four decades.
Major abortion rights groups have launched ballot measure campaigns in several swing states across the country, hoping their success can help sweep liberal candidates into office. Earlier this week, reproductive rights groups in Arizona launched a bid to enshrine abortion protections into that state’s constitution, setting off a high-stakes battle in a state key to Biden’s reelection.
Abortion rights supporters are also pursuing ballot measures in conservative-leaning Florida and Missouri, while advocates in several other states are still exploring whether to do so for 2024 and beyond. And in Maryland and New York, the states’ Democratic-controlled legislatures have referred abortion rights amendments to state voters, a move that could help Democratic House candidates in those states, especially New York.
Unlike other issues Democrats have seized on in the past — including gun control, the Affordable Care Act and minimum wage — the abortion issue has shown staying power and crossover appeal in places where the party has struggled. That dynamic confronts Democrats, including Biden, with a need to balance their standard pitch about the economy with a more emotional appeal on an issue that has in the past vexed Democratic candidates.
Both parties are still wrestling with just how much the Supreme Court decision in June 2022 overturning Roe v. Wade has remade American politics. With each vote like Tuesday’s, evidence grows that the effect has been seismic.
Biden, whose position on abortion has evolved during his decades in politics, has at times signaled discomfort with abortion rights, whether because of his Catholic heritage or his centrist politics. But he has become more outspoken on the issue as it has moved to the top of his party’s agenda.
“I happen to be a practicing Catholic. I’m not big on abortion,” Biden said at a fundraiser in June. “But guess what? Roe v. Wade got it right.”
Biden advisers say the president can balance his economic pitch and a broader defense of “freedom” that includes women’s reproductive rights. They point to Biden’s messaging in the lead-up to the 2022 midterms as well as a campaign launch video that included a reference to “the freedom for women to make their own health-care decisions.”
But the Ohio vote did not have an immediate impact on Biden’s focus. He issued a statement Tuesday applauding the results and condemning Republicans’ “blatant attempt to weaken voters’ voices and further erode the freedom of women to make their own health care decisions.” But on Wednesday, the president visited a wind tower manufacturing facility in Belen, N.M., as part of push to draw attention to the Inflation Reduction Act and “Bidenomics.”
The White House has often relied on Vice President Harris to take the lead in delivering its message on abortion, dispatching her to 16 states over the past year to discuss reproductive rights. Harris recently traveled to Iowa — where GOP presidential candidates like former president Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) were also gathered — to slam the state’s new law banning abortion after roughly six weeks of pregnancy, which has since been blocked by the courts.
On its face, the Republican measure that Ohio’s voters rejected Tuesday would have required 60 percent of the state’s voters to approve an amendment to its constitution, up from the current 50 percent. But because Ohioans will vote in November on a proposal to amend the constitution to guarantee abortion rights, Tuesday’s vote became a proxy fight over that issue.
For their part, Republicans reeling from Tuesday’s defeat were left to reassess their national strategy for 2024 as they processed the latest in a string of rejections of their abortion stance by voters. In the suburbs of cities from Kansas City to Louisville to Columbus, unexpectedly high voter turnout in defense of abortion rights has flashed a warning sign for the party.
Among other things, abortion rights measures have often performed far better than Biden and the Democrats did in the same states. In Ohio, Trump defeated Biden by 53 to 45 percent in 2020, but abortion rights forces prevailed there Tuesday by 57 to 43 percent. In Kansas, where Trump trounced Biden 56 to 42 percent, voters rejected an abortion ban last year by 60 to 40 percent.
The challenge has split Republicans. Some want to double down on their opposition to abortion rights, saying they’ve been too timid, for example by hedging on whether the Ohio measure was really aimed at restricting abortion. Others in the GOP argue for moderating their position to reflect a landscape that has shifted dramatically since the Supreme Court decision.
Antiabortion groups are squarely in the former camp. “So long as the Republicans and their supporters take the ostrich strategy and bury their heads in the sand, they will lose again and again,” the antiabortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America said in a statement.
Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life Action, sent supporters an email Wednesday contending Republicans were losing abortion fights by engaging in “cut and run politics.”
“The Left went all in on the abortion issue,” she wrote. “And many Republicans once again ran away from it. How many times do our ‘allies’ need to see this happen before they learn waving the white flag doesn’t win battles?”
Tuesday’s results dealt a particularly harsh blow to Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who is seeking the Republican nomination for Senate and often served as the face of the campaign. He expressed frustration with Tuesday’s results, but called them “only one battle in a long war.”
LaRose, who appeared at more than 75 events to urge support for Issue 1, suggested he would now focus on trying to defeat the November measure that would guarantee abortion rights in Ohio. “I’ve said for months now that there’s an assault coming on our constitution, and that hasn’t changed,” he said in a written statement.
Two others are also running for the GOP Senate nomination in Ohio. The winner will face Brown, an opponent of Issue 1 who on MSNBC called Tuesday’s results “a rejection of the power grab that the politicians in Columbus were making.”
The issue has prompted other Republicans to change or obscure their positions on abortion, a phenomenon that has affected races up and down the ballot. GOP presidential candidates have faced pressure to embrace a national ban on abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy, which Scott has done. The issue will likely feature prominently during a Republican presidential debate later this month.
Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) is among those who have notably shifted their position since the Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision last year and abortion providers in his state stopped offering the procedure. As a candidate, Van Orden described himself as “100 percent pro-life” and said he strongly opposed abortion, including in cases of rape and incest.
This spring, after liberals won a majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in a race that focused heavily on abortion, Van Orden suggested the state should allow abortion up to 15 weeks of pregnancy.
“We should have a law in the state of Wisconsin right now that says we have exceptions for the life of the mother, rape and incest, and we need to talk about a pain-capable 15-week limit on abortion,” he told a conservative radio host in April.
Some political analysts see 2024 as potentially a mirror image of the 2004 election, when President George W. Bush and his top strategist, Karl Rove, focused on issues such as opposition to gay rights. They sought to turn out the votes of evangelicals, and the strategy may have put Bush over the top in key states including in Ohio.
Abortion rights supporters say a growing number of Democrats have already begun campaigning more aggressively on abortion rights, adding that this is likely to continue as evidence of the issue’s political potency continues to roll in.
“It’s a pretty popular issue across the party,” said Christina Reynolds, spokeswoman for Emily’s List, a political action committee that backs Democratic women who support abortion rights. “And it’s one that we know is vital to voters, we know that it is clear where the two parties are and the differences, and we know that voters stand with us.”
Last year, some candidates in competitive congressional districts in Ohio campaigned on the issue and won, said Ryan Stitzlein, a vice president at NARAL Pro-Choice America, a prominent abortion rights group.
“The conventional wisdom several years ago may have been that they should not talk about this issue as much, or that it may not be this winning issue,” Stitzlein said. “But they ran strongly on that and were able to win.”
Mariana Alfaro, Marianna Sotomayor and Matt Viser contributed to this report
