National Dem strategy worries state abortion-rights leaders

President Joe Biden and other Democrats are championing efforts to restore abortion access in red and purple states.

But local organizers and national advocates fear Democratic candidates, in promoting abortion-rights referendums that may boost their electoral prospects, could inadvertently doom the initiatives.

It’s a particular concern in key presidential and Senate battlegrounds like Arizona, Montana and Nevada where ballot measure campaigns to codify abortion rights need more than just Democratic voters to succeed.

“We haven’t won or beat back a single one of these ballot measures without significant independent and Republican support,” said Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All. “We spent a lot of last year talking to candidates directly saying, ‘Don’t put things on the ballot just to enhance voter turnout for Dems.’ That’s not how this works.”

Democratic candidates and ballot measure coalitions are united in wanting to expand abortion access, but they’re sometimes divided on how to achieve it. Some ballot campaigns, like Ohio’s in 2023 and Missouri this year, have largely avoided holding events with Democratic politicians or featuring them in ads — concerned doing so would further politicize the measures and turn off Republican and independent voters. Some, like Florida, have warned Democrats to remain at arm's length.

Others, including those in Arizona and Nevada, have either sent staff to candidate events or hosted Democratic officials at their rallies in an attempt to energize volunteers and collect signatures to qualify for the ballot. Nearly all are sticking to nonpartisan messaging calling for freedom from government control and personal autonomy and are refraining from commenting on candidates.

“The message that polls the best, the message that, when we're collecting signatures, people respond to, is that Nebraskans should have the freedom to get the care that they need, with compassion and privacy, and without any kind of political interference at all,” said Taylor Givens-Dunn, a leader of the state’s Protect our Rights coalition working to overturn the state’s 12-week ban via ballot initiative. “We want to be clear that this is about people, not politicians.”

Givens-Dunn said while her campaign does not have a policy of avoiding events with Democratic candidates, she is not aware of any they have held so far — noting that the majority of voters in the state are registered Republicans or unaffiliated.

The Biden campaign is taking its cue from local organizers — for instance, hosting signature gatherers at events attended by Vice President Kamala Harris and first lady Jill Biden. Biden campaign aides believe that they “share the common goal of having the broadest possible coalition in November."

Still, Biden campaign spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg said, “[Former President Donald] Trump and his allies proudly brag about having already wiped away many protections at the state level and would ban abortion nationwide, so while we continue to support all efforts to protect reproductive freedom, the only way to truly restore and protect reproductive rights where you live is to vote for President Biden and Vice President Harris and Democrats up and down the ballot."

Yet there remains an inherent tension between Democrats and ballot measure coalitions. Both want to use abortion to motivate people to the polls, and abortion-rights advocates acknowledge that ballot measures alone, without a Democratic president and Congress, can’t protect access to the procedure. But as ballot measure campaigns work to appeal to voters across the political spectrum, they fear Democrats will make the referendums appear too partisan, and ultimately sink their chances.

“I'm not trying to suggest that Democrats shouldn't talk about abortion. I think Democrats should talk about abortion all day long. You just don't need to talk about the specific ballot initiatives all day long,” said a consultant working with several state ballot initiatives, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about campaign strategy. “Because when Democratic politicians try to falsely claim ownership of the ballot initiatives, they reduce the chances that they win.”

Voters have upheld abortion rights at the ballot box seven times since Roe v. Wade was overturned nearly two years ago, protecting or restoring access for millions of women, but the tactic has not yet been tested in a presidential election year.

Trump last month said he would not sign a national abortion ban if elected, arguing that access to the procedure should be left up to individual states. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Abortion-rights activists hope to use the ballot process again this fall to circumvent GOP-controlled legislatures that have banned or restricted abortion in Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Nebraska and elsewhere. Yet groups also are pushing ballot measures this year in states where access is not at risk — including Colorado, Maryland, Nevada and New York — drawing accusations from abortion opponents that Democrats are more concerned with winning down-ballot races than protecting abortion rights. Some Democrats have bolstered this perception by releasing memos and giving interviews arguing the ballot measures will help them flip key seats.

“It’s obvious that the reason why there are pro-abortion ballot initiatives is to prop up the Biden campaign,” said Kristi Hamrick, the chief policy strategist with Students for Life of America, a group door-knocking against the initiatives in several states. “I’m not saying they’re cooperating illegally, but they’re all singing from the same song sheet.”

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee in a memo last week urged statehouse candidates to harness “the power of ballot measures'' and work to “maximize the impact of ballot measures in key districts.” House Democrats’ campaign arm argued in another recent memo that the ballot measures will help their candidates win at least 18 close races by “keep[ing] this issue at the forefront of voters’ minds.”

Many Democratic candidates in Arizona, including state lawmakers and Senate hopeful Rep. Ruben Gallego, spent months collecting signatures for an abortion-rights constitutional amendment while gathering petitions to get themselves on the ballot. Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) recently signed her state’s abortion-rights initiative petition at a community signature drive, where she lambasted her likely Republican opponent, Army veteran Sam Brown.

And Harris has held events in Arizona, Nevada and Florida both promoting those states’ abortion-rights ballot initiatives and excoriating Trump and other GOP officials for dismantling Roe v. Wade.

Lindsey Harmon, president of Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, acknowledged the “strong Democratic support” her coalition has, but said they have “extended invitations to any champion who wants to step up and take a stance on this issue.”

And in Arizona, Cheryl Bruce, campaign manager for the Arizona for Abortion Access Coalition, said she is seeing “broad-based support.”

“We have Republicans out in rural areas circulating the petition and getting signatures for us. We have independents who are appalled by the taking away of abortion access and rights here in the state that are lining up to support the campaign,” she said. “And of course there is Democratic support for it, but we do not see it as a partisan campaign.”

Democratic strategists, ballot measure consultants and abortion-rights groups said candidates can’t rely on the initiatives to carry them to victory and need to talk about what they would do in office to protect or expand abortion rights. They believe it’s important not only to create distance that will protect ballot measures from being further politicized, but also to underscore for voters that caring about abortion rights means more than just voting for a ballot measure.

In some states, like Michigan, both Democratic candidates and the initiatives they championed won. But a POLITICO analysis found that putting abortion on the ballot didn’t always correlate with higher Democratic turnout. GOP voters in several states voted to protect or expand abortion rights and elect anti-abortion Republican candidates.

“There’s an education element there that Democrats need to do to make sure that people are voting a straight Democratic ticket in addition to supporting the amendment because the two ideas are not mutually exclusive,” said Matt Grodsky, a Democratic strategist in Arizona. “It’s clearly an issue with some voters that aren’t connecting them, and we can’t have a blind spot there.”

Some Democratic groups also argue that their candidates’ efforts, rather than undermining the ballot initiatives, can be beneficial.

Heather Williams, the president of the DLCC, said that the ballot initiatives in places like Arizona have a statewide strategy that focuses on big cities, while state lawmaker campaigns are focused on districts that may not get as much outreach.

“We're going to be working in communities that are further down their priority list — Yuma down to the southern border, for example,” she said, noting that they need only a few wins to flip control of the Arizona legislature to Democrats. “Their efforts in population centers certainly will have a positive benefit on us, and our efforts in these communities that are more isolated, that are more rural … — telling the story of our campaigns and our candidates, but also telling the story of the stakes of this election — will help up-ballot.”

Those benefits will also accrue over time, Williams added, pointing to Kansas, Ohio and other states where the abortion ballot initiative results of the past couple years have provided the DLCC a roadmap of which districts to invest in to flip in the future.

And many of the candidates see their promotion of the ballot measures as both smart politics and the right thing to do.

“I’m helping the initiative because it's good policy, and it's really important for voters to understand who's on their side,” said Gallego. “We incorporate it into our everyday conversations when we're out there stumping with voters, talking about protecting democracy and protecting freedom and part of that freedom being abortion rights.”

Activists on the right, in contrast, have called on GOP officials to get more involved in the fight against abortion-rights ballot efforts. Many are rebuffing these calls, echoing Trump’s position that abortion should be left to “the will of the people” in each state. But some Republican elected officials in Ohio and other states have thrown themselves into campaigns against abortion-rights ballot measures, speaking at rallies, appearing in TV ads and using the powers of their offices to try to stymie them.

Anti-abortion groups believe that the ballot campaigns and Democratic candidates they’re working to defeat — no matter how much they try to distance themselves from one another — are working hand in glove. But the groups differ on whether, and how much, to work those partisan accusations into their voter outreach.

Kelsey Pritchard, director of state public affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said the group believes it’s “crucial” to message that the ballot initiatives “embody the Democrats’ goals for abortion and the free pass they want to give their abortion industry buddies to maximize their profits.” Yet that isn’t one of their main talking points in ads or door-to-door canvassing.

Students for Life, meanwhile, said that because their target audience is voters in their late teens and 20s, they are avoiding such a message altogether.

“Partisan arguments don’t resonate as much with our base of students,” Hamrick said, noting that younger voters are much less likely to be registered with one of the major political parties than their older counterparts. “If our message was, ‘Vote this way to help the GOP,’ that would not appeal to them at all.”