James Comer’s challenger releases ad reviving claim he took college girlfriend for abortion

A single Kentucky mom running as a Democrat to unseat U.S. Rep. James Comer is putting abortion — and allegations that the incumbent Republican took his college girlfriend for the procedure — at the forefront of November’s race.

Erin Marshall, a 29-year-old Frankfort resident, released both a campaign video and fundraising email Wednesday morning, repeating allegations that publicly surfaced during Comer’s failed 2015 bid for Kentucky governor.

Marilyn Thomas, Comer’s girlfriend from the early 1990s when the pair attended Western Kentucky University together, claimed he was physically and emotionally abusive toward her during their relationship. Thomas also said Comer drove her to Louisville for an abortion in 1991. The story was widely reported by media outlets across the commonwealth nine years ago.

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Comer, then Kentucky’s agriculture commissioner, vehemently denied the allegations at the time, and did so again Wednesday.

“It is not shocking that an out-of-touch Democrat, who worked for Hillary Clinton, has recycled false smears and garbage allegations from decades ago against Congressman Comer,” Comer spokesperson Caroline Cash said in a statement to the Herald-Leader. “Kentucky’s 1st District is Comer Country and voters know and trust Jamie Comer.

“This desperate attempt for relevance may make her liberal consultants a buck from donors in New York and California, but she will lose in a landslide.”

In the new video, Marshall talks to a past version of herself in a mirror, a version who, five years ago at age 24, was unexpectedly pregnant and unsure whether she should get an abortion.

“I know you’re in the middle of making the hardest choice of your life,” Marshall says. “When birth control fails, no one wants to think that that 1% chance of getting pregnant will happen to them. But it did.”

Marshall said the people at Planned Parenthood would be “incredibly kind. They’ll tell you it’s your choice, with no pressure either way. And you’re lucky you’re making this decision when you do have choices.”

Marshall then recounts some key events over the past five years, including the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the overturning of federal abortion protections in Roe v. Wade in 2022. That decision by the U.S. Supreme Court triggered abortion bans to take effect in Kentucky, laws that are still in place today.

Marshall says that was why she decided to run for Congress.

“You’ll be running against Congressman James Comer and the choices he’s made,” she says. “Not just his phony investigations into President Biden’s family, but also how he’s an anti-abortion Republican who once took his girlfriend to get an abortion.”

Marshall derides Comer for supporting former President Donald Trump, “despite accusations of Trump sexually assaulting 21 women.”

“For congressmen like him, it’s just a game to dehumanize women and put our lives in danger,” she tells herself. “But you can be part of changing all that.”

Marshall’s son, Teddy, then walks into the room.

“You were in the same situation as James Comer, and this was the choice you made,” she says.

It was a personal choice that pregnant women no longer have in Kentucky, said Marshall, who moved back to Frankfort in late 2018 after giving birth to her son.

“We’re living in a different world than we did when I had my son,” Marshall said in a phone interview Wednesday. “I had the opportunities to choose, (which) women don’t have right now.”

Marshall isn’t the first Kentucky Democrat to center a message on abortion access.

In his reelection campaign last year, Gov. Andy Beshear repeatedly took shots at then-Attorney General Daniel Cameron for his support of Kentucky’s restrictive abortion ban, which does not have exceptions for victims of rape and incest, or for fatal fetal abnormalities.

Perhaps the most impactful of those attacks was an ad featuring Hadley, a young woman who was sexually abused and impregnanted by her stepfather when she was 12. The ad went viral online and received widespread attention in political circles and press for how a Democrat would effectively message on abortion in a red state.

Beshear won by five percentage points over Cameron in November.

Marshall cited Beshear’s victory, along with voters’ rejection of a Republican-backed ballot measure in 2022 that sought to amend the state constitution to make clear abortion access is not a protected right, as proof voters find the current bans too “draconian.”

“If one of my friends who’s pregnant right now were to have complications with their pregnancy, they ultimately might have to pick up and drive to another state, like Illinois, to get the services they need. That’s terrifying,” Marshall said. “I think Kentuckians know they are a step too far.”

In 2015, Matt Bevin — who would serve one term as governor before being ousted by Beshear — ultimately won the Republican primary by 83 votes over Comer.

Comer would go on to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2016, and became chair of the powerful Oversight Committee in 2023, where he has made investigating President Biden his top priority.

Marshall is a 2016 graduate of Wake Forest University, according to her campaign website, and worked for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign as a field organizer.

Kentucky’s 1st Congressional District runs from far West Kentucky, along much of the state line with Tennessee and snakes upward to Franklin County, where Frankfort, the capital, is located.