Trump’s abortion stance could put Florida Republicans in a bind

MIAMI — There’s no state that will need to navigate Donald Trump’s abortion stance quite like Florida, which has authorized one of the strictest abortion bans in the country but also could broadly enshrine abortion rights protections in the state constitution through a ballot measure in November.

The Republican Party of Florida and key conservative lawmakers, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, consider Florida’s ballot initiative “extreme” and want voters to oppose it. But they’re not calling on Trump to pick up a megaphone over the cause. They generally support his stance to leave one of the most politically treacherous issues for Republicans up to states to decide — even as abortion rights supporters in Arizona, a key battleground state, also are trying to put a similar initiative on the ballot.

“I’ve always believed this is a states’ issue,” said Evan Power, the Republican Party of Florida chair. “That is why we will fight to oppose the Florida constitutional amendment because the people’s representatives here in Florida have adopted a Florida constitutionally-sound approach.”

State Sen. Joe Gruters, a longtime Trump ally and an RNC national committee member, agreed with Power’s assessment about state decision-making and called the former president’s statement “perfect.” Asked whether he wanted Trump’s help on getting the word out about the referendum, Gruters replied that DeSantis — someone he has clashed with in the past — could keep championing the issue.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican who has drawn several Democratic challengers, also said this is a “states rights issue.”

“He’s doing exactly what he’s supposed to be doing,” she said of Trump.

Florida Republicans have good reason to tread lightly around Trump. The former president attacked one of his close allies, Sen. Lindsey Graham, after the South Carolina Republican broke with the president over abortion. One of the nation’s most influential anti-abortion groups, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, also stated it was “deeply disappointed” by Trump’s decision. Marjorie Dannenfelser, the group’s president, later reiterated the organization’s support of Trump.

Trump, who as a Florida resident would vote on the abortion referendum, through his campaign did not respond to questions over whether he planned to make his ballot vote public. It’s clear Trump opposes both options facing Florida: He has called the DeSantis-backed six week ban a “terrible mistake,” but on Monday he also blasted abortions that happen late in a pregnancy as being “radical.”

Former state Rep. Carlos Lacasa, a Republican who supports abortion rights, said Trump took a “smart” and “calculated” centrist position.

“Will he distance himself from the Florida initiative? I think so,” he said. “I think he has nothing to gain and everything to lose here.”

Yet a few anti-abortion organizations and Republican lawmakers said they were disappointed in Trump ignoring Florida’s ballot amendment and on his refusal to articulate a national gestational limit. Mathew Staver, founder of the Liberty Counsel, who argued against putting Florida’s abortion referendum before the state Supreme Court in February, said Trump “needs to embrace this issue and not tiptoe around the matter of the sanctity of human life, because it is fundamental to us as humans, that we respect life, especially for the most vulnerable.”

“Human dignity doesn’t change because you’ve crossed some state line,” he said.

And while Trump takes credit for appointing three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade almost two years ago, Staver said that DeSantis was one of the greatest advocates anti-abortion groups had to help defeat the referendum because he embraced tighter limits.

“He articulated conservative values on all the issues, including on this issue of abortion, and that brought together people from different communities that didn’t typically vote Republican,” Staver said. “People have resonated with that, and that’s what I would hope that we would see here.”

GOP state Rep. Spencer Roach of Fort Myers said he also would have preferred to have Trump address the amendment’s language to help turn out voters.

“If he’s hoping to lead this nation but he doesn’t have the courage to state where he is on the ballot initiative, that’s not a good sign in my opinion,” Roach said.

But Republican state Rep. Mike Beltran, who was one of 70 state House members who voted for the state’s six-week abortion ban last year, maintained that the issue was always supposed to be decided by states and called it “absurd” for Republicans to flip and say it should be decided nationally.

“Trump has already done more than any other American in the last century to protect life by making those Supreme Court appointments,” Beltran said. “Ron DeSantis didn’t make those Supreme Court appointments, and Joe Biden certainly didn’t.”

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a Trump ally who is up for reelection in November, recently said in an interview that he also opposed setting federal limits on abortion and that states should decide the issue. But Scott also said that he would have signed the six-week abortion limit into law if he had still been governor, and this week told the Washington Post that he planned to vote against the referendum.

The Biden campaign, signaling that abortion rights is a winning issue for them, declared Florida “in play,” though Democrats haven’t been pouring cash into the state and keep falling behind on voter registration. Florida Democratic Chair Nikki Fried told reporters on Tuesday that voting against Trump and Scott in November would hold the GOP accountable for the abortion limits that led to the referendum in the first place.

But messaging on the November abortion referendum is going to be expensive for both sides. The referendum needs 60 percent support to pass, which will mean getting backing from voters across the political spectrum. Roach said it would take a “concerted campaign” on the airwaves as well as through mailers and text messages.

“I agree that the Republican Party is the party of life. … I agree with [Trump] that it’s smart politics to make a pitch for the general election and coalesce on the issues that we can solve,” Roach said. “But I would hope for a more principled position to help turn out the vote here in Florida to oppose this amendment.”

Mia McCarthy contributed to this story.