OPINION | ABORTION RESTRICTIONS WILL HAUNT GOP AT THE POLLS

By John Jameson | guest column

THE CAPITAL TIMES

Jul 2, 2023

The issue of abortion and a woman’s right to choose isn’t going away in Wisconsin and many other states with restrictive laws on the books.

The overturning by the U.S. Supreme Court of Roe v. Wade a year ago didn’t settle anything. Anger over the Dobbs decision, which reversed Roe, is one of the reasons Janet Protasiewicz did so well in her run for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court this year. For many Republicans, as the Washington Post reported, this is a “a political headache.” Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway sounded an alarm earlier this year when she alerted party donors that 80% of American voters disagreed with the U.S. Supreme Court when it overturned Roe v. Wade.

I’ve followed public opinion on this issue closely. For more than 25 years, I’ve worked with groups like NARAL and Planned Parenthood on campaigns to secure reproductive rights, as well as with a raft of Democratic candidates for public office. I seldom agree with Conway on anything, but she’s right about the polling data. And in The Badger State, the abortion issue isn’t a mild headache; it’s going to feel like a migraine in 2024.

A majority of American voters, including Wisconsinites, are intensely scared of and frustrated with Republicans’ efforts to snuff out reproductive rights like the now-notorious legislation passed recently in Florida that outlaws abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.

Even before the Supreme Court’s ruling in June of last year, a Pew Research Center survey showed that about 62% of Americans expressed support for reproductive rights, the highest level in three decades. In April of this year, Pew found that more Americans said “it should be easier to obtain an abortion” than in 2019. Much of that increase comes from people in states where abortion is now prohibited or severely limited — states like Wisconsin. In other words, fear is growing, especially where the fear is real.

In the world of politics, these findings are significant. My firm, Winning Connections, connects to voters via the telephone. We’ve worked on hundreds of campaigns. But I’m not sure that we ever encountered the level of anger and alarm expressed as when we connected with tens of thousands of people in Kansas and urged them to go the polls in August 2022 to vote against a ballot initiative calling for a total ban on abortion in the state. Kansas voters from many backgrounds told us they were reeling about what they saw as a dangerous overreach of power and underestimation of the public will. So we were not surprised when nearly 60% of them rejected the initiative.

We heard the same sharp sentiment when we worked with reproductive rights groups in Kentucky to turn out what we call “low-propensity” voters (those who vote intermittently) to stop a similar state constitutional ban on all abortions, and in Michigan to support a state constitutional right to abortion. In November 2022, the Kentucky measure failed 52% to 47%, and the Michigan initiative passed 56% to 43% — both solid wins for reproductive rights.

In spite of these losses, some Republicans are apparently deaf to concerns that their overzealousness may create blowback. In many statehouses, they are continuing to ram through unpopular legislation to impose total or near total bans on abortion, to criminalize those who get or provide one, or other acutely regressive actions.

In Wisconsin, Sheboygan County’s Republican prosecutor, Joel Urmanski, joined by a couple of other Republican DAs have turned to the courts in an effort to return the state’s abortion laws to where they were in 1849.

It’s not my job — or in my interest — to advise Republicans on how to win elections. But if I were them, I’d brace for the beating the party is likely to take when its candidates — especially those who advocate the most extreme abortion restrictions — stand for election this year and next. The despair and frustration over what has been lost over the last year is broad and deep.

That’s an opportunity for the campaigns to mobilize voters against candidates who are rolling back reproductive rights that most Americans support.

John Jameson is the president and founder of Winning Connections, a national direct voter contact firm that works for advocacy groups, associations and Democratic candidates.