The Kansas abortion vote; Democrats meddling in Republican primaries
On Tuesday, voters in Kansas rejected an amendment to the state constitution that said that there was no right to an abortion in it. In 2019, the state supreme court ruled that abortion was a right under the state constitution and the proposed amendment was an effort to undo that ruling. Almost no public polling of the initiative was done and those on both sides of the issue all seemed to agree the vote would be close.
That the amendment was rejected is not necessarily a surprise by itself given that most everyone expected a close outcome. What was surprising was the margin. The amendment was rejected 59-41. That is not a nailbiter, that is a blowout. Literally nobody saw that coming. What is so astonishing about the margin is not only that the amendment did horribly in suburban areas, but that its support in rural areas was decidedly mixed.
Making the margin even more impressive is that supporters of the amendment did everything they could to increase its odds of passing. The vote was held during the primary, not during the general election. In Kansas, registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats by a large margin. Voters who are not registered with either party cannot vote in primaries. On top of that, there were some competitive statewide primaries for Republicans, but none for Democrats.
The amendment was always going to be voted on regardless of what happened with Roe v Wade. Undoubtedly, the reversal of Roe gave momentum to opponents of the amendment as Kansas saw a surge in voter registrations right after it was reversed. How much Roe’s reversal benefited opponents cannot be known for sure, but odds are if it was still the law supporters of the amendment would have been more motivated to show up.
Turnout for the amendment was massive. The Kansas Secretary of State said that turnout was 50%, which is the highest turnout ever recorded for a primary in the state. Approximately 900,000 people showed up to vote.
What the results mean for November is not entirely clear. There is absolutely momentum on the side of voters who are pro-choice, which should help Democrats. Still, it probably will not be enough to offset the overall favorable environment for Republicans, but it could be decisive in some key individual races. In the case of Kansas, the amendment was specifically about abortion, which allowed people to vote on that issue. Most races in November will not have such a thing up for a vote so they will be voting for candidates only.
Kansas is not about to become a left-wing bastion. Many of the people who voted against the amendment are Republicans who will vote that way in November. But that is instructive for the pro-choice movement. In states where ballot initiatives are allowed, they have an opportunity to reach out to people who are Republicans but are pro-choice. If the pro-choice movement can win massively in Kansas, they should be able to win in a huge majority of states where ballot initiatives are allowed.
This article gives a good rundown of some of the tactics used by opponents of the amendment. The entire campaign was designed to appeal to those in suburban and rural areas. It was a campaign run by Kansans for Kansans. Aside from donations, there was almost no involvement from national pro-choice advocacy groups and that is something the pro-choice movement in other conservative-leaning states should take to heart.
The ads that were run by amendment opponents were designed specifically to appeal to moderate and conservative audiences. This thread shows several of the ads that were run. Examples of some of the ads included an ad featuring a doctor who was worried about having to violate the Hippocratic Oath, an ad labeling the amendment as a government mandate and an ad featuring a Catholic grandmother talking about how she does not want the government making decisions for her granddaughter. Some of the ads did not mention abortion specifically. I recommend watching them. They are only 30 seconds long.
You will notice what the ads do not talk about. They do not use any woke jargon. They do not talk about race, feminism, sexism or culture war battles that the activist left eats up. None of the ads talk about how having an abortion is great and some of them discuss, directly or indirectly, the hardship that women in that situation face. None of the ads said that the only way someone can be pro-choice is by signing up for the entire left-wing agenda. The ads spoke to real world concerns that normal people have, including those who may personally oppose abortion or have reservations about it but do not think it should be banned.
That is very smart messaging and it was very encouraging to see it used. Just as smart was that the main group opposed to the amendment was called Kansas for Constitutional Freedom and it was run by Kansans, not national groups. The emphasis of much of the campaign was about freedom and not having the government tell women what to do with their bodies. That is the kind of message that normal people can be receptive to even if the activist left is not.
Kansas is a reliably red state, at least in national elections. Trump won it by almost 15 points in 2020. The last Democratic candidate for president to win it was LBJ in 1964. The last time a Democrat got elected to the Senate from Kansas was in the 1930s. Despite that, most people there are pro-choice, but reaching out to them required messaging on things that they care about and that would not turn them off.
For the amendment to be defeated at all, let alone in a landslide, a significant number of Republicans had to have voted against it. There is no way the amendment could have failed by the massive margins it did in the suburbs. There were some rural counties in the state that had voted heavily for Trump, but also voted against the amendment or barely voted for it. That does not happen without some substantial Republican votes. Those campaigning against the amendment did everything they could to reach out to Republican voters because they could not have won otherwise.
I have written before about why I think the national pro-choice groups are not up to the task of defending abortion rights. The result from Kansas has not changed that, but I am much more optimistic about the pro-choice movement’s odds of success. What happened in Kansas shows that the pro-choice movement has gotten their act together despite the national groups living in a bubble. Abortion is an issue that many people care about and banning it will have far reaching effects. It is way too important to be left to the bubble-dwellers who run the national groups. The pro-choice movement seems to realize that and their campaign in Kansas showed what happens when they act on it. I think it is safe to say they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
There will be ballot initiatives in other states soon and some will even be happening in November. The pro-choice movement in other states would be wise to follow Kansas’ lead. Each state is going to have its own differences and unique features. What works in Kansas may not work somewhere else. But if a red state like Kansas can decisively reject an anti-abortion measure, so can other red states. Purple states should easily be able to reject such measures.
I traditionally have not put much stock in polls showing a vast majority opposed to reversing Roe. In general, I am not a huge fan of issue polling, especially when they ask about whether someone agrees or disagrees with something (people like to agree with things). Polls showing most opposed to reversing Roe also showed most in favor of limits on abortion that Roe did not allow. Issue polling is full of those kinds of contradictions.
That said, after the result in Kansas, I am having second thoughts. I do not know how much your average voter has thought through the abortion issue, but if a red state like Kansas is going to be decidedly pro-choice when it counts, something is going on. I would not extrapolate the results from one state onto another state entirely. At the same time, many other states have similar demographics to Kansas and treating Kansas like it is an outlier or somehow completely disconnected from other states would be equally wrong.
According to this analysis from the New York Times, based on demographics, 4 out of 5 states would have voted the way Kansas did. I have no idea whether that is right, and some of the numbers seem too high or too low, but, if it is right, the pro-choice movement is in a very good position. I have believed that the pro-choice movement will need a decades long plan to win, but if Kansas is any indication they may win much sooner than that. Given that Kansas is to the right of most states and the nation, a huge pro-choice win there can only be a good omen for future wins.
Who’s really at fault?
There has been a bit of a controversy over the decision by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to boost a far-right challenger to Peter Meijer. Meijer was one of 10 Republicans in the House to vote to impeach Trump. On Tuesday, he lost his primary to the far-right challenger.
Democratic candidates and organizations have been spending money in Republican primaries in several states to boost more extreme candidates because they are less electable. It has been controversial because of the risk that those extremists could win and it flies in the face of their claims to be concerned about democracy. I do not quibble with either of those things.
I believe Democrats are concerned about democracy the same way Republicans are concerned about the federal deficit. That is to say, not at all. Their professed concerns are entirely opportunistic and are full of crocodile tears.
I do not think the DCCC spending money in the Republican primary against Meijer is good, but for more pragmatic than philosophical reasons. Democrats are much more likely to beat the far-right challenger than Meijer, but even if they do it is just one seat. I could understand doing that in the Senate or a gubernatorial race, but the House has 435 seats. One seat is almost certainly not going to make or break a majority. Odds are Republicans will win the House and so Democrats winning one seat is not going to make any real difference. The DCCC should be spending its money trying to help vulnerable incumbents.
I am not opposed to boosting far-right candidates in statewide races in purple or blue states. As long as the Democrats have a good candidate(s) running, I am in favor of most anything that increases their odds of winning. In the cases of Illinois and Maryland, Democrats spent heavily promoting far-right candidates for governor who went on to get nominated. Whatever chance Republicans had of winning those races is over. In the case of Pennsylvania, Democrats spent money boosting a far-right candidate for governor who is probably going to lose despite the national environment.
Sure, there is a risk that some far-right candidates could win, but in purple states it is less likely than not and in blue states it is all but impossible barring some kind of cataclysm. In 2010, despite it being a great year for Republicans, they lost Senate races in Delaware, Colorado and Nevada that a non-lunatic could have won. Even in a favorable year for a party, if they nominate someone who is extreme they can still lose. Republicans, with or without Democrats spending money, have nominated many candidates this cycle who fit the definition of extreme.*
Arguing over the wisdom and/or hypocrisy of Democrats boosting far-right candidates is missing the forest for the trees. Say what you will about what Democrats are doing, but the fact is the reason they are doing it in the first place is because Republican primary voters like far-right lunatics. If they didn’t, Democrats would not be trying to boost them. That is the real problem for Republicans.
If Republicans want to stop Democrats from boosting bad candidates, they have to find a way to get their primary voters to not like them. Crying foul about what Democrats are doing may make some non-crazy Republicans feel good, but it does nothing to address their problem. At the end of the day, Republican primary voters are adults and they have minds of their own. That they like far-right lunatics is a choice. They could decide not to like them.
Of course, getting rid of the bad candidate problem is easier said than done. I have no idea how Republicans could actually do that and whether most of them even want to. Certainly, as long as Trump is around there will be candidates who try to be like him. But even when he leaves, there will still be extreme candidates running. They were there before him and will be there after him. What Trump has done is make it much more likely that they get nominated by giving the weight of his endorsement to them.
Funny enough, the handwringing over what Democrats have been doing reminds me of the woke crowd in a way. The implicit premise behind it is that Republican primary voters have no agency and are being forced by Democrats to nominate lunatics. That is exactly the kind of mindset the woke crowd has, just applied to anyone who is part of a “historically marginalized group.” Anyone who is a part of those groups, according to the woke crowd, is hopelessly oppressed, has no future and is doomed to never go anywhere because everything is racist, homophobic, transphobic or misogynistic.
That mindset dovetails very well with the common excuse I have heard about why Republicans support Trump. The idea is that Democrats and/or the left said or did something and that gave Republicans no choice but to side with Trump. That is a load of BS. Nobody is forced to do anything. Nobody is required to be woke or MAGA, they choose that. Republican primary voters nominated far-right candidates because they chose to, not because of anything Democrats did. If the ads run by Democrats actually did boost far-right candidates, that is because Republican primary voters liked what they saw from the ads they ran and that is entirely their choice.
Everyone has a mind of their own. Nobody has to vote a certain way. Nobody is made to do anything. You can find the left distasteful and still not support the far-right and vice-versa. It is entirely up to you. Nobody is required to watch cable news, listen to talk radio or spend 12 hours a day on social media. All of that is a choice. Just as Trump does not force Democrats to do anything, Democratic meddling in primaries does not force Republican primary voters to pick lunatics. To quote Eric Clapton, before you accuse me, take a look at yourself.
*Just a few examples of where Republicans have nominated extreme or highly problematic candidates include, for the Senate, Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania and potentially New Hampshire. For governor, examples include Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Maryland and Arizona. Political scientists will have a treasure trove of information to look at from this cycle to determine which is more important, the national environment or candidate quality. Republicans may still win most of those races listed because of the national environment, but they are doing everything they can to minimize their chances.