When Tim Ryan first ran for Congress two decades ago, he campaigned as an anti-abortion Democrat.
Now, as he runs for Senate in an increasingly red Ohio, a nationwide reckoning over abortion rights is reshaping the political landscape in this year’s elections—and could propel Ryan’s underdog campaign.
Ryan himself had an “evolution” on abortion, announcing in 2015 that he had changed his mind and embraced the mainstream Democratic position. And even though abortion still isn’t exactly a comfortable issue for Ryan—his progressive primary opponent, Morgan Harper, focused her attacks on his past opposition to abortion rights—a leaked draft of a decision to overturn Roe v. Wade changed that overnight.
ADVERTISEMENT
On Monday night, Ryan reaffirmed he would vote to end the Senate’s 60-vote threshold in order to re-establish abortion rights should the Supreme Court follow through.
“We cannot sit back and allow the Supreme Court to gut Ohioans’ most fundamental rights,” Ryan said in a statement. “It’s time to end the filibuster… and fight like hell to make sure all Ohio families are free to make these critical decisions without interference from politicians in Columbus or Washington.”
The northeast Ohio native faces an uphill climb to win this increasingly conservative state amid a tough political environment for Democrats. But Ryan’s populist focus on workers’ interests and economic threats from China had impressed Democrats who saw him sketching out a path to a competitive race against whichever staunchly MAGA candidate emerged from the GOP primary—the Trump-endorsed J.D. Vance, as it turns out.
Overnight, however, Democrats have become increasingly eager to make the 2022 midterms a referendum on the GOP’s long quest to outlaw abortion. Now, whether Ryan gains traction in Ohio could depend on how well this one-time abortion foe can capitalize on the public backlash to the end of abortion access.
David Pepper, a former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, said that overturning Roe is an unpopular position in Ohio, and argued that the justices doing so sparks a “five-alarm fire” in the lives of voters.
“If Tim and others can show that electing them can lead to laws that save us from this nightmare,” Pepper said, “yeah, it could motivate, it could persuade.”
That logic could apply to virtually every Democrat running in a competitive race this fall, who now find their campaigns reshaped by this week’s seismic news from the Supreme Court.
With President Joe Biden’s popularity bottoming out, inflation reaching historic levels, and the party’s legislative agenda stalled, Democrats are bracing for a brutal 2022 election that could see them lose control of both the House and Senate.
Democrats are devastated by the court’s decision, but many believe the deeply personal stakes of abortion rights will re-motivate voters to turn out for their candidates in a way that few issues can—if any.
Meredith Kelly, a former director of House Democrats’ campaign arm, argued that many voters—including independents and suburban voters, two key blocs for the party—are more motivated to vote in the November midterms today than they were yesterday.
“If I were a Republican running in some of these House or Senate races,” Kelly said, “I’d be terrified at the prospect of the Supreme Court going through with this.”
Several Democrats in the most competitive congressional races moved quickly on Tuesday to loudly amplify their opposition to the court’s move.
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), for instance, is considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents. But New Hampshire—a perennial battleground that has leaned just a little left on the federal level—is seen by Democratic strategists as a place where the Roe backlash could be particularly powerful.
By midday Tuesday, Hassan’s Senate office sent out a press release touting three interviews she had done with local TV and radio that morning, discussing her view that the Supreme Court’s decision “would be devastating for American women and their freedom.”
In sharply divided North Carolina, Cheri Beasley—a Democrat who previously was chief justice of the state’s Supreme Court—weighed in on the news within hours of the Politico story coming out. By Tuesday, her campaign had also put up ads on Facebook asking supporters to “rush a donation to help us fight back.”
“This horrifying news… has shown us exactly what is at stake and it is more urgent than ever that we elect leaders who will stand up for our fundamental freedoms in the U.S. Senate,” said Beasley, who is running to flip the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC).
Meanwhile, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee quickly worked on Tuesday to connect Republican House candidates to the Roe ruling. They blasted out dozens of press releases declaring that swing-district GOP lawmakers and candidates were “complicit in Republicans’ crusade to end access to legal abortion in America.”
To some activists, the imminent demise of Roe is inspiring a magnitude of reaction within the Democratic base not seen since the Donald Trump era. On Tuesday evening, thousands of demonstrators gathered outside the Supreme Court building, where top Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) spoke about the need to protect abortion access.
Rahna Epting, executive director of the liberal group MoveOn, acknowledged that progressives are “exhausted,” but she said the Roe news set up a “five-alarm fire that we have not contended with as a country.”
“While we had signs this might happen, seeing it in writing last night reawakened the Resistance, reawakened voters, and their consciousness about whether they need to keep engaging in elections,” Epting said. “They do.”
Public polling consistently finds that voters, even in conservative-leaning states, oppose the overturning of the abortion access enshrined in Roe. A recent Ohio survey, for instance, found that 61 percent of voters support that decision, which mirrors the nationwide average.
There has also been pronounced backlash to state-level Republican bills to restrict abortion access. In New Hampshire, support for Republican Gov. Chris Sununu’s legislation to ban abortion at 24 weeks has deteriorated, with only 33 percent of Granite State voters backing the measure in a recent poll.
Those numbers aren’t the only thing giving Democrats confidence: Republicans’ reaction to the news has convinced them that the GOP knows a full Roe overturn would be politically toxic for them. Even committed conservatives focused their energy on Tuesday decrying the leak of the draft opinion, not on celebrating a legal outcome they have worked to secure for decades.
A memo from the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, reported by Axios, encouraged Republican candidates to frame themselves as “compassionate consensus builders” on abortion and distance themselves from the party’s most hard-line positions on the issue.
In practice, that playbook is already looking messy. Adam Laxalt, a leading Republican candidate to take on Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada, issued a tortured statement on Tuesday in which he hailed the court’s decision, decried the leak, and declared access to abortion “settled law” in Nevada.
Kelly, the Democratic strategist, said that “a really essential, powerful part of Democratic messaging needs to be that Republicans are taking us backwards.”
But some Democrats believe that voters may no longer be convinced to show up and vote for Democrats out of fear of Republicans’ plans.
Amanda Litman, a Hillary Clinton campaign alum and the founder of the candidate recruitment group Run For Something, said the Roe news “clarifies the stakes of the election,” especially on the state level.
But Litman also said she does “not envy Democratic members of Congress right now.” She expressed doubt that voters would take Washington Democrats’ vows to secure abortion access seriously when they had, clearly, failed to do so.
The archetypal voter who Democrats hope is most motivated by the abortion rollback—the moderate suburban woman—is “not an idiot,” Litman said. “She can see Democrats control Congress, the White House, so if they're telling me they're going to protect my right to choose, why haven't they done it?”
But Molly Murphy, president of Impact Research—the pollster for Biden’s 2020 run—said the nature of the court’s decision sets up a stark contrast between the parties. Some observers had expected the conservative majority to roll back parts of Roe at a time. But the draft opinion, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, aims to undo the entire legal framework for abortion rights in one go.
Democrats, Murphy said, have to keep it simple in their messaging. “A vote for Republicans is a vote for maintaining illegal abortion and expanding it into every state,” she said. “As long as we’re emphasizing that, we don’t need to get into the weeds.”
Ohio is one example of a state where the GOP candidate’s views could make that contrast even starker. In his rush to win over the MAGA right, the formerly Trump-critical Vance embraced a number of hardline positions. He has argued against abortion exceptions for rape and incest.
Pepper, the former Ohio Democratic Party chair, noted it was not long ago that extreme anti-abortion views cost Republican candidates very winnable races in Indiana and Missouri.
“Those positions are no less unpopular,” Pepper said. “They got lost in the shuffle—but they won’t get lost in the shuffle anymore.”
If Democrats make good on that, they could win over voters who are hardly committed partisans.
Samorra Dower, a self-identified independent voter, told The Daily Beast in Columbus on Tuesday that the news was “really surprising.”
Dower said she had not decided whether to vote this year. But if the court’s move opens the door for Ohio to ban abortion, Dower had a clear answer.
“Well, then, yes,” she said, “I’m voting.”
—with reporting in Ohio from Roger Sollenberger
