At first glance, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) might seem like a walking Democratic attack ad.
Before arriving on Capitol Hill, Johnson dedicated his constitutional law career to ending abortion rights. As former senior legal counsel for the evangelical Alliance Defense Fund, he fought to shut down Louisiana abortion clinics. In a 2005 op-ed, Johnson described abortion as “a holocaust.”
During his seven-year tenure in Congress, Johnson has cultivated a reputation as one of the most anti-abortion members of the House. Johnson co-sponsored legislation to ban abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected—around six weeks of pregnancy—which helped earn him an A+ rating from anti-abortion advocacy group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
ADVERTISEMENT
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Johnson celebrated it as a “historic and joyful day.” Many in Washington expect that he will advance some type of national abortion restriction bill to the House floor.
Practically speaking, Democrats are terrified of Johnson’s abortion positions. But politically, they couldn’t ask for a better foil.
Democrats were already planning to make the 2024 elections a partial referendum on the GOP’s abortion rollback, and there is probably no more perfect person in Congress to underscore the urgency and stakes of that fight than the new speaker.
On top of his abortion stance, Johnson spent nearly as much of his career fighting against LGBT rights, especially same-sex marriage. He was also well known in Washington for his leading efforts to contest Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.
Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN), who represents a closely divided purple seat in suburban Minnesota, told The Daily Beast she believes Johnson’s election will fundamentally change the dynamics of the 2024 election—and “we are only starting to touch the surface” of his record, she added.
“I view Mike Johnson’s election as Speaker of the House as the final transformation of the Republican Party into the MAGA party,” Craig said. “It’s done. That’s who they are.”
With House Republicans unanimously on record supporting Johnson for speaker, House Democratic campaign organizations are already sharpening the attacks they will deploy against lawmakers defending competitive seats.
Abby Curran Horrell, executive director of House Majority PAC—the main outside super PAC for House Democrats—said in an interview that Johnson’s elevation as speaker presents Democrats with a “very clear opportunity” to connect vulnerable incumbents with the leader they are branding as “MAGA Mike.”
“There are many vulnerable Republicans who have been trying to hide their true colors—and hide where they stand—and they are standing with Team Extreme,” Curran Horrell told The Daily Beast.
In the 2022 midterm elections, House Majority PAC spent over $180 million, mostly on TV ads. While Curran Horrell said it is “too early to know exactly” what will fill their ads for 2024, she laid out several clear themes.
“I can say we are going to be talking about the fact that the House GOP and MAGA extremists want to ban abortion nationwide, slash Social security and Medicare, rip away personal freedom from women and LGBTQ Americans, and want to make it OK to overturn election results,” she said.
Already, some Democratic organizations are pushing out content highlighting vulnerable Republicans’ support for Johnson. The Democratic National Committee started circulating a clip linking Republicans who represent Biden districts to Johnson’s support for a national abortion ban. House Majority PAC released a new ad called “MAGA Mike” highlighting, among other things, Johnson’s support for a national abortion ban.
Since Oct. 3, when eight Republican rebels removed Kevin McCarthy as speaker with Democratic help, the GOP’s chaos and dysfunction has cast a long shadow over the party’s hopes of defending their very narrow House majority next year.
Aside from suffering the abysmal optics and weeks of awful news cycles, Republicans lost in McCarthy their most prolific fundraiser and sharpest campaign strategist. In Johnson, they gain a man who has virtually no experience in campaign strategy and whose fundraising totals for this year would amount to a rounding error for McCarthy.
Where McCarthy was of an affable but somewhat bland political flavor, Johnson is as strong an ideologue there is in the House GOP—presenting an unexpected opportunity for Democratic campaign strategists.
“He is, in a lot of ways, a caricature of everything Democrats would have wanted to say about Republicans—and then they went ahead and manifested that into a speaker and all locked arms and voted for him,” said Jesse Ferguson, a longtime Democratic strategist who has specialized in House races.
“It is no longer possible for a swing-district Republican to pretend to be a moderate, once they’ve taken the vote for someone as extreme as Mike Johnson to be in power,” Ferguson said.
For their part, Republicans are rallying around their new leader as they sketch out their messaging against Democrats.
“Republicans will grow the majority under Speaker Johnson by weaponizing extreme Democrats’ dangerous policies on the border, crime and economy against them,” said Will Reinert, spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
In interviews and public statements, Democratic strategists and lawmakers have so far focused less on the unique particulars of Johnson’s record in conservative politics, instead highlighting his positions as the broader new norm for a party that has drifted right under Trump.
"On three pretty important things—the right to love who you love, the right to control your own body, the right to have a democracy—they’re moving further and further away from the American people,” Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) told the Daily Beast. “They’re becoming more dangerous and more extreme and the election of Mike Johnson, I think, is just one more example of that.”
Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA), chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, posted a meme of a pre-packaged Halloween costume titled “same GOP majority” with a photo of Johnson. The description says Republicans are still “unable to govern, want a national abortion ban, pushing cuts to Medicare & Social Security, and anti-LGBTQ+.”
The meme quips that the “speaker mask may vary with each package.”
In more official statements, the DCCC is also tying the GOP conference, and especially vulnerable Republicans, to Johnson’s anti-abortion background.
“In elevating ‘MAGA’ Mike Johnson as their speaker, so-called moderate House Republicans have officially given in to the far-right fringes of their party,” DCCC spokesperson Viet Shelton said.
“Their enthusiastic support of him is further proof of their embrace of an agenda to ban abortion nationwide and criminalize care,” he continued. “Voters will resoundingly reject this MAGA extremism next year in favor of Democrats’ focus on protecting our freedoms and expanding the middle class.”
Kildee, a 2024 Republican target, said the GOP’s unanimous support for Johnson will be a liability for moderate Republicans.
“Anyone who is running for Congress is going to have to answer the question as to whether and why they would run for Congress to support Speaker Mike Johnson, when he’s such a threat to women’s reproductive rights,” Kildee said.
While Johnson’s record is supplying Democrats with plenty of campaign fodder, his personality may make it harder for Democrats to build him into a boogeyman. Johnson’s Republican colleagues have painted him as an affable, even-keeled, and trustworthy party leader.
While he remains unabashedly opposed to the Roe v. Wade decision, Johnson seemed to distance himself from claims he would pursue a national abortion ban during a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity last week. Hannity asked Johnson if either gay marriage or abortion are agenda items during the next 14 months of a Johnson speakership.
Johnson said he considers same-sex marriage settled law. And on abortion, he deflected to other subjects that, he said, warrant the House’s immediate attention, including the conflicts in Israel and Ukraine, border security, and the economy.
“These are the frontline matters that have our attention right now and the rest of these things they are just using for political attacks,” Johnson told Hannity.
Thus far, Democrats have been reluctant to say that a Johnson speakership would result in noticeably more conservative policy than a McCarthy speakership—perhaps a defense of their decision to help the eight GOP rebels boot the California Republican.
On abortion, however, Democrats see a clear difference.
“With Kevin McCarthy, it was clear to us that they wanted a federal abortion ban. But now, with Mike Johnson, it should be clear to everyone that they want a federal abortion ban,” Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) told the Daily Beast.
McCarthy’s support for an abortion ban lacked teeth since he was viewed as untrustworthy among Democrats and Republicans alike, according to Kildee. Johnson, though, has been celebrated inside the GOP for his authenticity and honesty.
“When it comes to Mike Johnson, you can take him at his word,” Kildee said. “He says he’s going to outlaw abortion in all circumstances, he will do everything he can to get there. With Kevin McCarthy, we knew that was his view, but we knew he was a weak speaker and was, you know, obviously somewhat inept.”
Johnson’s record on LGBT rights is also particularly concerning, especially for openly gay lawmakers like Craig, who also note how out-of-touch it is with most Americans.
In announcing her vote for Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) last Wednesday, Craig pointedly wished a happy anniversary to her wife, earning an ovation from colleagues. She told The Daily Beast the decision was made totally spontaneously from the House floor. (“I texted my chief of staff and said, ‘I’m about to do a thing,’” Craig recalled. “There’s nothing that scares a chief of staff more.”)
While Democrats are poised to focus intently on abortion and health care in their 2024 messaging, Johnson’s election unexpectedly elevated 2020 election denialism and Jan. 6 as a concern. The Louisiana Republican organized GOP member efforts to support a Texas lawsuit throwing out Biden’s victories in key states and marshaled opposition to rejecting Electoral College votes on the House floor after Jan. 6.
Curran Horrell, of House Majority PAC, told The Daily Beast that they “continue to see this as a potent issue,” adding that “Jan. 6 is still fresh in a lot of voters’ minds.”
Of course, there’s still a full year—one in which Biden and Trump will likely fight it out yet again—until the 2024 elections, and much will change.
Craig, for one, had a reality check for those immediately attempting to assess any seismic impact of the Johnson ascension on the battle for the House.
“Here’s the truth from a swing district in Minnesota,” she said. “No one’s paying a lot of attention to us. They’re not following it to the level Washington insiders are. But I guarantee you those of us who are frontliners in swing districts, when we campaign, you better bet our constituents and voters know who he is and why he’s so dangerous to our country.”
