Democrats are counting on abortion rights to win this battleground state

PHOENIX, Arizona — Democrats are counting on abortion rights to carry them to victory this fall in races across the country. But nowhere more so than in Arizona.

Abortion-rights activists are gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures to put a measure on the ballot enshrining protections in the state’s constitution. Doing so, Democrats believe, will juice turnout on the left, giving them a chance to break the GOP’s narrow majority in the state legislature, win a pivotal Senate seat and deliver the state — and possibly the election — to President Joe Biden.

Biden reminded voters in Phoenix last week that he “desperately” needs their help. And Vice President Kamala Harris made Arizona her first stop after the State of the Union, where she focused her speech on the threat posed by the state supreme court, which could soon reinstate an 1864 abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest.

Some Arizona conservatives acknowledge that a referendum on abortion rights could dim their electoral chances, and are working to keep the issue off the November ballot. Others are backpedaling on previous hardline anti-abortion stances as they court independents and moderates.

The parties’ scramble in the battleground state eight months ahead of the election is a model for how the issue is shaping competitive races nationwide. And while Democrats are nervous about progressive rage over the war in Gaza and slipping support among communities of color, they remain confident after a string of victories over the last two years that championing abortion rights will help them clinch key contests in November.

“Even though this is a purple state, this is not a swing issue for us,” said Senate hopeful Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), sitting inside Lola, a dimly lit coffee shop on Phoenix’s Roosevelt Row. “It is solidly a pro-abortion-rights state.

While Gallego pitches himself as a champion for abortion access — helping collect signatures to put the measure on the ballot, holding events with abortion-rights groups and pledging to abolish the Senate filibuster to help pass national protections if elected — his likely GOP opponent is backing away from the issue.

Republican Kari Lake, the front-runner in the GOP Senate primary, said during her failed bid for governor in 2022 that she would enforce Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban if elected, calling it a “great law.” She has also expressed support for a state ban on abortion pills and the forced closure of abortion clinics. But the MAGA firebrand has of late tried to sidestep questions about her plans on abortion, telling POLITICO “it’s ultimately going to be up to the voters of Arizona to decide” before changing the subject.

Both sides are bracing for a nailbiter. Biden won Arizona by just over 10,000 votes in 2020, and the state’s Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes won her 2022 race by just a couple hundred votes — a victory she attributes almost entirely to voter outrage over the fall of Roe v. Wade and the rise of state abortion bans.

“I was elected because of Dobbs,” she said in an interview at an independent bookstore on the outskirts of Phoenix. “My campaign was turbocharged the moment the decision came down, and I really think it made the difference in my race.” That energy, she added, “has never gone away, quite frankly. And I think we’re going to see that in November of 2024 it’s going to result in Joe Biden being reelected.”

Yet abortion may prove less decisive than either side believes.

A POLITICO data analysis found that abortion referendums in several states over the past two years did not boost turnout for Democrats. Indeed, many voters who turned out in support of those measures also voted for Republican candidates. A March poll of Arizona voters also found that just a quarter listed abortion as among their top three issues.

Still, deep-pocketed national groups are pouring millions into Arizona’s ballot initiative — far more than other state campaigns are receiving — hoping its impact will ripple across other races. And elected officials, political consultants and activist groups alike argue that an abortion-rights message will sway the state’s high number of registered independents.

“There's a large contingent of independent voters here that we feel confident will come to our side and are supportive of the issue,” said Cheryl Bruce, the campaign manager for the Arizona for Abortion Access Coalition, which is leading the ballot measure effort. “And there’s also a libertarian bent to the Republican electorate here that’s more about freedom and opposition to government interference than there is in some of the other states on the East Coast or in the Midwest that have run similar abortion ballot measures.”

Arizona Republicans, aware of these dynamics, are not keen on leaving abortion access up to voters, and are instead fighting to block the proposed referendum.

“If that issue gets onto the ballot, it is going to drive out the Democratic base, and potentially we lose the [state] House and Senate,” Republican state Sen. Shawnna Bolick told POLITICO right after she and a few dozen other state GOP officials gathered outside the state capitol in early March to sign a pledge by Arizona Right to Life to “oppose the effort underway to change the Arizona Constitution.” “I represent a swing district, so obviously, I’m a target.”

Democrats in the statehouse agree that the abortion referendum could help them gain control of one or both chambers for the first time in more than 20 years, and they’re working to keep the issue top of mind for the electorate.

State Sen. Eva Burch — a Mesa Democrat and nurse practitioner — shocked the state and the country when she announced on the Senate floor this week that she was preparing to have an abortion for a non-viable pregnancy. Burch said in an interview that she wanted to explain in graphic detail what terminating a pregnancy entails under the state’s current restrictions to educate and galvanize the public.

“My greatest hope for this entire scenario that I'm in right now is that I'm able to get people engaged in the political process,” Burch said. “We've got extremist politicians who are crafting the laws, who have no background in health care, and they aren't interested in patients having good outcomes or getting high quality care. The only thing that's going to improve that situation is flipping the legislature.”

Abortion, she added, “absolutely will move the needle when it comes to the elections in November.”

Republicans, meanwhile, are hoping that other issues are top of mind for voters when they go to the polls in November. Lake, for example, is working to steer clear of abortion rights, and has softened her stance on a number of issues as she courts more moderate members of the GOP.

At an immigration-focused press conference in early March outside her campaign office in Phoenix, aspiring Senate GOP Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) argued that Arizona’s Senate contest was “the critical race” of 2024, adding that if Biden wins reelection, Lake’s victory would help Senate Republicans block his “extremely liberal nominees” to federal agencies and courts. “She can put an end to all of that,” he said, beaming at the former TV anchor.

Asked by POLITICO what abortion policies she believes are best for the state and the federal government, Lake demurred, and pivoted to the safety net programs she argued would reduce demand for the procedure. “I’m interested in, from a federal level, maybe offering baby bonuses and paid family leave, so that moms can take that time off that they need,” she said.

GOP leaders are warning, however, that ducking abortion will hurt them in November, and are urging conservative candidates to tackle the issue head-on. Anti-abortion activists are making the same case to Republicans, arguing they lost key races in 2022 because they adopted an “ostrich strategy” of avoiding abortion on the campaign trail and scrubbing the issue from their websites, leaving Democrats an opening to hammer them.

Now, as they knock on doors across Arizona, they fear this avoidance will fuel conservative apathy and depress turnout on the right. Some voters, they said, no longer feel abortion is a priority now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe, while other Republicans have been primed to distrust the voting system.

“I often meet people who are Republicans, and they’re just like, ‘It’s all a distraction. It’s all fake. I’m not voting. I’m just stockpiling my patriot supplies,’” said Jeremiah Wilkerson, the campaign leader for the group Abortion Free Cities in Tucson who has knocked on more than 5,000 doors this year alone. If the abortion-rights measure makes it to the November ballot and passes, he fears even lower turnout in future elections.

“It will mean we can’t pass any more pro-life laws, which essentially means there’s no longer any point to electing pro-life politicians,” he said. “We’ll stop being purple and we’ll go blue, because it will feel like a lost cause.”

While some groups on the right work to reenergize their anti-abortion base, other conservatives investing in Arizona in 2024 are targeting independent voters, who they worry will be swayed by Democrats’ abortion-rights messaging.

“Conservatives have underestimated this threat every time,” warned the group Independent Women’s Forum in a strategy document obtained by POLITICO, pointing to the 2022 midterms as evidence. The group is working to raise nearly $11 million for ads, mailers, text-banking and other outreach aimed at “centrist women, Independents, Hispanics, Millennials and GenZ” in 11 states, including Arizona, promoting anti-transgender policies, among other issues, as a means to woo voters away from Democrats. It’s necessary, they stressed to their donors, to “change the narrative so that [abortion] does not become a liability.”

Heather Higgins, the chair of Independent Women’s Forum, confirmed the group will spend about $1.2 million in Arizona this year, arguing that they are uniquely positioned to reach the state’s large population of voters who don’t identify as Republicans or Democrats.

“Instead of reflecting on the complexity of the issue and the way the majority of Americans take a position between the extremes, we have one side often that comes across like there's no woman and the other that acts like there's no baby,” she said of the abortion debate.

Progressives, though hopeful voters’ overwhelming abortion-rights sentiment will mean victory for both the ballot measure and candidates who run on the issue, are warning that the issue itself guarantees nothing. Many reliable abortion-rights voters, they report, are turned off by the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza and others by the ballot initiative only restoring abortion rights up to fetal viability instead of throughout pregnancy.

Dr. DeShawn Taylor, an OBGYN and owner of the Desert Star Institute for Family Planning in Phoenix, was one of several community leaders who told POLITICO that the ballot initiative’s viability limit threatens to alienate “the marginalized communities that are most impacted by these policies.”

“A lot of them believe the government won’t work for them anyway, so they don’t show up,” she said. “And when they see these concessions being made, it just reinforces their belief that the government doesn’t work for them.”

The debate over viability limits is also splitting the left in several other states that are working to put abortion rights on the November ballot. But the leaders of the Arizona ballot measure campaign told POLITICO that they decided to propose returning to the Roe standard of abortion through about 24 weeks of pregnancy — with allowances after that for medical complications — based on extensive polling and focus group research showing that’s what can pass in the battleground state.

“I have no illusions that everybody and their mother is going to agree with everything that we’re doing,” said Chris Love, a senior adviser for Arizona for Abortion Access. “But I think where we are right now is where Arizona voters feel comfortable with and that's where we need to be.”

Several younger activists also say the Biden administration’s handling of the Gaza conflict is driving them away from the Democratic Party despite its embrace of abortion rights. When First lady Jill Biden recently spoke at an abortion-rights event in Tucson, for example, protesters with the Arizona Palestine Solidarity Alliance disrupted the event — saying that Democrats’ pledges on women’s rights will ring hollow if they allow the suffering of pregnant people and children in Gaza to continue. The group Vote Ceasefire AZ also pushed Arizonans to cast protest votes for Marianne Williamson in last week’s primary. More than 15,000 did so — greater than Biden’s 2020 margin of victory.

“Many groups are upset that the Biden administration is supporting genocide,” said Eloisa Lopez, the head of Pro-Choice Arizona. “A lot of people are disillusioned with the two-party system in general and Biden in particular.”

Yet Gallego, who is stressing his own support abortion rights and hitting Lake on the topic as he campaigns for Senate, believes that not only will progressive Democrats come through for Biden despite their misgivings, but moderate Republicans and Independents who previously backed Donald Trump will also vote blue this year now that they’ve seen the impact of GOP-backed abortion bans.

“A lot of people who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 assumed that he was not as anti-abortion — based on his past statements, based on the fact that he’s from the Northeast, based on him having no real religious affiliation,” he said. “I remember having a lot of conversations with voters back then, and we said, ‘He’s going to try to get rid of abortion. And they said, ‘No, no, no. Never, never never.’ Well, now they’ve seen it. Now he brags about it. There’s no way for him to put the genie back in the bottle.”