Inside the ground game to win Florida abortion referendum votes
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GAINESVILLE, Fla. - There was standing room only for the volunteers gathered near the University of Florida on a recent afternoon to learn how they could campaign in favor of a referendum to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.
Among the tips they got: Don’t mention President Biden or Donald Trump by name. Describe abortion as a health-care issue, not a political one. And don’t be afraid to get personal.
“We must not make this a partisan fight,” said Julie Cantillo, one of the Yes on 4 campaign representatives leading the training. “Our goal is to kick all politicians, regardless of party affiliations, out of private medical decisions.”
Florida’s six-week abortion ban went into effect Wednesday, making the state one of the most restrictive for reproductive rights in the nation. Simultaneously, another front in the battle over abortion has begun: the fight to convince voters for or against a referendum enshrining access to the procedure in the state’s constitution.
Though voters won’t head to the polls until November, Democrats and Republicans have begun coalescing around two contrasting messages aimed at appealing to the sizable share of Floridians somewhere in the middle.
Sixty percent of voters will need to approve the referendum for it to pass, a threshold that cannot be met by Democratic votes alone. The state has increasingly veered right in recent years, and today, 65 percent of voters identify as either Republican or having no party affiliation.
Conservatives are painting the referendum - which would allow abortion up until a fetus is considered “viable,” a stage typically reached by 24 weeks of pregnancy - as radical. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) calls it “extremist.” A political action committee is putting out a similar message.
“Florida voters are not in agreement with extreme abortion laws in states like California and New York,” Sara Johnson, statewide grass-roots director for the Florida Voters Against Extremism PAC, said in an email. “Yet if Amendment 4 passes, Florida’s abortion laws would be among the most liberal in America.”
Supporters of Amendment 4, meanwhile, are trying to navigate the hyperpartisan political waters in the state by keeping the issue nonpolitical.
It’s a tall task at a moment when abortion rights are seen by Democrats as a way to energize voters and get them to the polls in November. The Biden-Harris campaign has pledged to spend more money in Florida, and the president and vice president both gave separate speeches in the state in the weeks following a court decision that allowed the issue to go before voters.
But in a state where Biden’s favorability is consistently behind former president Donald Trump’s, keeping the party at arm’s length is at the center of the Yes on 4 campaign.
At the Gainesville volunteer training, one instructor put it plainly: Supporters need to get more than 7 million voters to approve the amendment to put it in the constitution. That will inevitably mean talking to people who disagree with them
“How do you change minds in increasing numbers if you’re only talking to your echo chamber?” Chanae Jackson told the crowd at the Civic Media Center, a nonprofit library. “We stay focused on the ballot language, and we also stay focused on, this is absolutely health care, and it’s valuable for everybody.”
Amendment supporters are buoyed by the fact that so many Republican and no-party-affiliation voters signed petitions to put it on the ballot. Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group behind the amendment, gathered petitions from 1.4 million voters across the state, including in conservative rural counties. They said more than 35 percent of the signatures came from Republicans and independent voters.
The state Division of Elections confirmed that enough voters from all of Florida’s congressional districts - including places like rural Jackson County in the Panhandle, where Republicans outnumber Democrats nearly 2 to 1 - signed petitions to get the issue on the ballot in November.
Ibis Soto, 34, a server in Miami, is the type of voter Democrats are hoping to attract. She had never voted in an election before and is not affiliated with any party. But she said the six-week abortion ban has motivated her to act.
“Some women don’t even realize they are pregnant until they are at six weeks,” she said. “My parents never pushed voting, but honestly, I am planning to for the first time this November, to extend the time. I think it’s ridiculous.”
A recent USA Today/Ipsos poll found that 57 percent of Florida voters favor expanding abortion access through the ballot measure, while 36 oppose it and 6 percent are unsure.
To persuade those on the fence, Democrats are planning to argue that abortion is an issue that transcends party lines.
“Nobody asks for your party affiliation when you’re seeking health care,” said state Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat who used to work for Planned Parenthood.
But abortion will, undoubtedly, be a rallying cry for Democrats up and down the ballot here in November. Democrats like Debbie Mucarsel-Powell have begun highlighting the issue. The challenger to Republican Sen. Rick Scott is noting his support for the six-week ban as part of her bid to attract voters.
Vice President Harris traveled to Jacksonville on Wednesday for a speech on abortion rights, and while she said the contrast between Biden and Trump “could not be more clear,” she didn’t mention the proposed amendment by name.
“Reproductive freedom is on the ballot,” she said. “And you, the leaders - you, the people, have the power to protect it with your vote.”
Florida GOP leaders, meanwhile, are trying to “make sure that every Florida voter knows the truth about Amendment 4 - that it is deceptive and extreme,” said Johnson, of the anti-referendum PAC.
Anthony Pedicini, a GOP strategist in Florida, said most voters are in the middle on abortion rights, and if they’re convinced the amendment is extreme, they’ll reject it.
“The majority of voters think there’s some middle-ground solution here, and I don’t think the amendment finds a middle line,” Pedicini said. “Also, getting 60 percent of Floridians to agree on anything is a huge feat.”
Michael Binder, a professor at the University of North Florida and the director of the school’s Public Opinion Research Lab, said because Democrats in the state face a deficit of nearly 1 million voters, it’s a good strategy to separate the amendment from the party.
“It’s very reasonable to think that people can go in and vote for a Republican presidential candidate and Senate candidate and congressional candidate and still have a different perspective on specific issues, in this case, abortion,” Binder said.
He noted that the six-week ban DeSantis signed could sway some Republican voters who may have supported the 15-week ban the governor signed two years ago but who see the new law as too extreme.
“That’s a very sharp distinction people can point to,” he said.
For volunteer Eve Myer, a Republican from deep red Marion County who attended the Yes on 4 campaign training session, making the issue nonpartisan is the only way to persuade her fellow conservatives to vote for it.
“Do you support individual freedoms, limiting government responsibility and best medical practices?” Myer said after attending the two-hour “teach-in.” “That’s the message. And it is nonpartisan.”
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Jess Swanson in Miami contributed to this report.
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