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      Five States Have Abortion Referendums on the Ballot

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      The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in June at first appeared like it might change Democratic fortunes in this year’s midterm elections, giving the party an energizing issue even as inflation remained high and President Biden’s approval ratings remained low.That momentum was clear in August, when voters in deep-red Kansas rejected a proposed amendment to the state Constitution that would have allowed legislators to enact abortion restrictions.But Republicans have gained an edge as voters have expressed concern about the inflation and the economy. Democrats are bracing for a red wave in the House, and control of the Senate hinges on close contests.Even so, abortion remained a hot-button topic heading into Election Day. Races for governor and legislature in several states could have implications for future abortion legislation. And in five states, abortion is directly on the ballot.Here are the states where abortion referendums will be decided on Election Day.MichiganMichigan’s Reproductive Freedom For All proposal would protect the right to make decisions about “all matters relating to pregnancy” in the state, where a 1931 law that would make abortion illegal was blocked from taking effect by a court ruling earlier this fall.The proposal would allow the state to regulate abortion after fetal viability, which is usually around 24 weeks, except in cases where abortions are medically necessary to protect the “physical or mental health” of the woman. The 1931 law does not include exceptions for rape, incest or the health of the mother, and it threatens doctors who perform the procedure with up to 15 years in prison. CaliforniaVoters will decide whether to enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution. Separately, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has urged Hollywood companies to stop filming in states like Oklahoma and Georgia, where stricter abortion laws are in place, and recently signed a package of 12 bills meant to strengthen abortion rights in the state, where the procedure is permitted up to fetal viability.KentuckyKentucky voters will be asked to approve a revision to the state Constitution to make clear it does not protect the right to abortion. It is a safeguard against potential legal challenges to the state’s existing law restricting abortion, which went into effect over the summer.MontanaThe ballot initiative won’t affect typical abortion access in the state, where the procedure is permitted until viability or if necessary to prevent a serious health risk to the mother.Rather, the measure would require mandatory medical interventions to save those the state defines as “born-alive” infants — which can include fetuses diagnosed as nonviable — and establish criminal penalties for health care providers who refuse to intervene.VermontThe Reproductive Liberty Amendment, if enacted, would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state Constitution. Abortion is already legal in the state, without a time limit, and that will continue even if the amendment fails.Lauren McCarthy More

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      The US made women second-class citizens. Now we must give a stinging rebuke | Moira Donegan

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      The US made women second-class citizens. Now we must give a stinging rebukeMoira DoneganThe supreme court edict overturning Roe v Wade said women are ‘not without electoral and political power’. That feels almost like a dare Organized feminism has been on the decline in the US since the 1980s, with the radicalism of the second wave giving way to a more diffuse, less focused feminist movement consisting of NGOs, campus activists, online discourse and HR inclusion initiatives. In a way, this is normal. Students of the movement have long spoken of feast and fallow years for feminism, eruptions of activism that are followed by long and virulent backlashes.But feminism has perhaps never received such a dramatic and immediate setback as it did this June. The supreme court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization undid the major legal achievement of the second wave era, reversing Roe v Wade and ending the constitutional right to an abortion.The result has been chaos, with so-called “trigger bans” blasting into enforcement in some states, long-dormant laws from before the era of women’s suffrage being revived in others and still other states left in limbo, as abortion flickers in and out of legality, depending on the proclivities of whichever judge is determining whichever injunction. Children and teens who are pregnant as a result of incest, rape or exploitation are now forced to travel across state lines for abortions, because they live in states where a fetus or embryo is valued more highly than their own health and potential. Women whose pregnancies are doomed are forced to wait, carrying fetuses they know will not live, or to slowly bleed out their miscarriages until either the fetus dies or they go septic.There’s an incalculable amount of cruelty now being forced on pregnant women, and there’s also an insidious kind of debasement being imposed on all women, pregnant or not. Millions of American women and trans people are now living in states where their lives are not their own, where an unplanned pregnancy can derail their educations, careers or plans, where they must live under the indignity of the knowledge that the state can compel them to give birth. That injury is not the kind of acute horror story that we see coming out of states where bans are now in effect. But it is an injury that has been done to each and every woman in America.This indignity is political. For the past five decades, during the Roe era, American women were endowed with a basic level of respect by the right to abortion. They could not be forced to carry a pregnancy to term; their bodies, at least on paper, were their own. This principle lent women a sense of worth and equality under the law, the sense that the freedoms and responsibilities of self-determination and self-respect – of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – so revered in the American tradition were theirs, too. The idea was that women were made, by Roe, into full citizens – not members of some lesser class needing monitoring or protection, but equal participants in the American project.This idea was so powerful and potent to American women’s identity that it did not matter what the reality of Roe was. It did not matter that the decision itself was built on legal reasoning about a right to privacy, instead of a more secure, more honest reasoning about equality; it did not matter that the supreme court had never recognized American women as having their own individual right to reject pregnancy. Over the 49 years of its existence, Roe became more than just the 1973 court decision and its logic. It became a symbol, a shorthand for the baseline preconditions of women’s full citizenship.Dobbs erased both the law and the symbol. Women no longer have a constitutional right to an abortion, and we no longer have the dignity that that right gave us. We are now, in many states, subject to laws that criminalize and surveil us, that assess our needs for medical care based on whether we are suffering enough to deserve it, that in many cases treat blobs of tissue, laughably far from anything human, as having rights and interests that trump our own. In one of the most intimate and life-defining aspects of our existence, we find ourselves not quite treated as adults, not allowed to make our own choices, not trusted to know our own interests and not valued in our own right. In pregnancy, women are now less citizens than they are subjects.In his majority opinion ending the constitutional right to abortion, Samuel Alito asserts that he’s not hurting women on the basis of their sex at all, that he is merely handing the issue “back to the states”, as if any state law banning or restricting abortion did not inherently make women less equal. But Alito asserted that women who did not like the Dobbs decision could simply vote to reverse its effects in their own states, and hope that a majority of other voters agreed with them that they should be full citizens with self-determination. “Women are not without electoral or political power,” Alito said, perhaps somewhat regretfully. If they didn’t like the status of second-class citizenship to which his ruling had consigned them, why didn’t they simply vote themselves out of it? Maybe we will. During the midterm elections, American women can vote en masse to restore reproductive freedom.Of course, voting will not be sufficient to restore abortion rights and women’s full citizenship in America. For that, we will need a revival of an organized and radical feminist movement, committed to local engagement, long-term relationship – and institution-building and direct action. The seeds of that movement are already beginning to germinate in the local abortion funds, clandestine mutual-aid efforts and grassroots mobilizations that have helped fill the well of need in the wake of Dobbs. And of course, voting is not easy for everyone – it has been made less easy, and less meaningful, by the actions of the same supreme court.But the midterm elections represent an immediate opportunity for American women to exercise that political power of which Alito spoke. The elections can preserve Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, which can stave off Republican ambitions to ban abortion nationwide; if the majorities are large enough, they may even be able to fulfill Joe Biden’s promise to reinstate Roe by statute. Voting for Democratic governors, attorneys general and state legislators can blunt or reverse the impact of state abortion bans and misogynist laws: a local election, for many women voters, means a choice between a district attorney who will prosecute patients and providers of abortions, and one who will not.Alito’s whole opinion drips with contempt, but the line about American women – that we are “not without electoral and political power” – felt like a dare. American women do have power, perhaps more than Samuel Alito realizes. It’s time to call his bluff.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionAbortionWomenRoe v WadeUS supreme courtLaw (US)HealthcommentReuse this content More

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      Don’t Believe Lee Zeldin When He Says He Can’t Touch Abortion Access in New York

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      I called Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president, on Monday morning to see how worried he was about New York’s governor’s race. Levine, a Democrat who’d just come from campaigning with Gov. Kathy Hochul, was pretty worried. Yes, polls have shown Hochul consistently ahead of the Trumpist Republican congressman Lee Zeldin, but Levine thought the race could go either way.“I don’t think we know how accurate polls are in New York State,” Levine told me, noting how long it’s been since New York has had a competitive statewide general election. “And there’s no doubt that Zeldin has used the crime issue to whip up energy on his side.”There are many reasons to be aghast at the idea of a gun-loving election denier taking power in a state that’s been as reliably liberal as New York. One of them is what Zeldin might do to New York’s status as a haven for abortion access.Though Zeldin is a co-sponsor in the House of the Life at Conception Act, which would bestow full personhood rights on embryos, he’s tried to neutralize abortion as a campaign issue by insisting that he couldn’t change New York’s abortion law even if he wanted to.There’s something bizarre about this argument: As Assemblywoman Deborah Glick pointed out to me, Zeldin is telling pro-choice New Yorkers that we can rely on the Legislature to protect us from him. And while it’s true that Zeldin wouldn’t be able to ban abortion anytime soon, there are many things, short of making abortions illegal, that a governor can do to make them harder to get.Zeldin’s strategy is similar to the one that Christine Drazan, the anti-abortion Republican with a decent chance of becoming governor of Oregon, is employing in her race. Both are trying to use Democrats’ success in passing state-level abortion protections against them, by arguing that these laws make their personal opposition to abortion moot.“I will not change and could not change New York’s abortion law,” Zeldin said in one ad, while Drazan told Oregon Public Broadcasting that “Roe is codified into Oregon law. Regardless of my personal opinions on abortion, as governor, I will follow the law.” But when it comes to reproductive rights, the letter of the law isn’t the only thing that matters.New York, for example, recently passed a statute that, among other things, prohibits law enforcement from cooperating with out-of-state prosecutors on most abortion cases. But whether a Governor Zeldin would be totally constrained by the law is unclear. He has promised to remove Manhattan’s district attorney, Alvin Bragg, from office, even though Bragg was elected last year with 84 percent of the vote, suggesting a willingness to push the limit of his authority. Oregon, meanwhile, has no such law, only a written commitment from the governor, the Democrat Kate Brown, to resist out-of-state legal actions over abortion.In both Oregon and New York, there are lots of administrative levers governors could pull to stymie reproductive health care. Zeldin has said it would be a “great idea” to appoint an anti-abortion health commissioner, a position with a lot of power in the state. Shortly after the draft of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe was leaked in May, Hochul created the $25 million Abortion Provider Support Fund to help New York providers care for an expected influx of out-of-state patients, and allocated $10 million more to help clinics beef up their security. Zeldin would almost certainly do away with grants like these. Drazan has criticized a similar grant program in Oregon, referring derisively to the funding of “abortion tourism.”New York’s governor “controls the purse strings, because he controls the division of the budget,” said Glick, who led the fight to pass the 2019 Reproductive Health Act, which codified Roe and expanded the number of health professionals who can legally perform abortions in the state. As governor, she said, Zeldin could withhold money from Planned Parenthood and restrict Medicaid funding for abortion. “You can slowly starve some programs by simply not providing resources in a timely fashion.”Of course, the people who care deeply about the nuances of reproductive health policy are probably already voting for Democrats, which is why pointing out all the ways right-wing governors could erode abortion access feels so dispiriting. Politically, the anti-abortion movement has often been at its strongest when it’s fighting for regulations that strangle providers with red tape or cut off public funding, because most people aren’t going to get far enough into the weeds to get outraged.While Roe still stood, the anti-abortion movement used a strategy of regulatory siege to chip away at abortion rights in red states. With anti-abortion governors, a similar strategy could be deployed in blue ones. Speaking to New York Right to Life in April, Zeldin promised an open-door policy. “Come on in to the second floor of the New York State Capitol,” he said. “It’s been a while, but you come right on in.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘My gut-felt, heartbreaking decision’ – Tracey Emin on her ‘A-Z of abortion’ blanket

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      ‘My gut-felt, heartbreaking decision’ – Tracey Emin on her ‘A-Z of abortion’ blanketThe artist made The Last of the Gold to help women considering a termination. With the issue dominating tomorrow’s US midterms, the work seems more potent than ever “I felt pretty vulnerable. I was so broke, homeless, in debt … I had worked so hard at my education and coming from my background … I knew I wanted to be an artist and I knew that if I had a baby on my own, I felt that I had zero chance of that happening. It seemed ironic that now after all my education and fighting … that I was going to end up being a single mother … And I just thought, I can’t bring a baby into the world with all this …”These are the words of Tracey Emin reflecting on her two abortions from the early 1990s. They highlight the reality endured by so many women around the world. Emin has been making highly political work for decades. Through painting, textiles, films and more, she unveils the rawness and truths of life. Abortion is an issue she has constantly explored, yet its importance in her work has too often been dismissed.TopicsArt and designThe great women’s art bulletinTracey EminAbortionUS politicsWomenfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      Confidence, Anxiety and a Scramble for Votes Two Days Before the Midterms

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      As candidates made their closing arguments on Sunday, Democrats braced for potential losses even in traditionally blue corners of the country while Republicans predicted a red wave.DELAWARE COUNTY, Pa. — The turbulent midterm campaign rolled through its final weekend on Sunday as voters — buffeted by record inflation, worries about their personal safety and fears about the fundamental stability of American democracy — showed clear signs of preparing to reject Democratic control of Washington and embrace divided government.As candidates sprinted across the country to make their closing arguments to voters, Republicans entered the final stretch of the race confident they would win control of the House and possibly the Senate. Democrats steeled themselves for potential losses even in traditionally blue corners of the country.On Sunday, President Biden campaigned for Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York in a Yonkers precinct where he won 80 percent of the vote in 2020, signaling the deep challenges facing his party two years after he claimed a mandate to enact a sweeping domestic agenda. Former President Donald J. Trump addressed supporters in Miami, another sign of Republican optimism that the party could flip Florida’s most populous urban county for the first time in two decades.In the rally at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., Mr. Biden characterized Election Day and the coming 2024 campaign as “inflection points” for the next 20 years. Voters, he said, had a clear choice between two “fundamentally different visions of America.”Mr. Trump, meanwhile, took the stage for about 90 minutes to blast Democrats as being soft on crime, re-litigate grievances about his presidency and the 2020 election, and boast that he has motivated Hispanic voters, especially in Florida, to shift toward the Republican Party.“We need a landslide so big that the radical left cannot rig or steal it,” he said, minutes before a rainstorm soaked the crowd. “We are going to take back America.”The appearances represented an unusual capstone to an extraordinary campaign — the first post-pandemic, post-Roe, post-Jan. 6 national election in a fiercely divided country shaken by growing political violence and lies about the last major election.While a majority of voters name the economy as their top concern, nearly three-quarters of Americans believe democracy is in peril, with most identifying the opposing party as the major threat. Should Republicans sweep the House contests, their control could empower the party’s right wing, giving an even bigger bullhorn to lawmakers who traffic in conspiracy theories and falsehoods like Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida.A gas station in Mineral County, Nev., had gas prices well above $5 a gallon last week. A majority of voters say the economy is their top concern.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesA central question for Democrats is whether such a distinctive moment overrides fierce historical headwinds. Since 1934, nearly every president has lost seats in his first midterm election. And typically, voters punish the party in power for poor economic conditions — dynamics that point toward Republican gains.After days of campaigning across rural Nevada, Adam Laxalt, the Republican challenging Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, rallied supporters in and around Las Vegas this weekend, predicting a “red wave” that is “deep and wide.” Mr. Laxalt noted that Mr. Biden did not campaign in Nevada this year and blamed him for the state’s 15 percent inflation.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.House Democrats: Several moderates elected in 2018 in conservative-leaning districts are at risk of being swept out. That could cost the Democrats their House majority.A Key Constituency: A caricature of the suburban female voter looms large in American politics. But in battleground regions, many voters don’t fit the stereotype.Crime: In the final stretch of the campaigns, politicians are vowing to crack down on crime. But the offices they are running for generally have little power to make a difference.Abortion: The fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer Democrats a way of energizing voters and holding ground. Now, many worry that focusing on abortion won’t be enough to carry them to victory.“He’s going to call you anti-democratic for using the democratic system to give us a change,” he told supporters on Saturday in Clark County, the state’s largest county. “But that change is coming.”The midterm’s final landscape hinted that voters were prioritizing fiscal worries over more existential fears about democracy or preserving abortion rights. From liberal northeastern suburbs to Western states, Republican strategists, lawmakers and officials now say they could flip major parts of the country and expand their margins in Southern and Rust Belt states that have been fertile ground for their party for much of the last decade.There were also some early signs that key parts of the coalition that boosted Democrats to victory in 2018 and 2020 — moderate suburban white women and Latino voters — were swinging toward Republican candidates. Top Democratic officials made 11th-hour efforts to shore up their base. Vice President Kamala Harris made stops in Chicago to help Illinois Democrats. The first lady, Jill Biden, traveled to Houston on Sunday, trying to lift party turnout in Harris County, a stronghold for Democrats in Texas.In the House, where Republicans need to flip five seats to control the chamber, the party vied for districts in Democratic bastions, including in Rhode Island, exurban New York, Oregon and California. Republican strategists touted their surprisingly close standing in governor’s races in longer-shot blue states like New York, New Mexico and Oregon.At the same time, the Senate remains a tossup, with candidates locked in near dead-even races in three states — Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania — and tight races in at least another four. Republicans need just one additional seat to win control.“Everyone on the Republican side should be optimistic,” said Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican and the head of the Republican Senate campaign arm. Mr. Scott predicted his party would flip the chamber, going beyond the 51 seats needed for control. “If you look at the polls now, we have every reason to think we’ll be over 52.”Lt. Gov. John Fetterman with supporters at a rally in Pittsburgh on Saturday.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesTwo supporters of Senator Raphael Warnock greeted each other at one of his events in Monroe, Ga., on Thursday.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesFor months, Democratic candidates in key races have outpaced Mr. Biden’s low approval ratings, aided by flawed Republican opponents who had been boosted to primary victories by Mr. Trump. Continuing to outrun the leader of their party grew more difficult as perceptions of the economy worsened and as Republican groups unleashed a fall ad blitz accusing their opponents of being weak on crime.“It’s a close race — it’s a jump ball for sure,” Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democrat running for Senate in Pennsylvania against Mehmet Oz, the television personality, told a group of supporters in suburban Philadelphia.Dr. Oz and Mr. Fetterman both spent time in the Philadelphia area on Sunday, battling, in particular, in the crucial swing suburbs. A day after joining Mr. Trump at a rally in the Pittsburgh exurbs, Dr. Oz campaigned with Senator Susan Collins of Maine and Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, two more moderate Republicans.In Georgia, the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley told supporters not to feed into national headlines about Republicans’ strength, as she campaigned with Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee, in the conservative northwest Atlanta exurbs.“Don’t listen to this red wave stuff they’re talking to you about. The win that will happen in Georgia will simply be based on turnout,” she said. “Do more of us show up than they do?”And in the Las Vegas suburbs, former President Bill Clinton appeared with Ms. Cortez Masto to urge a crowd of labor union members to warn their family and friends not to cast a protest vote for Republicans, who he said would be “terrible” for working-class people.“They’re gambling that they have this magic moment where we’ll all be so mad, we’ll stop thinking,” he said. “Between now and Tuesday, people here could change the outcome of this election.”Cheri Beasley, a Democrat running for Senate in North Carolina in a tight race against Representative Ted Budd, spoke to voters in Charlotte, N.C., in September.Logan R. Cyrus for The New York TimesIn the House, the question is how large next year’s Republican majority will be. Some strategists have increased their estimates of how many seats the G.O.P. will gain from a handful to more than 25, which is well over the threshold for control of the chamber. Some of the Democratic challenges are structural: Republicans could pick up three seats just from redistricting according to some estimates, and a wave of Democratic retirements means more than a dozen seats in competitive districts lack incumbents to defend them. Paired with the number of seats leaning Republican or considered tossups, those obstacles are the makings of a landslide if undecided voters break decisively for the party out of power.“It’s not a surprise that this is a tough cycle,” said Sean Patrick Maloney, the head of the Democratic House campaign arm, who is in danger of losing his seat in New York’s Hudson Valley, which Mr. Biden won by 10 percentage points. “We’re very much aware of what we’re up against.”In governor’s races, Republican candidates modeled after Mr. Trump face decidedly mixed prospects, reflecting their party’s struggles with his continued influence. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida seemed poised for re-election, while Kari Lake, the Republican nominee in Arizona, faces a tough battle. Doug Mastriano, the far-right nominee in Pennsylvania, was expected to lose, but Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia and Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, both of whom clashed with Mr. Trump, appear to have solidified their hold.Kari Lake addressed reporters at a campaign event on Friday, alongside other Republican candidates at the U.S.-Mexico border in Sierra Vista, Ariz.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesSupporters of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida gathered at a campaign event in Coconut Creek, Fla., on Friday. Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesIn some ways, the congressional elections are less consequential than some of the state elections, given that Mr. Biden will still be in the White House to block Republican legislation. In Wisconsin and North Carolina, the party is on the verge of breakthroughs in state legislatures that would give it almost total control of their governments.If Republicans gain just a handful of House and Senate seats in North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, faces the prospect of a Republican supermajority, rendering his veto pen obsolete to stop policies like a state abortion ban. If Republicans flip only one of the two State Supreme Court seats up for re-election Tuesday, a Republican-controlled high court could ratify even more gerrymandered state legislative maps that would lock in Republican control for the foreseeable future.“Yes, we’re concerned about it because the Republicans got to draw their own districts,” Mr. Cooper said. “We know this is a very purple, 50-50 state, yet we have a situation with unfair maps of maybe a supermajority.”But the chaotic events of the post-Trump era along with questions about the very mechanics of elections have injected a heavy dose of uncertainty into the outcome of the 2022 midterms.Democratic strategists have been enthusiastic about early voting, saying that it matched or was higher than the turnout two years ago when the party swept the House. More than 30 million ballots have been cast already, exceeding the 2018 total, and the Democratic advantage is 11 percentage points nationwide, even better than in 2018, according to Tom Bonier, the chief executive of TargetSmart, a firm that analyzes political data.But Republican candidates have followed Mr. Trump’s lead in denouncing mail voting and encouraging their voters to cast their ballots on Election Day. So those early Democratic numbers could be swamped by Republican votes on Tuesday.New Yorkers cast their ballots during early voting at a polling station at John Jay High School in Brooklyn on Saturday. More than 30 million ballots have been cast already.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesRepublicans, meanwhile, point to polling averages that crept toward the G.O.P. in the final week. But a number of the polls were conducted by Republican-leaning firms, which could influence the outcome of those surveys. And after several cycles of polling underestimating Trump voters, it’s unclear whether pollsters have correctly captured the electorate. “I’ve never been one who has put my bets on any poll, because I think particularly at this time people are not sharing where they are,” said Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat of Washington, who is facing a tough re-election battle in her blue state.Hispanic voters are likely to play a crucial role in Tuesday’s election, though both sides remain uncertain how much the landscape has shifted. In two of the states that are likely to determine control of the Senate — Nevada and Arizona — they make up roughly 20 percent of the electorate. Latinos also account for more than 20 percent of registered voters in more than a dozen hotly contested House races, including in California, Colorado, Florida and New Mexico.“The data itself right now is a picture of uncertainty,” said Carlos Odio, who runs Equis, a Democratic-leaning research firm that focuses on Latino voters. “We’re not seeing further decline for Democratic support, but the party has relied on very high margins in the past.”The audience watched former President Barack Obama at a Democratic rally in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesKatie Glueck More

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      Democrats, Don’t Despair. There Are Bright Spots for Our Party.

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      The Democratic Party and Senator Mitch McConnell rarely see eye to eye on anything. But if Democrats hold the line in the elections on Tuesday and keep control of the Senate — and we still have a shot — it will come down to candidate quality.That’s the phrase that Mr. McConnell used this past summer alluding to his Republican Senate nominees.Going into Tuesday’s vote, Democrats face fierce headwinds like inflation and the typical pattern of losses in midterm elections for the party in power. But unlike some Republican candidates — a real-life island of misfit toys — many Democratic Senate candidates have been a source of comfort: the likable, pragmatic, low-drama Mark Kelly in Arizona and Raphael Warnock in Georgia, the heterodox populists John Fetterman (Pennsylvania) and Tim Ryan (Ohio). If the party can defy the odds and hold the Senate, there will be valuable lessons to take away.For many election analysts, the hopes of the summer —  that the Dobbs decision overturning Roe could help Democrats buck historical trends — look increasingly like a blue mirage, and Republicans seem likely to surf their way to a majority in the House.Yet the battle for the Senate is still raging, and largely on the strength of Mr. Kelly, Mr. Warnock, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Fetterman. Their races also offer insights that can help Democrats mitigate losses in the future and even undo some of the reputational damage that has rendered the party’s candidates unelectable in far too many places across the country.In a normal midterm year, Mr. Warnock and Mr. Kelly would be the low-hanging fruit of vulnerable Democrats, given that they eked out victories in 2020 and 2021 in purple states.But they bring to the table compelling biographies that resist caricature. Mr. Kelly is a former Navy combat pilot and astronaut whose parents were both cops. Mr. Warnock, the senior pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, quotes Scripture on the campaign trail and compares the act of voting to prayer.They’ve rejected the hair-on-fire, hyperpartisan campaign ads that endangered incumbents often rely on. Mr. Kelly’s ads highlight his bipartisanship and willingness to break with the Democratic Party on issues like border security — he supports, for example, filling in gaps in the wall on the border with Mexico.Mr. Warnock, too, has focused on local issues: His campaign has highlighted his efforts to secure funding for the Port of Savannah and his bipartisan work with Tommy Tuberville of Alabama to help Georgia’s peanut farmers. These ads will probably not go viral on Twitter, but they signal that Mr. Kelly and Mr. Warnock will fight harder for the folks at home than they will for the national Democratic agenda.In Ohio and Pennsylvania, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Fetterman have showed up in every county, red or blue, in their states. Democrats can’t just depend on driving up the margins in Democratic strongholds — they also need to drive down Republicans’ margins in their strongholds.Mr. Fetterman is holding to a slim lead in polls. Most analysts doubt Mr. Ryan can prevail in what is a tougher electoral environment for a Democrat, but even if he loses, he helped his peers by keeping his race competitive, and he did it without a dollar of help from the national party. He forced national Republicans to spend about $30 million in Ohio that could otherwise have gone to Senate races in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania.Anything could happen on Tuesday. Politics, like football, is a game of inches. It’s still possible that Democrats could pick up a seat or two. It’s also plausible that Republicans could take seats in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and even New Hampshire.But when the dust settles on the election, Democrats need to do some real soul-searching about the future of our party. We look likely to lose in some places where Joe Biden won in 2020. And what’s worse, we could lose to candidates who have embraced bans on abortion and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, views shared by a minority of the American people. This outcome tells us as much about the Democratic brand as it does the Republican Party.Fair or not, Democrats have been painted as the party of out-of-touch, coastal elites — the party that tells voters worried about crime that it’s all in their heads and that, by the way, crime was higher in the 1990s; the party that sneers at voters disillusioned with bad trade deals and globalization and that labels their “economic anxiety” a convenient excuse for racism; the party that discounts shifts of Black and Hispanic voters toward the Republican Party as either outliers or a sign of internalized white supremacy.If Democrats are smart, they’ll take away an important lesson from this election: There is no one way, no right way to be a Democrat. To win or be competitive in tough years in places as varied as Arizona, Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania, we need to recruit and give support to the candidates who might not check the box of every national progressive litmus test but who do connect with the voters in their state.Mr. Fetterman and Mr. Ryan offer good examples. Both have been competitive in part because they broke with progressive orthodoxy on issues like fracking (in Pennsylvania, Mr. Fetterman was called the “enemy” by an environmentalist infuriated by his enthusiastic support for fracking and the jobs it creates) and trade deals (in Ohio, Mr. Ryan has bragged about how he “voted with Trump on trade”).It also means lifting up more candidates with nontraditional résumés who defy political stereotypes and can’t be ridiculed as down-the-line partisans: veterans, nurses, law enforcement officers and entrepreneurs and executives from the private sector.In some states, the best candidates will be economic populists who play down social issues. In others, it will be economic moderates who play up their progressive social views. And in a lot of swing states, it will be candidates who just play it down the middle all around.It might also mean engaging with unfriendly media outlets. Most Democrats have turned up their noses at Fox News even though it is the highest-rated cable news channel, but Mr. Ryan has made appearances and even put on air a highlight reel of conservative hosts like Tucker Carlson praising him as a voice of moderation and reason in the Democratic Party. In the frenzied final days of the campaign, Mr. Fetterman wrote an opinion essay for FoxNews.com.This year we still might avoid losing the Senate. And Democrats can avoid catastrophe in future elections. It all comes down to two words: “candidate quality.”Lis Smith (@Lis_Smith), a Democratic communications strategist, was a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign and is the author of the memoir “Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Walker and Warnock Spend Big on TV Ads as Georgia Football Wins

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      Nothing quite holds an audience captive like a clash of undefeated college football behemoths. Senator Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker didn’t need reminding of that on Saturday.Neither candidate in Georgia’s pivotal Senate race blinked at the $50,000 cost of a 30-second campaign ad during Saturday’s game between the top-ranked University of Tennessee and the third-ranked University of Georgia, according filings with the Federal Communications Commission.Each of them booked two ads on Atlanta’s CBS affiliate, with the National Republican Senatorial Committee listed as sharing some of the cost of one of the ads supporting Mr. Walker.On CBS in Atlanta, a 30-second ad during the pregame show or on Friday night prime time cost $5,000; it was a thrifty $75 during the station’s “Wake Up Atlanta” show in the 5 to 5:30 a.m. time slot on weekdays.Mr. Walker won the Heisman Trophy in the 1980s when he starred for the Georgia Bulldogs, which are the defending national champions in college football. Georgia beat Tennessee, 27-13.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.House Democrats: Several moderates elected in 2018 in conservative-leaning districts are at risk of being swept out. That could cost the Democrats their House majority.A Key Constituency: A caricature of the suburban female voter looms large in American politics. But in battleground regions, many voters don’t fit the stereotype.Crime: In the final stretch of the campaigns, politicians are vowing to crack down on crime. But the offices they are running for generally have little power to make a difference.Abortion: The fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer Democrats a way of energizing voters and holding ground. Now, many worry that focusing on abortion won’t be enough to carry them to victory.In one ad for Mr. Warnock that he highlighted on Twitter during the game, three Georgia graduates conveyed their reverence for Mr. Walker’s accomplishments as a college football star, but said that was where the praise ended. One was wearing a jersey with Mr. Walker’s No. 34 and another displayed a football autographed by him.“I’ve always thought Herschel Walker looked perfect up there,” said a man identified in the ad as Clay Bryant, a 1967 graduate, pointing to photos of Mr. Walker on a wall in his home.“I think he looks good here,” another graduate said, gesturing to her jersey.“I think he looks great there,” the third one said, sitting next to the football and a copy of Sports Illustrated with Mr. Walker on the cover.“But Herschel Walker in the U.S. Senate?” the three asked critically in unison.On social media, college football fans groused about being bombarded with attack ads run by the candidates and groups aligned with them, including dueling commercials that lobbed domestic abuse allegations at Mr. Walker and Mr. Warnock.Senator Lindsey Graham, left, campaigned with Herschel Walker in Cumming, Ga., in October.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Walker has been roiled by accusations that he urged two women to have abortions, despite campaigning as a conservative who opposes the procedure.On the CBS affiliate in Savannah, Ga., Mr. Walker booked a 30-second ad during the game for $35,000, while Mr. Warnock reserved a 30-second block for $15,000. Advertising rates are typically higher for coordinated efforts between parties and candidates than for candidates on their own.On the CBS affiliate in Augusta, Ga., Mr. Walker reserved a pair of 30-second ads during the game for $25,890, with the N.R.S.C. listed as helping to pay for one, according to federal filings. Mr. Warnock bought ads on the same station, but not during the game.Mr. Warnock and Mr. Walker, who is backed by former President Donald J. Trump, were not the only bitter rivals in a close Senate race who invested heavily this week advertising around sporting events.In Pennsylvania’s open-seat contest, the celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Republican, and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate, spent six figures to run campaign ads during the World Series featuring the Philadelphia Phillies and the Houston Astros.Both candidates booked multiple ads on Fox’s Philadelphia affiliate at a rate of $95,000 for 30 seconds, according to federal filings. Mr. Fetterman also reserved 30 seconds of airtime during Thursday night’s National Football League game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Houston Texans. More

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      I Write About Post-Roe America Every Day. It’s Worse Than You Think.

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      Despite Republican‌ assurances that their draconian abortion bans wouldn’t hurt women, a flood of heart-wrenching accounts from across the country prove otherwise. Yet even with that outpouring of stories, plus polls showing broad opposition to the bans and an increase in women registering to vote, it’s still unclear if the issue will be the deciding factor for voters in the midterm elections on Tuesday.It should be.This past summer, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. W‌ade, I started publishing a daily newsletter tracking abortion news, ‌following everything from state bans to stories of women denied vital health care. After months of writing about abortion, it’s clear that stripping this right from half of Americans has had a swift, damaging and pervasive impact.What happens in the midterms won’t be about Republicans or Democrats, but whether people cast a vote for the continuation of suffering, or attempt to end the anguish that banning abortion has caused.This isn’t hyperbole. Laws that privilege fetuses over those who carry them haven’t just relegated women to second-class citizenship, they have also led to the denial of lifesaving care in case after case. In‌ affidavits, Ohio health care providers reported having to comfort a sobbing cancer patient who was refused an abortion, and seeing at least three patients who threatened to commit suicide after being denied abortions.In August, a woman in Texas who was denied an abortion for an unviable pregnancy ended up in the intensive care unit with sepsis. Another Texas woman, pregnant and in failing health, was recently told she shouldn’t come back unless she had a condition as severe as liver failure or stroke. A woman in Wisconsin was left bleeding for more than 10 days after an incomplete miscarriage just days after the Supreme Court’s decision; a doctor ‌in Texas was told not to treat an ectopic pregnancy until it ruptured.And then there are the stories of women forced to endure doomed pregnancies. Nancy Davis, a mother of three in Louisiana, ‌was denied an abortion even though her fetus was missing part of its head. Chelsea Stovall in Arkansas, who was 19 weeks pregnant when she found out that her daughter wouldn’t survive, was also refused treatment. After traveling 400 miles to get an abortion, she told a local reporter, “I should be able to say goodbye to her where I want to.”Those are just the adults. ‌This summer, Republicans insisted the story of a raped and pregnant 10-year-old in Ohio‌ was a hoax, and later tried to paint the girl’s experience as a tragic anomaly. In fact dozens of girls in Ohio 14 years old and under had abortions in 2021. In neighboring Kentucky, more than a dozen children aged 14 or younger had abortions last year; two 9-year-olds needed abortions in the past few years. These are victimized children who will now be forced to carry pregnancies, perilous for their small bodies, or leave their home state for care.In other words: real people, across the country, are enduring real suffering. All of which was predictable and preventable.In response to the onslaught of post-Roe horror stories, Republican legislators and abortion opponents have claimed that physicians are misreading the laws and failing their patients as a result. It’s a clever move, attacking those who make them look the worst: doctors who see the devastating impact of abortion bans up close, every day. But conservatives have been planning for the end of Roe for decades, and their laws were written with careful consideration.It isn’t just obstetricians and fertility doctors who fear prosecution, but many types of physicians. At an annual meeting of pulmonologists, a special session was held on how to avoid breaking the law while caring for lung disease patients they may have to advise on ending dangerous pregnancies. Instead of being able to singularly focus on helping sick people get well, these doctors have to worry that doing their job could get them arrested.The impact of abortion bans goes far beyond horrific individual stories; they’ve had a cascading effect into countless areas of Americans’ lives. I spoke to a young woman struggling with infertility in Tennessee, for example, whose state representative told her that I.V.F. doctors could be prosecuted under the abortion ban there for discarding unused embryos (a common part of the I.V.F. process). “We just want to be parents,” she told me.Abortion bans have also put birth control access in danger. For years, conservative legislators and organizations laid the groundwork to falsely characterize some forms of contraception as abortifacients. This distortion has already started to hurt women in states with abortion bans: Because of the law’s ambiguity in Missouri, a chain of hospitals there briefly stopped providing emergency contraception, with a spokesperson explaining, “We simply cannot put our clinicians in a position that might result in criminal prosecution.”At the University of Idaho, the legal counsel advised it against providing students with birth control in light of the state’s abortion ban. Staff members could give out condoms, the guidance said, but only to prevent sexually transmitted infections, not “for purposes of birth control.” Employees were told that even speaking in support of abortion could put them in danger of being arrested and banned from future state employment.Republicans’ abortion laws have even led to a crisis in care in states where abortion is legal. Doctors are so overwhelmed with patients from other states that some clinics have weekslong waiting lists, which, along with the logistical hurdles out-of-state patients face, has led to later abortions — which Republicans claim to oppose. ‌Writing about abortion every day feels like drowning, but what keeps me up at night is knowing that, by and large, we are hearing only from the women who felt comfortable enough going to the media. For every one story shared, there are hundreds or thousands more that we will never know about.Doctors who might otherwise speak up are also being silenced, warned by their employers’ PR and legal teams not to share stories of how abortion bans have affected their work and are hurting women.As Americans head into midterm elections, they need to consider not what Republicans say about abortion — but what they do, and what their laws have already done.Conservatives have claimed that they are not interested in targeting individual women. But in the past year, a teenager in Nebraska who authorities say had an illegal abortion is awaiting trial for concealing a death, and an Alabama county jail reportedly kept pregnant women in detention in an effort to “protect” their unborn fetuses from possible drug exposure.Republicans said women’s lives and health would be protected. They very clearly haven’t been. They said they’d make allowances for sexual assault victims, but states with rape and incest exceptions have language so narrow and vague that they’re near impossible to use.They said that women’s lives wouldn’t meaningfully change — but women are suffering, every single day.Republicans running for office have tried to sidestep the issue, dismissing it as unimportant or deleting any mention of abortion from their websites, knowing how unpopular bans have become.Voters should remember that none of this is accidental. All of this is misery, and hurt is by design. This alone should motivate voters to protect abortion rights.Jessica Valenti is the author of “Sex Object” and publishes a newsletter in which she writes about abortion every day.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More