Reproductive Rights

“They Never Showed Up”: How Democrats Lost the Red-State Fight for Abortion Rights

The recent fusillade of anti-abortion bills is the direct result of decades of Republican scheming—and Democratic neglect. “I can assure you that $100,000 in Alabama in 2018 would’ve gone so far,” says one Democratic donor, “instead of giving Beto more money than he knew what to do with.”

By Amanda Litman

May 20, 2019

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In many ways, the recent fusillade of Republican anti-abortion legislation—a complete ban in Alabama; “heartbeat bills” in Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Missouri; and a similar measure in Michigan—represents a final domino falling into place. These bills are the direct result of decades of Republican investment to seize control of state politics. It’s a strategy that, as the director of Run for Something, an organization that recruits candidates for local office, I’ve watched unfold firsthand.

Part of the blame, of course, lies with Democrats, who too often focus their efforts nationally, neglecting state and local races. “I know that Democrats have to make decisions. We don’t have the same kind of deep pockets as Republicans,” an Alabama native and Democratic donor vented to me. “But I can assure you that $100,000 in Alabama in 2018 would’ve gone so far, instead of the donor class giving Beto [O’Rourke] more money than he knew what to do with.”

As a result of this failure to invest, candidate recruitment—a high-cost, low-yield effort that takes time, relationship building, and a whole lot of cajoling for no guaranteed win—has dwindled to a trickle. (That’s one of the reasons Run for Something is the first of its kind: a local candidate-recruitment organization working at a national scale is really hard to pull off.) For decades, it’s been an uphill battle to get national Democratic organizations and donors to invest time and money in places that have been written off as red states. In 2016, nearly half of all state legislative races went uncontested. In 2018, a wave year with record numbers of candidates, that number was a still-disappointing 33 percent.

“I think Democrats have trouble thinking longer term, so the idea of investing to capacity-build when you’re unlikely to win the immediate next cycle is at odds with the way they historically approach elections,” Elizabeth Spiers, an Alabama native and founder of political strategy firm the Insurrection, told me. “I was told over and over again that there was no path to victory, so there would be no funding. And when you don’t have funding, no path to victory is a certainty.”

While Democrats have largely stayed on the sidelines, the G.O.P. has made no secret of its strategy to win majorities in state legislatures in order to re-draw state and federal districts in their favor. In 2010, a re-districting year, the Republican State Leadership Committee launched project REDMAP to invest in specific local races in order to flip statehouse control to Republicans. In all, the G.O.P. raised $30 million to target 107 seats in 16 states in the 2009-2010 electoral cycle. For context, the average State House race in that same period cost anywhere from $677 in New Hampshire to more than $350,000 in California. In the grand scheme of political spending, that’s a pretty good deal.

Republicans spent quickly and carefully, dropping almost $1 million in Pennsylvania to target three State House seats, flipping the Pennsylvania State House. They dropped another $1 million or so in Ohio to flip five State House seats. They did the same in New York, Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and, most relevantly, Alabama, where the state legislature flipped to Republican control for the first time in 136 years, and Republicans won every statewide office, including electing former lieutenant governor Kay Ivey. (You know, the Kay Ivey who just signed that horrific abortion bill into law.) After winning those chambers and some 700 state legislative seats nationwide, Republicans re-drew state legislative maps for 193of the 435 seats in Congress, using computer programs to place voters in districts block by block.

This re-districting ensured Republicans would be insulated from the votes of their constituents, essentially locking their majorities in place and discouraging any potential Democratic challenger. And it had tangible effects: in 2018, only about 54 percent of the Republicans in the Alabama State Senate and 60 percent of the Republicans in the Alabama State House had any competition. Democrats lost their chance at winning a majority before a single vote was cast.

David Daley—who’s literally written the book on gerrymandering in his aptly titled best-seller, Ratf**ked—explains how it worked in Georgia: Brian Kemp took the Georgia governor’s mansion with just 50.2 percent of the vote, “but Republicans hold a 30-seat advantage in the State House and nearly a super-majority in the State Senate.” Gerrymandering has created a government that’s no longer reflective of the people. For instance, there isn’t a single state where support for an abortion ban reaches even 25 percent. Even in Georgia, 70 percent of voters want to keep Roe v. Wade in place.

But public opinion doesn’t matter. The machine will keep on running. Republicans will keep passing draconian laws with the explicit goal of getting a yes-or-no vote on abortion to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, after an 18-month stint of showing up and knocking on doors in a midterm election, Democrats are back to the same old way of doing business, with nearly all the money and attention going toward presidential politics. When it comes to abortion, however, it doesn’t much matter who sits in the Oval Office. As long as Republicans are in charge, state legislatures will continue to screw over women. If Democrats don’t retake state chambers in 2020, another re-districting year, the G.O.P. will re-draw districts in their favor, win back the House in 2022, and devastate any chance of progressive governing in Washington.

The solution, then, is to flood the zone. Run for Something has worked with hundreds of candidates across the country, and I’ve heard thousands of stories about their experiences. A candidate challenging a Virginia incumbent who’d been in office for decades told me how a Republican voter told him in a deep Southern twang that he’d never met a Democrat asking for his vote—he didn’t even know “you people” existed in that part of town. A young woman running in a Chicago suburb told me she knocked on the door of a Republican voter who said he’d never met a single candidate running for office. Democrats assumed he was a lost cause, so they never showed up. Republicans assumed his support was guaranteed, so they didn’t either. If there’s a weakness in the G.O.P. machine, it’s this presumption. To exploit it, Democrats will need to broaden their strategy far beyond 2020.

Amanda Litman is the co-founder and executive director of Run for Something, a PAC that recruits and supports young, diverse progressives running for down-ballot office—since 2017, they’ve elected more than 200 people across the country. She’s also the author of Run for Something: A Real Talk Guide to Fixing the System Yourself, published by Simon & Schuster in 2017.