“The only issue that Democrats are running on is abortion,” David Rexrode, the executive director of Youngkin’s Spirit of Virginia PAC, said in an interview at the organization’s offices in Richmond earlier this month. “And so since they’re running attack ads on abortion, we’re going to respond on abortion.”
Republicans’ goal is to neutralize Democrats’ most powerful line of attack, even while focusing on topics like crime and the economy to try to win. If successful, it could provide a blueprint for a party that has struggled electorally since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
It was a mistake to cede the abortion issue to Democrats, Rexrode said. In just about every election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Democrats have overperformed expectations, while Republicans largely looked to deflect and change the subject. But in a slate of hypercompetitive legislative races that will be decided next month, Youngkin’s political operation has adopted a messaging strategy on abortion that is almost polar opposite to what most Republicans tried in last year’s midterms.
“For the first time in a long time, our candidates are being very focused on articulating the extreme position of where the Democrats are,” Rexrode said. “That wasn’t the case in 2022.”
There is no guarantee the gambit will work: Democrats have run hard on abortion rights since the Supreme Court ruled, and a year of elections have shown the depths of voters’ anger over abortion has largely been directed at Republicans. Democrats in Virginia dismiss the GOP effort, arguing that voters have shown over and over again that Republicans can’t be trusted on abortion.
It’s a big bet from Youngkin’s operation. And should Virginia Republicans capture both legislative chambers next month, it could become a model for the party and bolster Youngkin’s bid to project himself as a future leader of the GOP.
The group launched a statewide ad this week that says Democrats are spreading “disinformation” about abortion. “Virginia Republicans support a reasonable 15-week limit with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother,” the ad’s narrator says.
The ad goes on to assert that Democrats don’t support any sort of limit on the procedure, ending with the kicker: “Reasonable limits or no limits at all? That’s the truth.” (Virginia’s current law allows the procedure through the second trimester of pregnancy, and in rare cases in the third trimester if three doctors find that the woman’s health is at risk.)
The group says it will put the money into TV buys and digital ads to run it through Election Day on Nov. 7.
“In ’22, most of our candidates across the country did not message on the post-Dobbs environment, they in most states just didn’t talk about it,” said Rexrode, who was the executive director of the Republican Governors Association at the time. “They allowed millions of dollars to be spent without any counter-messaging.”
Still, Republicans’ biggest attacks are over other issues. While they are attempting to disarm Democrats over abortion, Virginia Republicans have continued to hammer messages about crime and the economy.
Crime has remained the number one issue Republicans have talked about in advertising, according to data from the ad tracker AdImpact, with the GOP running nearly three times as many television ads that mention crime compared with abortion since the primaries.
Both parties are seeking any edge to win both legislative chambers next month, and Democrats have once again made abortion their top issue by far. Democrats currently have a narrow majority in the state Senate, while Republicans have a slim state House majority — one they won off Youngkin’s coattails in 2021, despite Democrats’ then-theoretical warnings at the time about the looming fall of Roe.
A University of Mary Washington survey last month found that 40 percent of people said they’d prefer a Democratic majority in the Legislature, and 37 percent a Republican one.
Republicans argue Virginians are on their side: The recent ad barrage cites the Mary Washington survey saying 69 percent support “some limits on abortion.” (That number includes those who said they believe abortion should be “legal in most cases.”)
Democrats, meanwhile, quickly dismissed Youngkin’s efforts as doomed to fail. The past year’s worth of elections, they say, shows how abortion remains a winning issue for Democrats — and no amount of counter-messaging will change that.
“I think they think that it’s the silver bullet here,” said Matt Calderon, the campaigns director for Virginia Senate Democrats. “I do know that the Republicans don’t have a lot of trust on the issue of abortion with voters. And they can say all they want, but they’ve lost credibility.”
Democrats rode a wave of abortion attacks to better than expected midterm results and a series of 2023 special elections in which they have outperformed President Joe Biden’s 2020 margins. One of those was in Virginia: Democrat Aaron Rouse flipped a state Senate seat in January that both anti-abortion and pro-abortion rights groups flooded with cash.
Virginia Democrats point to a different read of the polling: While the ad frames voters who said abortion should be “legal in most cases” as supporting limits, Democrats point out that a majority of Virginians support the procedure being legal in most or all cases. And a majority of voters said the Supreme Court decision will be a “major factor” in deciding their vote for the legislative elections in the Mary Washington survey.
Democrats across the country continue to lean heavily on abortion in ad messaging this year. That’s especially true in Virginia: It is easily Democrats’ most advertised topic, according to AdImpact data, more than double the second most popular issue, education.
Democrats argue Republicans are being duplicitous and would look to push a shorter ban than 15 weeks if they take control.
“Abortion is absolutely on the ballot this year,” Amy Friedman, the executive director of the Virginia state House Democratic Caucus. “We know they want an abortion ban. And we know that Virginians and Americans don’t.”