Vote Harder is an op-ed column by Rebecca Fishbein digging into all things election 2024.
Democrats had their first major election victory of 2024 on February 13, in the special election for New York’s Third Congressional District. Democrat Tom Suozzi beat Republican Mazi Pilip by a healthy margin — 53.9 percent to 46.1 percent, as of Wednesday evening. His win flipped the district, giving House Republicans a razor-thin six seat majority and prompting a slew of headlines about how this particular election boded for November’s big presidential showdown.
This closely-watched race was not precisely a bellwether for 2024, since conditions were somewhat unusual. The vacant seat was previously held by George Santos, the disgraced former Congressmember who lied about everything from his resume to his religion to his mother being a survivor of the 9/11 attacks, and who was recently expelled from the House after being indicted on charges related to campaign violations, and money laundering, and identity theft, among other charges. Santos flipped that seat in 2022; before him, NY-03 was represented by Suozzi, who after three terms chose not to seek re-election in 2022 so he could embark on a failed primary run for New York State governor.
NY-03 voters were choosing between a longtime elected member they were familiar with and an unknown quantity from the party that just burned them, so Suozzi’s re-election wasn’t necessarily a huge surprise, though it was still a welcome outcome. But there was one particularly striking thing about the NY-03 race: once again, the Democratic candidate focused on abortion.
Suozzi, a centrist who claims he’s more conservative than 90 percent of Democrats, had declined to support the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which largely prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion, while in office. In this race, he was more vocal about his support for reproductive rights. Meanwhile, Pilip, a registered Democrat, held office as Nassau County legislator as a Republican and voted for Trump in 2020, gave muddled answers on her stance on abortion in a recent debate with Suozzi. Democrats painted Pilip as the anti-abortion candidate, running ads with her referring to herself as “pro-life” and accusing her of wanting to ban abortion in all cases.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Abortion is still on the ballot in 2024. The Supreme Court has agreed to revisit a case hinged on access to the abortion pill mifepristone, which could hamper access to the pill even in states where abortion is legal. If Donald Trump is elected again in 2024, anti-choice organizations are reportedly already working on plans to effectively ban abortion nationwide using the long inactive 19th century Comstock Act, which would federally criminalize sending, mailing or receiving any “drug, medicine, article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.” The Senate is projected to flip to the Republicans in November, and while it doesn’t appear that the fifteen-week national abortion ban Lindsay Graham introduced in 2022 is going anywhere right now, who knows what will happen when the GOP is back in power. Indeed, according to the New York Times, Trump has been quietly telling people he supports a national 16-week abortion ban.
Abortion wasn’t the main tipping point in this election: Suozzi ran on border security and hammered Pilip for her party’s scuttling of the bipartisan border bill earlier this month, which likely helped him in a more conservative district concerned about New York’s new influx of migrants. But there’s no doubt that abortion is a winning issue for Democrats. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, voters in blue, red and swing states have supported pro-choice measures and elected candidates who promise to protect reproductive rights. Special elections have proven particularly fruitful for abortion advocates. On the same day as the NY-03 race, Democrat Jim Prokopiak won a special election for a state House seat in Pennsylvania’s Lower Bucks County, keeping his party’s state House majority by promising to protect abortion access.
“What I heard from voters is that Bucks County residents need help supporting their families, want control over their own bodies, and ensure they have the ability to chart their own paths in life,” Prokopiak said in a statement shortly after the results came in on Tuesday.
The Democrats need to keep running on abortion — they need to unapologetically promise to restore and protect reproductive rights. This is an all-in winning issue. But President Joe Biden’s record on abortion has not historically been strong. He has repeatedly said that though he supports Roe v. Wade, as a Catholic, he himself is “not big on abortion,” though there are plenty of Catholics who support reproductive choice despite the church’s stance. As a U.S. Senator in the 1970s and ‘80s, for instance, he voted repeatedly to strip federal abortion funding and prohibit federal workers from using their health insurance to get abortions. Sure, that was many years ago and his policies have publically evolved, but as recently as 2022, during his State of the Union address, with Roe v. Wade already on the chopping block, he did not say the word “abortion” once.
Biden still rarely mentions abortion — although, a few weeks ago, at a fundraiser on the Upper West Side, he did bring it up, reportedly saying, “I’m a practicing Catholic. I don’t want abortion on demand but I thought Roe v. Wade was right.” I guess he at least said the word, but as Slate points out, the concept of “abortion on demand” is a right-wing talking point that dismisses the fact that abortion is essential, often lifesaving healthcare that people should have access to when they need it. This is not the strong stance on reproductive rights we’re looking for right now.
In an election year where full-throated support of reproductive rights is the winning issue — when the likely Republican nominee has taken responsibility for overturning Roe, and the Democrat running for re-election is taking hits on everything from his age to the economy to his handling of the Israel-Hamas war — there is no room for waffling, ambiguity, or personal ambivalence. Democrats would do well to remember this, and craft their 2024 messaging accordingly.
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