Political partisans on all sides often think they have found the single issue that will propel them to victory. But things in the real world of politics seldom work out so neatly.
Democrats think they have a winning issue in abortion, holding up their recent victory in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race as an example. Here, in a purple swing state with an overwhelmingly Republican state legislature, voters put into office the judicial candidate who specifically vowed to overturn the state’s pre-Roe abortion ban.
But Politico has published an analysis of the actual tactics that Wisconsin Democrats used to defeat the conservative judge. The article by Zach Montellaros is entitled Surprise lesson from Wisconsin: Abortion may not be panacea for Dems with the deck “Inside the media strategy that delivered a blowout win in Wisconsin.”
He quoted the top aides to Justice-elect Janet Protasiewicz’s campaign who “said that running on abortion doesn’t work without tying it to a larger message. They argued that the candidates’ own values matter when making abortion an issue. So too do the legislation or laws at stake.”
“We were careful to create a narrative early on about who Janet was, what was at stake in this election and who Dan Kelly was, and abortion fit within that,” Guarasci said. “Our paid media ends with ‘he’s an extremist that doesn’t care about us.’ Everything related back to that.”
Montellaros concludes,
The insights from Protasiewicz’s campaign team offers a note of caution — and a roadmap — to Democrats who think abortion has transformed the electoral landscape in their favor. Broadly speaking, the issue plays in their favor, but the experience in Wisconsin suggests that it will take a nuanced strategy to fully reap the political benefits.
Voters are a varied group. One size doesn’t fit all. So the Democrats stressed abortion in Madison, Milwaukee, and the suburbs. But in Green Bay, which is heavily Catholic and Lutheran, the campaign operatives reasoned that stressing abortion would drive voters to their opponent Dan Kelly. So they ran ads that stressed how Dan Kelly was an “extremist.”
In places with crime problems–which Republicans assumed would be their cause–Democrats co-opted the issue. They pushed the fact that Protasiewicz had experience as a prosecutor, whereas Kelly was a private attorney who never handled a criminal case. In Democrats’ TV ads, over 60% were about crime, while only 35% mentioned abortion.
The Democrats didn’t write off a single constituency. “The campaign made an effort to reach voters beyond Democratic diehards. Guarasci said it was important to reach all voters where they were, from expansive broadcast buys to even advertising on conservative radio.”
When the votes were cast, the Democrat beat the Republican 55.5% to 44.5%.
Here is the lesson that Badger State Democrats offered to their peers nationally:
The advice that Protasiewicz team gave to Democrats heading into 2024 was, ultimately, not to be afraid to go after Republicans as too extreme — and not just on abortion. Democrats win, they said, when they establish an overarching media strategy about tying the campaign to a fight against extremism.
“The extremism of the right is rejected by American voters writ large,” said Guarasci. “Don’t be afraid to point out this and label it an extremist agenda.”
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