Pro-choice Republicans are 'fighting for political survival' in competitive swing districts: report

Pro-choice Republicans aren’t extinct, but at a time when the Trumpified GOP keeps moving further and further to the right, they aren’t easy to find. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge and former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman are no longer in office, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker isn’t seeking reelection, and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine — who has long promoted herself as one of the GOP’s defenders of abortion rights — has drawn a great deal of criticism from Democrats for voting to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh and others on the U.S. Supreme Court who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The pro-choice Republicans who are fighting for their political survival in 2022 aren’t necessarily people being targeted by far-right Christian fundamentalists in red states. According to Politico’s Alice Miranda Ollstein, some of them are Republicans in swing states or swing districts who — despite their pro-choice records — find themselves being attacked by Democrats who are angry with Republicans in general following Roe’s demise and the High Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

One such pro-choice Republican is Rep. Todd Stephens, who serves in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives via the Philadelphia suburbs and is seeking reelection in the 2022 midterms.

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“Pennsylvania lawmaker Todd Stephens is the kind of Republican who has always counted on support from Democrats to help win his seat in the statehouse,” Ollstein explains in an article published by Politico on October 20. “But as he campaigns house to house in the Philadelphia suburb that he’s represented for more than a decade, one of the state’s last remaining Republicans who favors abortion rights is finding that his party’s record often looms larger than his own.”

Following the Dobbs decision, many Democratic strategists are arguing that Republicans in general can’t be trusted on abortion — even those who describe themselves as pro-choice.

“That the Pennsylvania Democratic Party’s bid to unseat Stephens, a 12-year incumbent in a Philadelphia suburb, has focused squarely on abortion illustrates just how much the fall of Roe has upended political conventions,” Ollstein reports. “As the number of states with near-total abortion bans continues to climb four months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Democrats across the country are arguing that even Republicans who support abortion rights shouldn’t be trusted in state or federal office — forcing candidates like Stephens to distance themselves from their party for their own political survival.”

Melissa Cerrato, Stephens’ Democratic challenger in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania outside Philadelphia, is arguing that he is “too passive” on the abortion issue and merely pays “lip service” to the issue.

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Stephens told Politico, “I vote my district, not my party. And I hope my fellow Republicans will take a look at what’s going on across Pennsylvania and around the country on this issue and recognize that some of the bills that they’ve introduced are extreme and dangerous for women.”

Post-Roe, Ollstein observes, abortion has become more of a “party-line” issue than it was in the past.

“In Pennsylvania — where swing districts like Stephens’ have repeatedly helped decide state and national elections — abortion has not always been a party-line issue,” Ollstein notes. “Scranton native Joe Biden, for example, was long one of the Democratic Party’s loudest anti-abortion voices, and the late Democratic Gov. Robert Casey, Sr. pushed for several restrictions on the procedure while in office in the late 1980s. And Republican lawmakers such as Stephens and officials including former Gov. Tom Ridge, the late Sen. Arlen Specter, and former Auditor General and gubernatorial candidate Barbara Hafer, have been vocal supporters of abortion rights.”

Ollstein adds, “While their ranks have dwindled over the decades in Pennsylvania and across the country, some prominent Republicans running for reelection this year — including New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who introduced a bill to codify Roe — are expected to hold their seats despite bucking a hardening party line on abortion.”

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