The NPR Politics Podcast - It Happened Again: Abortion Access Propels Dems To Huge Win

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

Liberal Janet Protasiewicz won her election to the Wisconsin State Supreme Court by more than 11 percent. The rout is the latest example of a powerful national trend: voters strongly support Democratic-backed candidates on abortion access issues.This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, political correspondent Kelsey Snell, and White House correspondent Tamara Keith.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It is edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Devin Speak.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Giveaway: npr.org/politicsplusgiveaway Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Kelsey in Oregon, Wisconsin. I just cast my ballot in the Wisconsin State Supreme Court race. This podcast was recorded at 1116 a.m. on Wednesday, April 5th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but hopefully I'm done being inundated by political messaging. Enjoy the show. Kelsey talking about politics timely for this episode. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover politics. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And before we get started, Kelsey, welcome back to the pod. You've returned from the mom trenches.

I have. I am back and I'm excited to be talking about Midwestern politics, which is, you know, my longtime love. I think we're all still in the mom trenches. You never really leave the mom trenches. So former President Trump appeared in court on Tuesday, and it captured the national media attention and the attention of the nation. But it was also a significant day in politics for the Democratic Party. The party's progressive wing won in a contentious Wisconsin judicial race, although that was nominally a nonpartisan race, as well as an intra-party fight in the Chicago mayor's race. Tam, the race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court ended up the most expensive judicial

race in American history, which tells you how the two parties saw this as a high-stakes contest. Tell us more. Who won and what do you think it means? Yeah, there was money pouring in from way outside of the state of Wisconsin. And the candidate who was aligned with the Democratic Party and Democratic values said openly that she was pro-choice, that she supported abortion rights, that she would consider revisiting the state's congressional district lines and state district lines that have been highly controversial. That candidate, Janet Protasewicz, won and not by a little bit. She won by more than 10 points, defeating Daniel Kelly, who was more aligned with Republicans, campaigned at GOP headquarters and had connections to former President Trump's efforts to overturn the election results in 2020. We need to just stick with abortion as an issue in this race, I think, in particular, because it seemed to be such a central focus of the race. I read a

fascinating data point that Protusewitz spent a third of her ad dollars focusing on the issue of abortion. You know, in 2022, it resonated with voters in a way that I think some voters weren't even anticipating. Clearly remains an issue. I mean, Tam, are Democrats seeing this race as abortion as an issue that they should continue to campaign on and campaign on hard going into 2024? Let me just tell you, as I was in Wisconsin right before the election, I went and interviewed voters. Now, admittedly, I was interviewing voters at a student union at the University of Wisconsin. So, you know, reliably, yes, turnout was quite high in reliably Democratic parts of the state. That's how you win. And what I heard again and again and again was that abortion was a very important, motivating issue.

And it was particularly motivating in this race because after the Dobbs decision, something called the 1849 law kicked in, which is a ban on abortion in the state. And that is inevitably going to come before the state Supreme Court. And it effectively outlaws abortion in the state. And that is inevitably going to come before the state Supreme Court. And it effectively outlaws abortion in the state right now. Yes. And that means that abortion is an incredibly live issue in the state of Wisconsin. And the reality is it's an incredibly live issue in many states in the United States. And, you know, before Dobbs, it was sort of abstract, right? Like, sure, it's there. Republicans were motivated by it because they wanted to change the precedent. They wanted to change the law of the land. But Democrats were just like, you know, they had their rights

protected and they didn't see it as this life- changing issue. Well, now that something has been taken away all over the country, it is a motivating issue for voters. And even if people say their top issue is the economy or they're not happy about the economy, they're not happy about this or that. The thing that they, it seems, care about most if they support abortion rights, the thing that makes them go to the polls is abortion. Yeah. I mean, Kelsey, Wisconsin is fascinating, too, because it's part of a bigger picture political path for Democrats, right?

It was it's a state that's part of the so-called blue wall, the states that had been reliably voting Democratic and presidential elections for a generation. Trump made history in Wisconsin when he won it in 2016. Where does it exist right now in the political ecosystem, especially if you take Tuesday's election into account? It's important, I think, for Democrats on two levels. First is obviously the presidential level. This is a state where they need to win. They need to kind of keep their voters engaged there. But it's also important to them because they have a critical Senate race there. Tammy Baldwin, the Democrat, is up for re-election. And this is a top target for Senate Republicans. They think that they can flip the state. So this

will be a place where, you know, we saw a lot of money being poured into this judicial race. You can expect that if this is just the tip of the iceberg, right, we're going to see so much money and so much time spent in Wisconsin over the next year and a half. So I want to ask you, last fall, there was also a Senate race. It pitted a more progressive Democrat named Mandela Barnes against the incumbent Ron Johnson, who's a very conservative Republican. And Ron Johnson won. He won by about one point. It was a close race, but he won. And now, not even a full year later, you have Janet Protusewitz winning by more than 10 points. So what gives? I think structurally, there's a couple things. It's always harder to beat an incumbent than it

is to win an open seat race, which is what Tuesday's race was. I think in a state like Wisconsin, you know, there's always probably going to be a race element to some of these elections. Mandela Barnes was a black man. He ran very hard to the left. And I think that that could have been a factor as well. So it's hard to say. One thing that I'm also curious about Wisconsin is it's got a lot of working class voters, right? Like this is a type of voter that had been in the Democratic Party for a long time, have increasingly been moving closer to the Donald Trump wing of the party, but also a group of voters that supports abortion rights, especially blue collar women. And if you're talking about a swing voter on an issue, there's a lot of blue collar women who do not want abortion bans. And in a state like Wisconsin, that could be a really potent political force. And I think that's something we're probably going to hear a lot more about going into 2024. Tim, I also wonder if you think that you see this race as possibly a new front in sort of the war of judicial elections. The Democratic Party hadn't really focused on judicial races with the same level of intensity that Republicans had, certainly in the pre-Dobbs era. And it seems like

we might be entering a new chapter here for the Democratic Party. Now, not every state has judicial races. Many justices in many states are appointed, but there are states with elected judges. And Wisconsin is one of them. And in the past, candidates that were aligned with Democrats for judicial positions in the state of Wisconsin didn't really like shout that from the rooftops. They, you know, they just ran as like, I'm going to be a carefully considered judge. And then something changed. Well, not just in Wisconsin. That's generally how judicial races have gone.

In this case, it's very clear that the veil was off. Like everybody knew exactly where Janet Protasewicz stood when they went to vote for her. And in a way, that means people are able to make more informed decisions. But also it does sort of change, I think, the way people view the judiciary, though the fact is from the Supreme Court on down, I think the way people view the judiciary has changed a lot in the last 20 to 25 years. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk about the Chicago mayor's race when we're back. And also on Tuesday, Democrat Brandon Johnson beat Democrat Paul Vallis in a runoff election to become the next mayor of Chicago. He'll be sworn in May 15th.

Kelsey, this race had it all, especially within the Democratic Party. It had race politics, crime politics, union politics. You know, Johnson seemed to represent a more progressive wing of the party, Vallis the more centrist wing, and the progressive wing won out. So how do you do it? Just to give people a little bit of background, Brandon Johnson is a 47-year-old former public school teacher and union organizer who lives on the city's west side. He also is a black man. And Paul Vallis is a 69-year-old white man who has lived off and on in the city and worked as the CEO of Chicago Public Schools during a time when there was a lot of controversy around the time when he was a CEO. Now, this is, like you said, a really interesting race because it did kind of cover a whole range of the things that Democrats are fighting about in and amongst themselves.

Johnson made this race a lot about public safety and a broader approach to solving problems across the city that he saw as education and housing access and mitigating crime through programs that get people to work instead of out on the streets, whereas Paul Vallis was very clear he wanted more cops. And that was the big focus for a lot of voters towards the end was, I mean, Vallis was running an ad that specifically said, I will put more cops on the streets and on the trains. You know, it was fascinating to me because unions are still pretty powerful in big city politics, especially in a city like Chicago. And you had the cops unions behind Vallis and the teachers unions behind Johnson. And that seems like such a power clash. And the

teachers unions won. They did. And this is also coming as the Chicago teachers union is heading into new contract negotiations. So that played into it. You know, Johnson had a rally last week on Thursday with Bernie Sanders as his opening act and Randy Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers. They were his opening acts at a huge rally at the University of Chicago. So it kind of gives you a sense of how much attention this was getting, not just among Democrats in Chicago, but in the country as a whole. Tim, this is a bit of a confusing outcome, right? Because on the one hand, we have this dialogue happening in Washington that Democrats are worried about, you know, voters are leaving the party over crime. President Biden

basically sided with Republicans recently in a fight to overturn a D.C. crime bill passed by a progressive council. And yet you have the progressive candidate win in a Democratic city facing a whole lot of crime issues. So what does that tell you about how salient crime is as an issue? Well, Biden also sided with the D.C. mayor. So these things are very nuanced arguments. And there is this other element, which is, you know, Chicago, the city of Chicago is not all of America. The city of Chicago has not had a Republican mayor since 1931. It was a completely different party. So, you know, President Biden and national Democrats are or even statewide elected Democrats like a Dick Durbin in Illinois are speaking to a broader audience than a candidate for mayor in the city of Chicago. And what I will say is that in my reporting over the years, I have found vastly more intense concern about crime in the cities, crime in Chicago, coming from people in like the

suburbs of Milwaukee than from people inside the actual cities themselves. You know, and this is actually something that came up in my reporting is that, you know, Democrats are wary of the Republican attack and using Chicago as an example for the failure of cities run by Democrats writ large. Regardless of who they're talking to, they're using Chicago as an example. So they're not necessarily campaigning to Chicagoans about crime in Chicago. They could be campaigning to, you know, somebody in Mississippi about the way Democrats are running cities because of Chicago. Kelsey, this was a relatively low turnout election. And there's some interesting data about who turned out. So who did show up? And what I thought was really fascinating is that more than 62% of the vote was over 45. And on its face, one would have thought that that would have benefited Vallis, right? Because he was kind of tailoring this message more to what we would consider an older voter. But that's not

how this turned out. And I'm going to be spending some time over the next couple weeks just looking into where Johnson's appeal really met people and how he got such a large percentage. All right. I think that's going to be it for us today. We'll be back in your feeds tomorrow. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover politics. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.