WASHINGTON — Sen. Mitch McConnell’s suggestion that Republicans could pursue federal legislation to ban abortion everywhere has supplied potent political ammunition to Democrats’ midterm campaign strategy.
The Kentuckian’s brief comments – made during an interview with USA Today in May, before the overturning of Roe v. Wade – are now being featured in television advertising and messaging of Democratic candidates across the country.
“Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says a national ban on abortion is possible,” blares a new commercial being run by the Democratic National Committee that clips from TV news accounts.
“Republicans aren’t stopping at overturning Roe,” concludes the advertisement that began airing last week.
In New Hampshire, Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, who is running for a second term, has fully integrated McConnell into her messaging for weeks.
“It’s going to be critically important this fall for people to understand that Mitch McConnell and my opponents want to pass a national abortion ban,” Hassan told Fox News over the holiday weekend.
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down the 49-year legal precedent, Hassan quickly produced her own 30-second television spot that advanced the same message: “This decision catapults us backwards. And there are politicians like Mitch McConnell who’ve made it clear that their objective is to ban abortion nationwide.”
On the other side of the country in Nevada, another first-term female Democratic incumbent is similarly wielding McConnell’s words against her Republican opponent.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is dubbing a national abortion ban as central to the “Laxalt-McConnell agenda,” referring to Adam Laxalt, a former state attorney general who clinched the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in June.
Cortez Masto also placed McConnell in a campaign video about Laxalt’s anti-abortion stance in Nevada, where a poll last fall showed 69% of voters identify as “pro-choice.”
“Adam Laxalt is an automatic vote for Mitch McConnell’s federal abortion ban that would restrict women’s reproductive freedoms across Nevada,” said Cortez Masto campaign spokesperson Sigalle Reshef.
While McConnell welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe, calling it “courageous and correct,” he clearly wants the central themes of his campaign to return to the Senate majority to be focused on inflation, the crime epidemic and general dissatisfaction with the Biden administration.
During a stop in Florence last week, he intimated an abortion ban would not be a priority if he returns as Senate majority leader next January.
Speaking to reporters after a visit to a local rotary club, McConnell conveyed that even if an outright ban made it through a Republican-led House, the Senate couldn’t muster the votes.
“It takes 60 votes in the Senate for either side to prevail on this issue,” McConnell said, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer. “So I think the democratic process on this issue is going to work out at the state level.”
“If McConnell says he won’t back a national abortion ban it’s because of the backlash he is seeing from the hyper conservative Supreme Court he helped create,” said Nicole Erwin, Spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates in Kentucky. “McConnell has miscalculated the consequences of this severe invasion of privacy and government overreach.”
Still, distrust of McConnell runs deep in the veins of Democrats, leaving some to believe that his election year rhetoric can’t be trusted once he regains power.
“He and, like, his Federalist Society pals … they’ve been laying the groundwork for this for like 30 years,” said Alyssa Mastromonaco, a former deputy chief of staff in President Barack Obama’s White House, on The Recount podcast. “Mitch McConnell, if he is Senate majority leader, is going to do whatever he can do, to make sure that something, for example, like abortion, is nationally banned.”
In the past, McConnell has contemplated legislating “a right to life of the unborn” if Democrats chose to eliminate the filibuster rule that requires 60 to pass major legislation.
But Max Berger, a progressive activist who worked for Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign, said it is McConnell who is more likely to quash the filibuster if Republicans reclaim the majority.
“It’s hard to imagine a more powerful issue to motivate progressive voters, but it’s also important Democrats show they’re fighting as hard as they can,” Berger said of the potency of shrinking abortion rights.
A court temporarily blocked Kentucky’s ban on abortion, which took effect on June 24, the day the constitutional right for a woman to end her pregnancy was eliminated. The state Supreme Court denied Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s attempt to enforce a total abortion ban.
But even as the fight shifts to courts and state legislatures, Democrats show no sign of relenting in talking about what McConnell might pursue, given his success shepherding three highly conservative Supreme Court nominees to confirmation through the Trump administration.
One congressional candidate in New York is even using McConnell’s effectiveness as a wedge in his primary challenge to two longtime Democratic incumbents.
“From climate change to gun control to abortion, 1990s Democrats have lost every major battle to 2022 Mitch McConnell Republicans. Doing the same thing for 30 years and expecting a different result is the definition of insan …-incumbency,” said Suraj Patel.
