WASHINGTON — Across the country, most Democratic candidates have hung their electoral fortunes on the threat to abortion rights, elevating it as the issue in which to disqualify their Republican opponents in a majority of voters’ minds.
There’s been a notable exception shunning that playbook: Georgia’s Raphael Warnock.
In the more than a dozen TV ads the first-term Democratic senator has run over the past year, none has mentioned reproductive rights. His campaign doesn’t harp on the right to choose in its press releases or relentlessly highlight the impact of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision through its Twitter feed.
Warnock’s avoidance of the issue that has most animated the Democratic Party base since Roe v. Wade fell in late June is no mistake.
Rather, it’s an intentional strategic omission from his re-election messaging in order to avert dividing Black churchgoers — an integral piece of Warnock’s fragile coalition that hold complex and evolving views on whether and when it’s morally acceptable to end a pregnancy.
“You split the Black church,” said Cyrus Garrett, a Democratic strategist who directed Southern states for Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential race and is working on the Georgia races this cycle. “Why would you split your base down there like that and make that a contentious issue?”
A Warnock campaign spokesperson did not respond to an inquiry about the observation.
A July survey by the University of Georgia found that just 15% of Black voters favored the eradication of the landmark Roe decision. An EMC Research poll, conducted on behalf of NARAL Pro-Choice Georgia at the end of last month, tabulated that 79% of Black men oppose the state’s abortion ban, leaving a notable 21% at least open to a hardline restriction.
And in a deadlocked race where the Black vote is estimated to comprise at least 27% of the total electorate, alienating even the smallest percentage of that cohort could cost Warnock another term.
“Black Americans have become more liberal on abortion over time, but they remain more conservative than their fellow Democrats,” noted a September 2020 Gallup national report, written by Frank Newport. It found that only 46% of Black Americans believed abortion to be morally acceptable.
Even after an explosive story broke this week alleging Herschel Walker personally paid for an abortion on behalf of the mother of one of his children, Warnock notably steered completely clear of rendering judgment or even seizing the opportunity to make a broader argument about Republican hypocrisy on the right to terminate a pregnancy.
He called the story “disturbing” but added he’d “let the pundits do the punditry.”
Instead, the Baptist pastor has consistently crafted his messaging around pedestrian, non-polarizing issues that tangibly benefit the widest swath of average Georgians, from securing funding for the Port of Savannah, to landing recovery dollars for Newnan following tornado damage and capping the cost of insulin drugs.
The senator’s latest advertisement places him squarely under a peanut sheller on a farm in Bainbridge, where he touts partnering with an Alabama Republican to open up agricultural trading markets.
Flush with a record-breaking war chest, Warnock has over the last two weeks spent more in advertising across all mediums – television, radio and digital – than any other Senate candidate in the country, according to the Wesleyan Media Project.
“He’s spending a lot of money,” said Michael Franz, co-director of the project, “He’s not spending it on abortion messaging.”
Even when Warnock touches on abortion, he cradles the topic in religious language.
“I have a profound reverence for life. And I also have a deep respect for choice,” he said at a late September rally in Atlanta. “So I trust women in their wisdom to sit with their own doctor and if they choose, to sit with their pastor. And to pray about that and let their own conscience guide them. Even God gave us a choice.”
With a greater portion of Black men showing signs of being open to voting Republican, Garrett said Warnock is smart to emphasize bread-and-butter concerns over all else.
“How does abortion politics impact the Black male independent voter in Georgia right now?,” Garrett asked. “It’s why Warnock’s not talking about it.”
“The Black male vote is very independent in Georgia. They have a lot of former military folks. That ideology, they tend to be more socially conservative than not,” Garrett added.
Walker’s own personal turmoil may also be making it easier for Warnock to largely evade the abortion issue. The former Georgia Bulldog and NFL running back has spent the week vigorously denying paying for a lover’s abortion, even after his son posted an impassioned video calling him a habitual liar.
“I’m saying it’s not true when they’re talking about me paying for someone’s abortion,” Walker again told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday.
Sen. Kevin Cramer, a Republican from North Dakota, said that while much about Walker’s past is baked into voters’ minds, the scandal could worsen if Walker is lying about his involvement in the abortion.
“He and his lawyers are adamantly denying whether it’s even true. That means that today he’s got to be judged on whether he’s telling the truth or not, at this moment. I do think that’s a different standard,” said Cramer.
