The New York Times has a great piece out about how abortion rights is taking center stage in the biggest battleground state for the midterms elections: Pennsylvania. It’s a must read for sure but what is also highlights is how much the GOP is betting on the electorate to have a short memory and not remember the leaked opinion from the Supreme Court ruling to end Roe v Wade:
Republicans are deeply skeptical that abortion can reanimate the Democratic base. “Their people are depressed,” said Rob Gleason, a former chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party. “Nothing’s going to be able to save them this year. Speaking from Philadelphia after a road trip from his home in western Pennsylvania, Mr. Gleason said: “I stopped on the turnpike and paid $5.40 a gallon for gas. That reminds me every time I fill up, I want a change.”
But Pennsylvania Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate, Josh Shapiro (D. PA), is vowing to remind the electorate every day until Election Day about what’s on the line:
He rejected the notion that voters, whose attention spans can be short, will absorb a major Supreme Court reversal and move on by the fall. “I’m going to be talking about rights — from voting rights to reproductive rights — until the polls close at 8 p.m. on Election Day,” Mr. Shapiro said. “People are very concerned about this. I expect that level of concern, of fear, of worry, of anger is going to continue.”
And what is making Shapiro’s job easier is that the Republican candidates have been very upfront on their positions:
Two of the Pennsylvania Republicans, Bill McSwain and Lou Barletta, said they support exceptions for rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother. The other two, Doug Mastriano and Dave White, said they support no exceptions.
Only White agreed to discuss his position in an AP interview this week. The others declined interview requests and didn’t answer specific written questions.
White said he would sign legislation banning all abortions with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother if given the chance. He noted that he’s ninth of 14 children from a Catholic family in which his parents taught him the “blessing of every child that comes into this world.”
In a televised debate last week, Mastriano said he supports banning abortion from conception, with no exceptions. He called abortion “the No. 1 issue” and pointed to the “heartbeat” bill that he has sponsored, which effectively bans abortion at six weeks.
Anticipating that Mastriano may emerge from the GOP’s May 17 primary election, Shapiro has began running attack ads against the Republican state senator this week highlighting his plans to “outlaw abortion.”
“They are wildly out of touch with where Pennsylvanians are,” Shaprio said in an interview of his would-be Republican challengers. “This issue boils down to whether or not we’re going to build a Pennsylvania where freedom is respected.”
The NYT article highlights that abortion rights now has the momentum to encourage younger voters to return to the polls:
Soleil Hartwell, 19, who works in a big-box store near Bethlehem, is typical of voters who drop off in midterm elections after voting in presidential years. But Ms. Hartwell said she would vote this year to protect abortion rights. “I don’t have any kids, and I don’t plan on having any yet, but if I was in a situation that required me to, I should be able to” choose the fate of a pregnancy, she said.
And this is not a winning issue for the GOP when it comes to Independent and Swing Voters:
In Hanover Township, outside Allentown, an affluent suburb in a onetime Republican enclave that has trended blue, Dave Savage and Vincent Milite, both center-right voters, were analyzing the abortion issue through the eyes of their adult daughters, while loading groceries outside a Wegmans supermarket.
Mr. Savage, 63, said that his 30-year-old daughter felt strongly that abortion should be legal, and that therefore it would be an important issue for him in November.
A retired municipal employee, Mr. Savage said he was an independent voter but had primarily voted Republican most of his life. Come November, he would not support a candidate for governor who opposed abortion rights, he said. “My position is, I don’t have a vagina so I have no skin in the game.”
Mr. Milite read aloud a text between his two daughters, abortion-rights supporters, in reaction to a Facebook post by a cousin who wrote sharply of her opposition to abortion after the Supreme Court leak.
“I unfollowed her immediately,” one of Mr. Milite’s daughters texted the other. “I would never have an abortion, but I don’t have the right to tell” others what to do, she wrote.
Mr. Milite, a supervisor in municipal government, said he supported his daughters. “I’m a Republican, but I’m a moderate Republican,” he said. “I’m a Republican because this county was always Republican.”
He said he was undecided about whom to support in this month’s primary. His vote in the general election also seemed up for grabs.
“What’s going to happen is, you’re going to lose a lot of Republican votes” over abortion, Mr. Milite predicted. “I think it’s going to hurt the Republican Party.”
Shapiro was already making voting rights a key issue in this campaign:
In an interview with the New York Times, Shapiro said: “Voting rights will be a central issue in this election. And it certainly will be a central focus of my campaign. There’s a clear contrast between me and my dozen or so Republican opponents. They’re out peddling the big lie, and kind of pass these far-right litmus tests with their audits. And they’re doing real destruction to our democracy. I believe that a central focus of this campaign will be on the preservation of our democracy, and the protection of voting rights.”
Shapiro added: “I think our democracy is truly being threatened. The only reason Pennsylvania has not suffered the way Texas and Georgia have with rollbacks of voting rights is because of the veto pen of our governor. We need to protect voting rights. And I’d like to work with people of both parties to expand voting rights.”
Shapiro had already been campaigning as a protector against Republican efforts to limit abortion access. With the Supreme Court appearing poised to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, Shapiro’s stance takes on even greater significance.
“The only way women lose their rights in PA is if our Republican Legislature passes an abortion ban and a governor signs it,” Shapiro tweeted Tuesday after the disclosure that a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court supports overturning the 1973 landmark decision Roe V. Wade decision, which found a constitutional right to abortion. “I’m going to fight like hell, and veto that bill.”
Now here’s what would happen if Pennsylvania would elect a Republican Governor:
All four of the Republican front-runners who participated in the first televised gubernatorial debate — state Sen. Doug Mastriano, former U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, former U.S. attorney Bill McSwain and businessman Dave White — say they would act to repeal Act 77 if elected. That means, unlike the elections of the past two years, voters would have to go to the polls in-person or apply for a traditional absentee ballot to cast a ballot.
Act 77 was passed in 2019 with bipartisan support, and Republicans have said they were able to broker an elimination of straight-ticket voting in exchange for no-excuse mail-in balloting. Mr. Wolf said at the time that it would modernize the electoral process, remove barriers to the voting booth and make voting more convenient and secure.
All four also say they would institute voter ID requirements, meaning that to participate in person on election day, voters would have to bring some sort of ID instead of just signing a logbook and voting.
The changes, according to Republicans, would provide for a more secure electoral system; insiders say they anticipate immediate action if the GOP wins the governor’s race.
Sam DeMarco, a member of the Allegheny County Board of Elections and chair of the county Republican committee, said he’d put the chances at 90% or greater that Act 77 is repealed upon a GOP gubernatorial victory. Expanding access to vote is a great idea in theory, Mr. DeMarco said, but in practice, there’s an inherent “inability for us to be able to secure it.”
“If we have all three houses, then we should be able to do it,” Mr. DeMarco said. “It’s not like there’s a filibuster.”
The state Supreme Court is currently considering a legal challenge to Act 77 after Commonwealth Court declared it unconstitutional. Justices on the high court — which has a 5-2 Democratic majority — have rejected challenges to the law in the past.
Any legislative effort to repeal Act 77 while Mr. Wolf is in office would be in vain because of his certain veto.
Also, here’s another example of how fucking nuts Mastriano is:
A leading candidate in Pennsylvania's Republican primary race for governor wrote in a 2002 academic paper that the U.S. should "not hesitate" to strike at locals if a military regime is nearby, describing the U.S. military's "hypersensitivity" to civilian deaths as an "enormous weakness."
The remarks appeared in a 2002 academic paper written by state Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin, who is seeking the state's Republican nomination for governor. Mastriano is a retired Army colonel who has frequently referenced his military experience in Europe and the Middle East during his time in the state Senate.
In the 2002 thesis, titled "Nebuchadnezzar's Sphinx," Mastriano examined how the U.S. can learn from Iraq's military strategy against Kuwait in the early 1990s, and how the country's conflict with Saddam Hussein during that time can "equip the U.S. with the capacity to anticipate and thwart the various strategies that Baghdad may use in future conflict."
Mastriano further described U.S. war strategies as "predictable," noting that Hussein took advantage of a U.S. reluctance to bomb civilian targets.
And yes, Mastriano is leading in the polls:
Franklin & Marshall’s final pre-primary poll shows Fetterman leading the next-closest challenger in the Democratic Senate primary, U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, by a count of 53% to 14%.
State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta ranked a distant third, with 4%.
Fetterman’s finances are equally swollen compared to his competitors. He’s raised more than $16 million and spent more than $14 million.
By contrast, the Republican race is tight. Oz is atop the latest poll at 18%. He’s followed closely by David McCormick at 16% and Kathy Barnette at 12%.
McCormick has raised and spent the most. Oz isn’t far behind, but Barnette is when it comes to money. Rather than the barrages of attack ads that her lead competitors have spent on, her television debate performance seems to have helped push her polling figures higher.
“She’s pretty much neck-and-neck among Republicans who identify as part of the Trump faction of the party,” Yost said.
State Sen. Doug Mastriano topped the latest poll in the Republican gubernatorial primary, with 20% of voters indicating they’d vote for him. McSwain followed at 12%, Lou Barletta at 11% and Dave White at 8%.
And this just came in today:
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