Creative, Persuasive and Disciplined
Choice, the 2010 election and John Boehner
02/10/11 08:05 AM
During last year’s California Senate campaign, Carly Fiorina insisted that a woman’s right to choose was "not an issue on the table in this election." She dismissed questions about choice as “frankly, a decided issue.” In other words, why talk about it if no one was trying to change the law?
What a difference a few months makes. House Speaker John Boehner has made enacting new restrictions on choice one of his top priorities.
Deep recession made the economy and jobs the dominant issues of the 2010 election cycle. They were the top concerns of large majorities of voters in California and across the country. But that doesn’t mean that no other issue mattered to individual voters as they decided which candidate to support.
A strong majority of the California electorate is pro-choice. In February 2009, the respected Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) poll reported that 72% of likely voters supported the Roe v. Wade decision on access to abortion. This support crosses party lines, with 67% of Independents and 56% of Republicans agreeing.
And when PPIC asked whether the positions of Senate candidates on choice mattered – it did matter, to 79% of voters, 45% saying it was very important and 34% somewhat important.
The independent expenditure campaigns backing Fiorina understood that. The anti-choice Susan B. Anthony List spent more than $200,000 trying to paint Boxer as an extremist in an aggressive campaign highly targeted to frequent Latino voters, on Spanish language TV and online.
Although most of the Boxer campaign focused on jobs, we reached out to likely voters with our own campaign ads on choice. Here’s one of the spots we promoted with highly targeted online ads:
You need to travel back more than 25 years to find an anti-choice Senator or Governor winning in California. Carly Fiorina’s extreme anti-choice position was clearly a liability for her.
Fiorina tried to deflect attention from that truth by arguing that social issues just didn’t matter. Today they do.
And today Barbara Boxer is back in the Senate working to protect women’s health:
: GOP Takes Latest Abortion Fight To The Tax Code
What a difference a few months makes. House Speaker John Boehner has made enacting new restrictions on choice one of his top priorities.
Deep recession made the economy and jobs the dominant issues of the 2010 election cycle. They were the top concerns of large majorities of voters in California and across the country. But that doesn’t mean that no other issue mattered to individual voters as they decided which candidate to support.
A strong majority of the California electorate is pro-choice. In February 2009, the respected Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) poll reported that 72% of likely voters supported the Roe v. Wade decision on access to abortion. This support crosses party lines, with 67% of Independents and 56% of Republicans agreeing.
And when PPIC asked whether the positions of Senate candidates on choice mattered – it did matter, to 79% of voters, 45% saying it was very important and 34% somewhat important.
The independent expenditure campaigns backing Fiorina understood that. The anti-choice Susan B. Anthony List spent more than $200,000 trying to paint Boxer as an extremist in an aggressive campaign highly targeted to frequent Latino voters, on Spanish language TV and online.
Although most of the Boxer campaign focused on jobs, we reached out to likely voters with our own campaign ads on choice. Here’s one of the spots we promoted with highly targeted online ads:
You need to travel back more than 25 years to find an anti-choice Senator or Governor winning in California. Carly Fiorina’s extreme anti-choice position was clearly a liability for her.
Fiorina tried to deflect attention from that truth by arguing that social issues just didn’t matter. Today they do.
And today Barbara Boxer is back in the Senate working to protect women’s health:
: GOP Takes Latest Abortion Fight To The Tax Code