The ripple effects of the Dobbs decision are impacting not only the right to an abortion but also abortion funding, IVF, and even recreational sex. Joining us on this week's episode of "The Downballot" is Grace Panetta, a political reporter at The 19th who has closely covered the electoral consequences of this ever-widening set of issues. Panetta highlights key races this year where reproductive rights will take center stage, including ballot initiatives in multiple states, efforts to repeal bans on public funding of abortions, and an upcoming special election in Alabama, the state that just thrust IVF into the limelight.
Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also discuss Ken Buck's highly entertaining resignation, which is making life way more difficult for both Mike Johnson and Lauren Boebert. They then preview next week's primaries in Illinois and Ohio, which will, among other things, determine which Republican will take on one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators up this year, Sherrod Brown.
Subscribe to "The Downballot" on Apple Podcasts to make sure you never miss a show. New episodes every Thursday morning!
David Beard: Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.
David Nir: And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. "The Downballot" is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency from Senate to city council. Please subscribe to "The Downballot" on Apple Podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review.
Beard: Well, primary season does not stop, so we've got some more races to talk about.
Nir: We sure do, but first up on our Weekly Hits, we are going to be talking about a delightfully fun Republican resignation from the House that is going to make Speaker Mike Johnson's already terrible life even worse. Then we are previewing several races in Ohio and Illinois to big states that have a whole bunch of primaries on the docket on Tuesday night. And then, in our deep dive, we are talking with Grace Panetta, a political reporter with The 19th. We are discussing abortion and the many ripple effects of the Dobbs decision that have reached far beyond abortion rights. We have another amazing show for you, so let's get rolling.
Nir: So we've got another big batch of primaries coming up next week, but there's some news from this past week that we just have to discuss first, and it really fills me with a lot of joy, and that is Colorado Republican Ken Buck's completely unexpected, or at least largely unexpected, resignation from the House.
Beard: From the House. Yeah. Ken Buck is one of those classic stories we've seen now repeatedly of a very conservative Republican who is really to the right of his party, if you go back a decade ago, who is now because of his adherence to at least some basic norms. One of his big issues, of course, has been "Let's not just impeach people because Donald Trump got impeached" or "Some Democrats should get impeached," because that's like tit-for-tat. He's like, "Let's actually only impeach people if they deserve it." And that is so far out of bounds of the modern Republican Party. He's like, "Well, guess I got to bail. It's just wild."
Nir: So the best part may be Buck was already retiring. He announced that many months ago, and you do every so often see someone decide to retire and then later resign. The amazing thing here is that Buck didn't even tell Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson found out from reporters, and he said something like, "I'm looking forward to talking through his reasons with him." Like, yeah, right you are.
Beard: Yeah. Yeah. Apparently he called and left a message or something, but obviously, 99 times out of 100, if you want to let someone know some important information, you can make sure they know it before you announce it. Clearly, Ken Buck did not care to make sure that Mike Johnson knew, which I think goes to show how much respect Ken Buck has for Mike Johnson.
Nir: So what, he called at like three in the morning, hoping it'll go to voicemail.
Beard: Yeah, I don't know the details, but it's clearly like he called, he didn't instantly get the speaker of the House on the phone, so he tried. Yeah.
Nir: Now, the real big angle here, of course, is what this means for Lauren Boebert, and a lot of folks were speculating that Ken Buck pulled this resignation just to screw Lauren Boebert. Now, Ken Buck claims he didn't think about Lauren Boebert at all. I don't know. I believe him. Sure, but whether it was intentional or not, this absolutely does screw Lauren Boebert because, of course, as "Downballot" listeners know, a ways back she said, "Oh, I'm going to run for reelection in Buck's district, Colorado's 4th, which is in Eastern Colorado, because it's much redder than my district, Colorado's 3rd, in Western Colorado."
I mean, she didn't explicitly say any of that, but that, of course, is exactly why. I mean, as we know, she almost lost reelection in 2022. It was the closest House race in the entire nation, despite it being a Trump +8 district, the 3rd District, her current district. So the problem for her now is that there's going to be a special election to fill the remaining months of Buck's term, and that special election is going to be on June 25, which is the same day as the state's regularly scheduled primary for a full term. Before that special election takes place, the parties are going to pick nominees for the special to replace Ken Buck.
And that is not going to happen by primary. That is going to happen by means of a convention with a relatively small number of local party leaders and officials, and these are the kinds of people who will resent, more than anyone else, the fact that Lauren Boebert is trying to schlep all the way across the state to a part of the state that she totally doesn't represent and has no ties to—they are definitely going to resent that. So she said, "Yeah, I'm not going to run in this special election." She's not even going to seek the nomination.
Beard: And the complicating factor around that is, obviously, if she were to somehow run and get the nomination for the special election and win, she would have to resign her Colorado 3 seat to take up her new Colorado 4 seat, she couldn't represent both seats for the second half of 2024, so that would create a—
Nir: Does she know that? Does she realize that?
Beard: Hopefully, she seems to have gotten there one way or another. I don't know if this was her reason or the fear of not winning the nomination, but since she can't represent both, she would have to resign and create a new special election for her more competitive Colorado 3 seat. So I think that was an additional reason why she felt like she couldn't run in this special election, but as a result, somebody's going to get this imprint of being the nominee in this special election, probably somebody who's also running in the primary for the full term for 2025 and beyond. So that person is going to have somewhat of a leg up because those campaigns are going to be happening at the same time.
This person is going to be running and is going to be the heavy favorite for the remainder of this term, while also running in this primary against Boebert and other Republican candidates for the full term. So that puts her in a tough spot when previously she was the one, even if she was coming across the state—she was a congresswoman, she was well-known, she had those benefits, and now there's someone else who's going to have some of those benefits as well.
Nir: Yeah, and let's just underscore the fact that this is going to be happening on the same day. So even though the special election on June 25 for the 4th District won't really be competitive, in all likelihood that candidate, whoever the GOP picks for that special election is going to be on the ballot that day twice, both for the special and in the primary. So Lauren Boebert is going to need people to vote for whoever that local Republican is and then, in the primary ballot, vote for her. So essentially, a weird form of ticket splitting. I mean, it can happen. It certainly can, but that definitely hoses her.
In fact, she even said that she wants Republican leaders in the 4th to pick a caretaker who won't run for a full term yet. There's no freaking way that they are going to listen to her on that.
Beard: Yeah, that just reeks of desperation. Like you said, these are folks who are not going to be sympathetic to Boebert's jump across the state anyway. So the idea that they're going to find some random person who just wants to be in Congress for five months and nominate them instead of the person they want to be their congressperson for the long term is crazy. They're going to nominate one of these folks that they think would be the best choice who's probably already running for the full term because Buck's retirement announcement, just for the next term, was a while ago. There's a number of candidates running.
So one of them is almost certainly going to get picked. They're going to run in both the special and in the regular primary, and Boebert is going to have to overcome that if she wants to stay in Congress or who knows. I could imagine her jumping back to Colorado 3 if in the next few weeks things don't go her way. It would not shock me. I'm not predicting that, but it wouldn't shock me. She's done crazier things like we saw.
Nir: Well, let's not forget there's another conservative open district in Colorado, the one held by Doug Lamborn. So maybe she'll hop over to Colorado's 5th. Maybe she'll do it by accident.
Beard: There you go.
Nir: I mean, who even knows with her? So one last thing before we get on to the primaries is the math. So the math is about to get even worse for Mike Johnson, which is hard to believe because he's so bad at counting votes. He'd probably be a terrible speaker even if he had a 10-seat majority, maybe even a 20-seat majority. What's going to happen is this, at the end of April, Democrats are going to fill Brian Higgins' vacant seat in upstate New York, in the 26th District. Tim Kennedy is the overwhelming favorite for that seat. And when that happens, then that will mean that there is a 218-to-214 Republican advantage in the House, which means then that Mike Johnson could afford no more.
No more than one defection on any given vote because, 218-214, if two Republicans side with Democrats on any given vote, that's a 216-to-216 tie, and a tie is the same as losing. Now, there are some wrinkles to this. Kevin McCarthy's seat could get potentially filled in the special election next week. That's not looking really likely though because the front-runner would have to win a majority of the vote. So since that doesn't appear set to happen, then McCarthy's seat won't get filled until the end of May. So really, Ken Buck is making life way harder for Mike Johnson, and it could get harder still. There was just a new report from Axios on Tuesday where they interviewed Ken Buck.
The reporters said, "Asked whether he's facing heat from his colleagues, Buck told Axios: 'I think it's the next three people that leave that they're going to be worried about.'" Whoa, whoa, is he? Is Ken Buck teasing that there are perhaps as many as three more resignations coming soon? I mean, maybe he's just talking hypothetically, but it also sounds like he knows something.
Beard: Yeah, I take this a little bit more as I think Ken Buck is probably trolling. This reporter is just like trolling in general. A little bit more than there's three resignations that Ken Buck knows about that's lined up. You never know. Obviously, we've seen that the Republican caucus isn't happy. Lots of people aren't enjoying being in the House Republican Conference for obvious reasons. It seems like a terrible place to work and to exist, but I would be pretty surprised if this is in reference to something actual and specific. And if you're that upset that you're resigning in this series, why not do something more radical like ally with Democrats or depose Mike Johnson?
Something like setting up a bunch of resignations doesn't seem terribly likely to me, but you never know. I guess we'll find out crazier things have happened in this Congress.
Nir: Beard, I agree that there are definitely more radical disruptive things that Ken Buck type Republicans could be doing, but we know they're not going to. Resigning, however, is pretty easy because you probably get to take some cush job. You don't have to deal with these anymore. I mean, you saw that report that fewer than a hundred House Republicans are going to be going to the House GOP caucus retreat. They hate one another. Buck said ... he told this to CNN, he said, "It's the worst year of the nine years and three months that I've been in Congress, and having talked to former members, it's the worst year in 40, 50 years to be in Congress." So I mean, yeah, he's probably trolling, but we can't rule it out.
Beard: Yeah, and the other thing that's important to keep in mind is that Mike Johnson doesn't really have control of the House, anyway. Obviously, in some unlikely series of events Democrats were to take control of the House, that would be a huge deal and would create some real change. Right now, Mike Johnson can't really pass anything without the support of Democrats, so that way it goes onto the suspension calendar, it's called, and he needs two-thirds. So he needs a bunch of Democrats to vote for most things that have any chance of becoming law, anyway. He's also, of course, terrified of the motion to vacate because the margin is so small, two or three members could take him down unless the Democrats decided to save him from his speakership.
So it's in this weird form of stasis where very few things happen. The whole goal of this monthslong thing is just to get spending bills passed so that they stop having stopgaps and they can actually fund the government for the rest of the year, and that's taken months and months and they can't do anything else. So the House is really in a situation where it's ungovernable right now.
Nir: Well, I don't think that is going to change, but as much as it gladdens my heart, we got to move on and talk about the two big states next week that are both holding down ballot primaries, Illinois and Ohio. And Ohio in particular has a very high-profile GOP primary to take on one of the two most vulnerable Democratic senators up for reelection this year. Of course, that's Sherrod Brown on the Democratic side. There's a three-way race for the GOP nod.
Beard: Yeah, so we've got three main candidates here, though really it's sort of narrowed down to two late in the game. We've got Bernie Moreno, who made his money from car dealerships. He's been backed by Donald Trump. He's very much the MAGA candidate in the race. And as we've seen in a lot of Republican primaries, that's often enough to get you over the top. We've also got state Sen. Matt Dolan. Dolan ran two years ago in the GOP primary, lost to J.D. Vance. He's back for another try. He's got a lot of money behind him. He has also got the endorsement this time of the state's governor, Mike DeWine. He is sort of similar to Ken Buck in a few ways where he's very conservative. He's not like he's some sort of moderate Republican, but he's not a Trumpist.
He's obviously been trying to walk the line a little bit in this primary, not highlight that he's not a Trumpist, but he's not a MAGA guy. He's managed to stay competitive with a lot of money and some key endorsements, like DeWine. And then we've got Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who was really seen as a top candidate when he got into the race and whose campaign has really gone nowhere. He spent a lot of last year on the Reproductive Rights Amendment, first trying to raise the threshold at which constitutional amendments in Ohio get passed, which failed. Then he tried to fight against the Reproductive Rights Amendment that was on the November ballot. He also lost that.
He's generally just been seen as sort of incompetent in everything he's tried to get into last year, in terms of issues. And then his Senate race, which was I think supposed to be built on those things, has just sort of fallen apart behind the Trump-backed Moreno and the DeWine-backed Dolan.
Nir: Yeah, LaRose has just had very little money compared to his two competitors. Dolan is also very rich. His family owns the Cleveland Guardians Major League Baseball team. Interestingly, the Dolan camp—Dolan and his allies—have been outspending the Moreno side on TV. I still tend to think that Moreno is the favorite just because of the Trump endorsement and because of Dolan's sort of slight hesitancy around Trump. I also would have to guess that Moreno might be the better candidate for Brown to face simply because he is so Trumpified. Given how minimal polling has been, and given the fact that polling a primary is difficult in the first place, yeah, maybe we'll see an upset in this one.
Beard: Yeah, I would consider it ... I would be surprised if Moreno didn't win, but it wouldn't shock me if Dolan managed to squeak it out somehow with some of this establishment support he's managed to collect. I do think that Moreno is who Democrats are looking to face and who are ready to sort of unload on post-primary. So if Dolan wins, there would need to be a bit of a reevaluation about how to run that campaign against him. He's obviously got a legislative record when Moreno doesn't, so that's something to think about but obviously they will go all-out against whoever it is.
Nir: One thing, by the way, that we ought to mention is that unlike the primaries last week, where I think really all of them actually involve the potential of runoffs, both Ohio and Illinois do not have runoffs. Most states don't have runoffs, so it only takes a plurality to win any of these primaries.
Beard: There's one other primary that we want to highlight in Ohio, and that is Ohio's 9th District in the GOP primary. This is the seat that Marcy Kaptur holds, one of the longest-tenured Democrats in the House. She has represented the Toledo-area district for a very, very long time. This district was gerrymandered ahead of 2022 to try to take her out, but when J.R. Majewski won the primary on the Republican side and had a whole litany of scandals and statements and all sorts of things, Kaptur ended up winning comfortably. Majewski was in and then out and then in, then out of this primary. So it looked for a while like Kaptur would be facing him again.
He is out for good, it seems like at this point, and the race is now between two or more establishment candidates. One a state representative, the other a former state representative. So folks are a lot more plugged into the Ohio Republican Party. You've got Craig Riedel, who was initially the guy that everybody got behind. He's a former state rep. He ran in 2022 and lost to Majewski, but he got caught saying not very nice things about Donald Trump. And we know the worst thing you can do in a Republican primary is say not nice things about Donald Trump. So everybody literally pulled their support from him because of this and convinced a state rep to get in, Derek Merrin, who is now the establishment-supported candidate who's got Trump's backing and all of that.
So I think Merrin is probably the favorite again. In a GOP primary, Trump's backing goes a long way, but we will have to see how that checks out on Tuesday.
Nir: So we're going to switch over to Illinois, where there aren't any statewide races to worry about, but there are a number of interesting House contests for different reasons. And in Illinois's 11th District, this is a comfortably Democratic seat in the western Chicago-area suburbs. And it's a little difficult to say whether this one might really be competitive or is going to be a total dud. Democratic Congressman Bill Foster has represented the area for quite some time, but he faces a challenge from the left, from civil rights attorney Qasim Rashid. Rashid though has run for office a few times in the past, except the last two times were in Virginia.
And he lost both of those races. I think that he considers Illinois home, so he went back recently and now, he's running against Foster. Rashid, though, has raised a lot of money. I think he has a very strong social media presence. This could be a total go-nowhere race. Most Democratic incumbents tend to do just fine in primaries, but in 2020, Foster defeated a pretty underfunded foe by just a 59-41 margin. Now, of course, in a general election, 59-41 is a blowout, no matter what. In a primary, though, when you're an incumbent, 59% is not all that great. I'd say it's actually fairly weak. I will note though, that that race took place under the previous district lines.
These are new district lines, so just want to keep an eye on, I think Foster is quite well liked overall, at least certainly among his caucus. He's a very mainstream Democrat, and we haven't seen a lot of success from left-wing challenges to mainstream Democrats unless that Democrat has some deep kind of flaw, like a Lacy Clay in Missouri, who is just known for his absenteeism more than anything else. Bill Foster, I don't think there's anything notable he's done that's been particularly wrong, so it's hard to see what kind of traction Rashid could get, but keep an eye on this one too.
Beard: Yeah, I would be pretty surprised if this got close or Rashid was able to pull off the upset. This district is just not in an area where we've seen these types of primaries from the left succeed. This is not an urban district or a college town, really. It is a suburban area. It's formerly swingy. It's still reasonably swingy, but definitely Democratic-favored. So I don't think that this is really the area where you would expect this sort of upset to pop up, but of course, definitely worth keeping an eye on.
Nir: One last race, maybe. The mirror image of this is in Illinois's 12th District, in the southern part of this state between two big local names, the incumbent Mike Bost and the GOP's nominee for governor in 2022, Darren Bailey. Bailey got destroyed by J.B. Pritzker in that governor's race, but after that loss, it seemed pretty clear to local folks that Bailey was already preparing to run against Bost, and Bost was very much aware of this as well. So this primary has been quite a while in taking shape. Bost has Trump's endorsement. He also has a huge financial edge. There was some sort of sketchy polling suggesting that this one might be close.
What's interesting about this one is that it doesn't really seem like this is one of those MAGA outsiders trying to take down some RINO squish. Bost is as extreme and Trumpy as they get. This more seems to be like a race where you just have two big-name local politicians who really, really hate one another. On the GOP side, I'm extremely in favor of those kinds of primaries. Again, I would be pretty surprised if Bost lost, but I also would not be at all surprised to see him finish with a take in the 50s.
Beard: Yeah, this doesn't really fit any of what we've seen in recent years match a primary upset or a battle that you expect, "Oh, this is going to be really tough for Bost." He has Trump's endorsement. He has the money. He's familiar with the area. This isn't like a redistricted, new-turf sort of thing. So there's not really an avenue that you would expect Bailey to be able to come at him over, other than just like, "You guys know me, I was the gubernatorial nominee, and Bost sucks." I'm sure he'll get some votes from that, but I would be pretty surprised if this went anywhere and Bost didn't win at least somewhat comfortably.
Nir: Well, there are a whole bunch more races on the docket next week, and once again, we will be liveblogging all of them. Go to elections.dailykos.com, and also find us on Twitter/X @DKelections. Well, that does it for our Weekly Hits. Coming up, our deep dive is a fascinating discussion with Grace Panetta, a political reporter at the 19th. We are talking not just about abortion but the many, many ways in which the fall of Roe v. Wade has affected our politics from abortion funding to contraception. It is a terrific discussion, so please rejoin us after the break.
Nir: I am so delighted to welcome our guest on "The Downballot" today. Grace Panetta is a political reporter at The 19th, an independent nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender politics and policy. Grace has also for a very long time been one of my favorite reporters on elections. I love following her work. I love following her on Twitter. Grace, thank you for coming on the show today.
Grace Panetta: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.
Nir: Absolutely. So I have to start by asking how did you get into political journalism in the first place, and in particular, the world of elections coverage? It's a very nerdy area and also very heavily male-dominated. So what brought you into it?
Panetta: Yeah, I kind of fell into political journalism itself sort of by accident. I went to Barnard College. I was a political science major. Like a lot of young college political science majors, I was like, "Oh, I'm going to go change the world and make a difference." And then I realized, "Oh, maybe this whole working-in-politics thing, not for me." So I saw a job opening for an intern position at Business Insider on the politics desk, churning out short stories, and I was like, "Okay, well, I like to write, and I like the internet, so let's go do that." And here I am now, almost six years later. So I did not plan on this being my career, but I'm so glad that it is.
And I've always loved politics. I've always loved elections in college. I was a research assistant for a professor who was doing a lot of data-heavy work research on American elections and voting, and that's how I got—it kind of also became my beat by accident about four years ago this week. When the COVID pandemic hit, states' voting rules were a mess. It was just chaos, pandemonium. And I kind of threw myself into trying to make sense of it for our readers, both covering how voting was doing, what election officials were doing, how people were coping, putting out guides for people. And that's also in the pandemic, is when I really got heavily into election Twitter and that community on there. And it's just been a great thing that's happened in my career.
Nir: That was an absolutely wild time at the start of COVID.
Panetta: It was. Yeah.
Nir: I mean, the calendar, just the election calendar alone, was changing every day. States were moving and delaying and rescheduling. It was an unbelievable time to get started in this business.
Panetta: It really was. Yeah, so I actually was class of 2020. I graduated a semester early, and my parents were like, "Oh, Grace, you're going to shortchange yourself out of your semester spring." And we all saw what happened there. Yeah, no, I was lucky enough to have a steady job for one thing, and I also ... I mean, I don't know, I just love rules, processed-based things, learning about different rules and try to explain them to people. So it became a really natural thing for me to do. And I was doing that in my articles, doing a lot on Twitter, and that's where I got connected with a lot of people who were in the space or who were analyzing elections themselves.
Nir: So you left Business Insider, and you moved over to The 19th. For our listeners who may not be familiar with The 19th—they should be, and they will be after this episode—can you give us some background on it and how it differs from other sites and how you came to be there?
Panetta: Sure. So The 19th was founded about four years ago, and we are a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom covering the intersection of gender politics and policy. Our name refers to the 19th Amendment. So we're voting and election nerds through and through as well. And everything we do is through the lens of gender. So for me, in my role, that's everything having to do with the intersection of gender and politics, which, too bad, there's really not a lot of news on that right now.
Nir: Yeah, it's been so dry, huh?
Panetta: Yeah, so dry, but the kind of gap ... we try to cover communities who maybe do not get the coverage they should be getting in mainstream media, issues that really matter. And we also come from a place of wanting to report for communities and people and not just about specific communities. That also translates into our political coverage as well.
Beard: So given that The 19th has a pretty specific focus, it has a real mission statement there. I'm always curious how do you divide up the work when you have a lot of reporters or writers who are in this field of like, oh, gender and politics and policy? How do you think of what your beat is? How do you differentiate it from what other folks are doing and then sometimes I guess collaborate on things?
Panetta: Yeah, that's a great question. So there are 15 of us reporters, and everyone kind of there has a different beat. I also have a few colleagues; there are four or five of us on the politics team. So we have a very strong politics focus, but I have colleagues who write about the economy and gender, health care, the environment and climate change data, LGBTQ rights. And the truth is, even with 15 reporters, there are way more than enough stories to go around. There is just a lot happening in the space on the policy front and the political front. On the politics team itself, my colleague Amanda Becker, she has covered Congress in congressional elections for years now. So that's kind of her focus.
My colleague Mel Barclay is really great about writing about voters and profiles, and I am kind of in the sort of more elections space within it, but to your point about collaboration, there are so many ways that we like to team up and collaborate obviously on everything relating to abortion and reproductive rights. There are big opportunities for collaboration there, but really across the newsroom, every time I get to work with a new person and learn from their specific insights, because the luxury of being at a job like this is you really get to become an expert in your beat. So I love always learning from my colleagues.
Nir: So on that note, Grace, I have to ask about which races in particular you're following this year, though I want to start by referring back to an extremely helpful guide you published a few months ago. You detailed what's going on with abortion-rights ballot measures in every state that is either going to have a vote on this or could have a vote on this, and we have talked about these sorts of initiatives endlessly on this show. In fact, we've talked about abortion almost every week on this show for the last two years, but I think that as we get toward November, and especially with the top of the ticket finally crystallizing this week, abortion once again is really going to come back to center stage.
And in these states that actually, literally have abortion on the ballot, I think it's going to be as salient as it's going to get. So among that group of states where this process is underway, are there any in particular that you're following especially, or are there any patterns or trends across these states that are worth highlighting?
Panetta: Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting you mentioned the presidential race, and that is, for us, presents a very unique set of circumstances because it's a race between two dudes and they have to talk about abortion, even though it's neither of their favorite topics, necessarily. To that end, that's created a lot of interesting dynamics downballot. So you just mentioned ballot measures. That's going to be a huge, huge focus of mine this year. I spent a lot of time in Ohio last fall, reporting on their abortion-rights ballot measure. I'll be looking—colleagues and I'll be looking at both swing states where abortion measures could be on the ballot, like Arizona and Nevada.
States that are abortion access points and are really important for access, like Colorado and Florida. There are also a lot of interesting dynamics in red states, like Missouri, like South Dakota—I'll be looking at that. I'm also definitely interested in state-level races. So the gubernatorial races in North Carolina and New Hampshire. North Carolina—also between two men, but abortion and gender is going to be a huge, huge focus. And the last piece I'm really interested in ... I shouldn't say "the last," but another piece I'm really interested in is the state-legislative level. Because if you think back to the last presidential election, in 2020, Democrats won the presidency, won the Senate, but they did not do as well at the state-legislative level.
And they actually lost quite a bit of ground. People theorize that a big chunk of that was not being able to do in-person canvassing, which is so important in those local races. And since the Dobbs decision, which I know we're going to get into more, we've seen Democrats continue to make gains in state-legislative races at the same time that there are fair maps coming into place in states like Wisconsin, for example, so I'm very, very interested to see what happens at that state-legislative level this year.
Nir: Going back to the states with ballot measures for a second, you talked about some of these more conservative states, like Missouri and South Dakota. In some of these states—I think South Dakota in particular is one of them—you have local advocates who are pushing measures that are maybe not as broad as where probably the mainstream abortion-rights movement nationally is at. And from what I've read, there is a definite tension between should we push a measure we think can pass in a very conservative state, or does that undermine the cause of abortion rights more broadly if we settle for something other than an amendment that grants women complete autonomy.
And I'm curious to know if this is a topic that you have delved into and how you see that playing out in some of these states.
Panetta: Absolutely. It is so fascinating to see how the internal dynamics within the abortion-rights movement are playing out on the ground right now. So yes, to the examples you just mentioned, yeah, there are advocates in South Dakota and Arkansas who are trying to get measures on the 2024 ballot that are ... they do not have the support of mainstream abortion-rights groups and also the groups that put frankly a lot of financial heft and resources behind abortion ballot measures because ballot-measure campaigns are extremely, extremely expensive. So it's—the big players are usually the local Planned Parenthood affiliates, local ACLU affiliates, and the national groups, like the Fairness Project.
Some of the other big 501(c)(3)s and now J.B. Pritzker's nonprofit group, Think Big America, which has also become a player in this space. And among those big organizations, yeah, they're not willing to fund ballot measures that do not at least restore what they see as an expansive framework. And that's created some tension on the ground in a couple of these states within activists and advocates. And then there are other groups who think that even the measures on the ballot that Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are backing don't go far enough. There are groups who think that the Roe ... restoring Roe is a bad idea and we should ditch it altogether because there were still abortion restrictions allowed under Roe v. Wade.
So it's really fascinating to see how these dynamics play out, and I'll be very curious to see how these ballot measure campaigns, that don't have the support of these deep-pocketed groups do in terms of being able to get on the ballot at all, in especially states that have a hostile political climate for abortion rights, like in Arkansas or South Dakota. If these groups can get on the ballot, and if they can actually win, and if they'll be kind of proven right, like, we needed to have a measure that's less expansive to be able to pass in a state like ours. So these are going to be really fascinating dynamics to watch throughout the cycle.
Beard: Now, one of the recurring issues, I think, that we've seen in this area over the years is that people, primarily women, warn the public writ-large that bad things are going to happen unless we fight back and stop it. Obviously, most notably is, of course, the Dobbs decision, the end of Roe. A lot of people, again, primarily women, were screaming that this was a huge problem that was coming and then it happened. And what we've seen in the aftermath is some people were like—saw this as a very narrow issue of abortion rights, and then there were again people yelling that this is a lot bigger than just abortion rights, that this is going to touch a whole host of issues.
And we've seen that proven right yet again in Alabama, where there was this ruling over IVF that has then kind of exploded on this issue. So can you just walk us through what happened in Alabama, how it sort of reverberated politically since then?
Panetta: Absolutely. So brief summary of what happened there is, back in 2020, there was an accident at a fertility clinic in Mobile, Alabama, where a few couples' embryos were destroyed and they sued the clinic under the state's death of a wrongful child act, and if we back up a little bit to when Alabama passed their strict abortion ban, they actually included a carveout for IVF and said, "Okay, we're going to ban abortion when Roe falls, but IVF is fine." This case, however, was brought under a completely different state law, a 19th-century civil statute regarding wrongful death of minors and children. And that's what these families sued under to get some recourse from this clinic, brought their case all the way up to the state Supreme Court, which ruled in February that, under the civil statute, embryos are children.
The ruling didn't explicitly outlaw IVF in the state, but for fertility clinics, it just created a lot of chaos and confusion and a lot of them temporarily halted care, and this immediately had national reverberations because nothing in American politics is ever in a vacuum. So it really yet again put abortion rights to the forefront, and to your point, Beard, it just showed that people were not being alarmist at all or over-exaggerating when they were saying all these other rights are under threat because I think the Dobbs decision opened up really a Pandora's box of consequences both reproductive-health-wise for people's actual lives and in the political sense.
Everyone is still grappling with this in real time, and I think we've seen that play out in the almost months since the Alabama decision where, yet again, the Republican Party has been put on the defensive. They do not have a clear narrative or response or any kind of messaging strategy, much like after the Dobbs League and the actual Dobbs decision. And the Democrats have yet another sort of thing to rally and cry to run on, and also a way to draw the contrast between the outcome of Republican policies and abortion bans when taken to their natural logical conclusion, which is something like this.
Beard: Yeah, and the proof of how bad Republicans have been in responding to this is no better crystallized than I believe it was Michelle Steel, who's in a competitive congressional seat in California, who was asked if she was on board with this act in Congress that a lot of Republicans have signed on to, which most people view as banning IVF because it's talking about life being in a conception, where she insisted that she did support it and I believe went to put her name on it, and then someone else asked her about it and then she took her name off of it the same day. It's just like a wild series of an inability to actually tackle the issue and where so many of their extremist folks stand.
Panetta: Right, and I think it draws out to the fact that overturning Roe v. Wade was a 40-plus-, nearly 50-year project for the Republican Party and the right wing, and in that time, members of Congress elected to the said party have had to put their names on a lot of messaging bills, vote on a lot of messaging bills that say life begins at conception, and if you say, "Oh, I support IVF, that doesn't explain the contradiction there," because in any given IVF cycle, there are embryos that are not able to be used or the patient doesn't want to use them, and they're disposed and saying that you believe life begins, a conception is incompatible with supporting IVF as it is currently done in the United States.
And that is a problem that is not going to go away anytime soon for the GOP, no matter ... if Michelle still wants to take her name off of a bill. That fundamental issue is still there.
Nir: Right after the Dobbs decision, Democrats started cutting TV ads on the topic like almost immediately. I'm not sure if we've seen any IVF-themed ads yet. I'm curious to know if you have or were aware of anything in the pipeline. Of course, the timing is a little bit different. This decision came out in February. The Dobbs decision came out in June, much deeper into the election cycle, but my sense certainly is that we will see ads like that sooner or later.
Panetta: Absolutely. I think you're 100% right. Nearly every day, I talk to advocates in this space, in the reproductive-right space and progressive politics, who are super, super ready to really begin messaging on the reality of what is happening on the ground. We saw ... so, I traveled to Birmingham in late February to attend a roundtable put on by the HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. There was a woman there whose IVF cycle was canceled because of this decision. Then, a week later, 10 days later, she was there in the first lady's box at Biden's State of the Union, Latorya Beasley. He shouted her out in his speech.
So definitely Democrats at the White House, they're moving very fast on this, and I will definitely as well be reporting Democrats' efforts to message on threats to IVF and contraception as well in the coming weeks. I think it's going to be a big theme this year.
Beard: Now, this is obviously an issue that's now been at the top of mind since the Dobbs decision, obviously, for a lot of people it was top of mind before then, but it's really obviously been crystallized since the summer of 2022. We're now in the early spring of 2024, almost two years of this sort of ongoing push and campaign in the wake of that, having reported on a lot of it over the past couple of years, has anything stood out to you or surprised you about how this movement has played out in the wake of the Dobbs decision?
Panetta: It's a good question. I would say the thing I've been most surprised by, and maybe shouldn't have been, is how much voters have really rebuked all of Republicans' proposals and messaging on abortion, no matter what form it comes in. I've spent time in Ohio last election cycle. I was also following the governor's race in Kentucky and the state-legislative elections in Virginia, and whether the argument—Republican arguments were parental rights or "I support a six-week ban" or Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin's attempt to try to message and sell a 15-week ban to voters. They have rejected it in every case. And I think it shows just how discerning voters are on this topic.
And just how much credibility the Republican Party has lost on this, I think, has been really striking to see play out in real time, both in polling and in the outcomes of elections.
Nir: Grace, you mentioned a minute ago contraception. I certainly am not alone in thinking that one of the top targets of the conservative legal movement has been to roll back or repeal the Griswold Supreme Court decision, which allowed birth control in the first place. And I still was quite surprised to see that the Heritage Foundation, among others, have talked about ending recreational sex. And I feel like these attacks on things like contraception, which are so mainstream and so popular, usually they happen a little bit more in the darkness of ... and now you're saying that maybe this stuff is going to come to the forefront.
I mean, that seems like a huge loser to me, but I'm curious, the politics of it aside, where are you seeing this come up in terms of conservatives trying to really push for a crackdown on contraception?
Panetta: Yeah, it's a great question. I'm glad you're drawing attention to this and drawing it out. And I think, yes, the Heritage Foundation, which, as we now know, is very involved, drafting plans for a potential second Trump term. They said the quiet part out loud, which we can really be a little bit appreciative too, because they're saying, "Yeah, this is about ending recreational sex," which we all kind of knew, but it helps. They put it in writing.
Nir: Yeah.
Panetta: Yeah, so we've seen, I think, since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, lots and lots of attempts to undermine that law. And in that bill was, of course—had made health insurance companies cover contraception, which was a huge landmark law. And in addition to the conservative attacks on that law, there have been a lot of attacks on Title X, which provides federal funding for family planning and health services. Literally just yesterday, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that, in Texas, federally funded family-planning clinics have to get parental permission to prescribe contraception to teenagers. So this is very real, and it's happening in real time.
There are other factions within the right wing who also want to attack things like IUDs and the morning-after pill, falsely claiming that they are abortions, even though they are not. There's also a really interesting divide. Still, within the Republican Party, you can't really be a Republican and say that you support abortion these days, but there are some, like former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who has been trying to push the GOP on embracing birth control and embracing contraception. There are other Republican governors who have kind of given lip service to this idea of expanding contraception, but I think where you really see the actual impact of this legal policy and legal fight is in these decisions that are undercutting federal funding for these programs.
And as we know, in a lot of times when we see this too and things like child care and paid leave, politicians will say they support the thing, but they're not actually willing to put taxpayer-funded dollars to ensure that people can access it or to support the landmark federal legislation that made insurance companies cover contraception. So I think the threat is very real, and the political dynamics surrounding it are going to be really interesting to watch.
Nir: Grace, There's one other topic that I have found extremely interesting in this area that hasn't gotten a ton of attention regarding the use of state funds to pay for abortions. And I know that some activists in Colorado were planning to put a measure on the ballot to overturn a previous law that bans public funding for abortions. And in fact, there's quite a few other states that could proceed with something like this, whether at the initiative level or just simply legislatures actually overturning old bans. Is that an issue that you've been following, and how do you see that playing out?
Panetta: Absolutely. That's a great point too because there's a big gulf between abortion rights and abortion access. And in fact, a lot of people in the reproductive-rights movement will point out that abortion access was significantly eroded, fundamentally inaccessible in a lot of places, way before Roe v. Wade ever fell because Roe only guaranteed the right and not the access, and public funding has become a really big part of the puzzle, especially since the Dobbs decision, the federal Hyde amendment, which is the prohibition on federal funding for most abortions—that's not going away anytime soon with Congress looking the way it is, probably.
So it's really in a lot of these blue states that have passed not only new laws enshrining a right to an abortion, but also shield laws protecting people coming in from other states, and also, just funding more money for abortion care, whether it's through programs like Medicaid or expanding access to medication, abortion, supporting more capacity among health care workers. This has been a place where we've seen a lot of action from Democratic state legislatures and governors, and in Colorado, that is a really important one because, thinking about where Colorado is geographically, it has become kind of a big access point for a lot of people coming from the south and the Midwest states where abortion is banned.
So this proposed amendment to repeal the ban on public funding for abortions, that could be a really big game-changer and a sign of what we could see coming more of down the pipeline in the future.
Beard: So, before we wrap up, I did just want to ask, obviously, there's a ton of races that are going to be on the ballot in November, but if there's one Senate or House race that you've really got your eye on, that you think of as a bellwether or something that would maybe prove to other races around the country, what's one that you're particularly keeping an eye on?
Panetta: Yeah, that's such a great question. There are so many—
Beard: You can give me more than one if you can't pick just one.
Panetta: Well, if I can give one that's before November.
Beard: Yes.
Panetta: I will be traveling down to the Huntsville, Alabama, area next week to write about a special state-legislative election in a competitive district, suburban district, outside of Huntsville, where the Democratic candidate Marilyn Lands is running on repealing the state's abortion ban and has did so before the IVF decision. I think special elections—that can only tell us so much. We have seen a Democratic overperformance since Dobbs, as you both know. I think that'll be really interesting to see how this IVF ruling plays out in these Sunbelt suburbs. Obviously, it can't tell us everything, but I'm going to be covering that and writing about it for The 19th.
And then, for November, I really do think that, much like in 2020, it's Arizona and Nevada and those Senate races that are really going to tell us a lot about where voters are, especially as it relates to concerns about inflation and the economy, in addition to all of these reproductive-rights dynamics and abortion we've been talking about since both are set to have abortion ballot measures on the ballots as well.
Nir: Well, we have been having a fantastic conversation with Grace Panetta, political reporter for The 19th. Grace, before we let you go, where can folks find you online? Where can they find your work? Where can they find The 19th? Please give us everything, websites, socials, the worst.
Panetta: Well, you can find The 19th at 19thnews.org. Important to note that it's dot org, not dot com. On social media, we are @19thNews on basically any platform you can think of. On X, the website formerly known as Twitter, I am @Grace_Panetta. That's one N, two Ts. You can find my work there, even though I don't tweet as much as I used to. And yeah, we were not hard to find.
Nir: Excellent. Well, Grace, thank you so much for coming on "The Downballot" this week.
Panetta: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Beard: That's all from us this week. Thanks to Grace Panetta for joining us. "The Downballot" comes out every Thursday everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can reach out to us by emailing thedownballot@dailykos.com. If you haven't already, please subscribe to "The Downballot" on Apple Podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks to our editor, Drew Roderick, and we'll be back next week with a new episode.