The nation's premier forced birther group, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, identified a lot of scapegoats earlier this week after Ohio voters decisively rejected a ballot measure 57%-43%, which was intended to block abortion protections from being added to the state's constitution in November.
"Tragically, some sat on the sideline while outsider liberal groups poured millions into Ohio," the group moaned in a statement issued minutes after the failure of Issue 1. "The silence of the establishment and business community in Ohio left a vacuum too large to overcome."
Issue 1 would have raised the threshold for amending the state's constitution from a bare majority of voters to 60%. State Republican lawmakers sought to sneak it through in what they believed would be a sleepy August special election. Unfortunately for Republicans, they missed the memo that a group of high-turnout erstwhile GOP loyalists—suburban moms—are actually deeply committed to keeping abortion legal while many are also fleeing the Republican Party.
In fact, voters in suburban GOP strongholds joined forces with those in progressive areas such as Columbus, Cincinnati, Akron, and Cleveland to thwart the measure, according to The Columbus Dispatch. "For example, nearly 58% of voters in suburban Delaware County north of Columbus rejected Issue 1 despite the county's long history of supporting Republicans," noted the Dispatch.
Additionally, formerly Democratic blue-collar regions turned Trumpy–for example, Mahoning County, which also rejected the measure. This led to its lopsided demise in a solidly red state Donald Trump won by 8 points.
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As Daily Kos Elections' Stephen Wolf noted, Biden won just seven of Ohio's 88 counties in 2020, while the "no on Issue 1" campaign carried 22 counties in total and bested Biden in every county across the state.
That's an impressive coalition of voters wise to the Republicans' fascist scheme, even though many of them won't vote Democratic next year and may even vote against enshrining abortion rights in the Buckeye constitution later this year.
What is clear, however, is Ohioans are paying attention, the electorate is shifting, and fractures are deepening among the decades-old GOP coalition of business-minded and socially conservative voters.
The Susan B. Anthony statement made those fault lines immediately apparent. Though the group scapegoated "liberal dark money" for defeating their wildly unpopular measure, it also lamented the absence of its allies.
"So long as the Republicans and their supporters take the ostrich strategy and bury their heads in the sand, they will lose again and again,” concluded the group's post-loss statement.
The line smacked of two fallacies at once: The assumption that if forced birthers simply talked about abortion more, they could win the public over to their side, and the idea that forced birthers' political bedfellows could be prodded into to altering their "ostrich strategy."
Both propositions are fundamentally flawed, but the latter foretells the fracturing of the Republican coalition. In truth, Christian zealots and the business community are on an irrevocable path to growing further part in what was once a union of convenience. In the past, the two factions' policy aspirations appealed to a like-minded set of voters that represented a fairly sizable and cohesive slice of the electorate.
But right-wing efforts to demonize LGBTQ+ individuals while stripping both them and pregnant Americans of bodily autonomy is broadly alienating Corporate America and educated voters alike. The Susan B. Anthony group's interests and its committed voters no longer benignly overlap with those of the business sector, which is exactly why the extremist laws enacted by Florida Republicans are starting to cost the state millions in business revenues. It's likely just the tip of the iceberg for the Sunshine State.
It’s also why the Ohio Business Roundtable, Ohio Manufacturers Association, and Ohio Council of Retail Merchants—three of Ohio’s “Big 6″ business groups—declined to take sides on Issue 1.
A key proponent of the ballot measure, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, admitted on national television this week that Republicans and forced birthers have lost the business community on the issue.
“The coalition on the right, when it holds together, we can get things done,” LaRose told MSNBC's Chuck Todd Thursday. “It can be social, cultural conservatives and business conservatives, and I consider myself both of those. But when the business community started to think this was about abortion, they walked off the battlefield."
LaRose, who recently announced a Senate bid, can thank himself for that revelation after he confessed in June Issue 1 was "100%" about keeping the abortion rights amendment from succeeding in November.
This week's results don't exactly bode well for his candidacy, but they will likely prove even more ominous for the fortunes of the Republican Party moving forward.
Take that, GOP schemes to rig ballot measures! On this week's episode of "The Downballot," co-hosts David Nir and David Beard gleefully dive into the failure of Issue 1, which was designed to thwart a November vote to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. The Davids discuss why Republican efforts to sneak their amendment through during a summertime election were doomed to fail; how many conservative counties swung sharply toward the "no" side; and what the results mean both for Sherrod Brown's reelection hopes and a future measure to institute true redistricting reform.
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"Tragically, some sat on the sideline while outsider liberal groups poured millions into Ohio," the group moaned in a statement issued minutes after the failure of Issue 1. "The silence of the establishment and business community in Ohio left a vacuum too large to overcome."
Issue 1 would have raised the threshold for amending the state's constitution from a bare majority of voters to 60%. State Republican lawmakers sought to sneak it through in what they believed would be a sleepy August special election. Unfortunately for Republicans, they missed the memo that a group of high-turnout erstwhile GOP loyalists—suburban moms—are actually deeply committed to keeping abortion legal while many are also fleeing the Republican Party.
In fact, voters in suburban GOP strongholds joined forces with those in progressive areas such as Columbus, Cincinnati, Akron, and Cleveland to thwart the measure, according to The Columbus Dispatch. "For example, nearly 58% of voters in suburban Delaware County north of Columbus rejected Issue 1 despite the county's long history of supporting Republicans," noted the Dispatch.
Additionally, formerly Democratic blue-collar regions turned Trumpy–for example, Mahoning County, which also rejected the measure. This led to its lopsided demise in a solidly red state Donald Trump won by 8 points.
Campaign Action
As Daily Kos Elections' Stephen Wolf noted, Biden won just seven of Ohio's 88 counties in 2020, while the "no on Issue 1" campaign carried 22 counties in total and bested Biden in every county across the state.
That's an impressive coalition of voters wise to the Republicans' fascist scheme, even though many of them won't vote Democratic next year and may even vote against enshrining abortion rights in the Buckeye constitution later this year.
What is clear, however, is Ohioans are paying attention, the electorate is shifting, and fractures are deepening among the decades-old GOP coalition of business-minded and socially conservative voters.
The Susan B. Anthony statement made those fault lines immediately apparent. Though the group scapegoated "liberal dark money" for defeating their wildly unpopular measure, it also lamented the absence of its allies.
"So long as the Republicans and their supporters take the ostrich strategy and bury their heads in the sand, they will lose again and again,” concluded the group's post-loss statement.
The line smacked of two fallacies at once: The assumption that if forced birthers simply talked about abortion more, they could win the public over to their side, and the idea that forced birthers' political bedfellows could be prodded into to altering their "ostrich strategy."
Both propositions are fundamentally flawed, but the latter foretells the fracturing of the Republican coalition. In truth, Christian zealots and the business community are on an irrevocable path to growing further part in what was once a union of convenience. In the past, the two factions' policy aspirations appealed to a like-minded set of voters that represented a fairly sizable and cohesive slice of the electorate.
But right-wing efforts to demonize LGBTQ+ individuals while stripping both them and pregnant Americans of bodily autonomy is broadly alienating Corporate America and educated voters alike. The Susan B. Anthony group's interests and its committed voters no longer benignly overlap with those of the business sector, which is exactly why the extremist laws enacted by Florida Republicans are starting to cost the state millions in business revenues. It's likely just the tip of the iceberg for the Sunshine State.
It’s also why the Ohio Business Roundtable, Ohio Manufacturers Association, and Ohio Council of Retail Merchants—three of Ohio’s “Big 6″ business groups—declined to take sides on Issue 1.
A key proponent of the ballot measure, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, admitted on national television this week that Republicans and forced birthers have lost the business community on the issue.
“The coalition on the right, when it holds together, we can get things done,” LaRose told MSNBC's Chuck Todd Thursday. “It can be social, cultural conservatives and business conservatives, and I consider myself both of those. But when the business community started to think this was about abortion, they walked off the battlefield."
LaRose, who recently announced a Senate bid, can thank himself for that revelation after he confessed in June Issue 1 was "100%" about keeping the abortion rights amendment from succeeding in November.
This week's results don't exactly bode well for his candidacy, but they will likely prove even more ominous for the fortunes of the Republican Party moving forward.
Take that, GOP schemes to rig ballot measures! On this week's episode of "The Downballot," co-hosts David Nir and David Beard gleefully dive into the failure of Issue 1, which was designed to thwart a November vote to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. The Davids discuss why Republican efforts to sneak their amendment through during a summertime election were doomed to fail; how many conservative counties swung sharply toward the "no" side; and what the results mean both for Sherrod Brown's reelection hopes and a future measure to institute true redistricting reform.
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