Florida’s Abortion Rights Battle: Mucarsel-Powell Challenges Rick Scott

(CTN News) – Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, the leading Democratic candidate to unseat Republican Sen. Rick Scott, rallied health-care workers in front of Jackson Memorial Hospital on a recent weekday morning and made the pitch that has become central to her campaign: Floridians should vote in November to protect abortion rights in a referendum — and if they care about that, they should vote for her as well.

“Access to abortion is on the ballot this November,” Mucarsel-Powell, a former South Florida congresswoman who lost her seat to a Republican in 2020, told the audience gathered to watch her accept the endorsement of the Service Employees International Union’s local and state chapters. “And if we want to stop these extreme bans, we have to stop the extremists that are pushing them.”

Mucarsel-Powell and her fellow Florida Democrats have not won a United States Senate contest or an electoral vote in this once-purple state since 2012. They believe they have found something that would draw voters to the polls and help her and President Biden win the state: a November referendum that would entrench abortion access in the state’s constitution, thereby overturning a near-total abortion prohibition that went into effect earlier this year.

Polls reveal that the referendum is quite popular. However, several Democrats and voting experts in Florida worry that the proposal will assist increase Democratic turnout in a presidential election year.

They point to Republicans’ sizable lead over Democrats in registered Florida voters, certain Republicans’ willingness to support the abortion amendment alongside their party’s candidates, and Mucarsel-Powell’s relative lack of statewide prominence.

“It’s going to be really difficult, I think, for this measure to be the magic bullet to help Democrats,” said Dan Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida who has long studied the influence of ballot initiatives. “I don’t see a lot of Republicans breaking rank and supporting Democratic candidates up and down the ballot over this issue.”

And the groups pushing for the referendum, which rely on independent and Republican support to secure the 60 percent vote required to pass, are staying away from partisan politics.

“This work is completely distinct. This is a basic human rights initiative. “It is not a political campaign,” said Lauren Brenzel, campaign director for Yes on 4, the coalition advocating for the amendment.

Abortion rights campaigners have seen electoral victory in the two years since Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized the procedure nationwide. Voters defeated anti-abortion ballot proposals in Republican states such as Kansas and Kentucky, while Democrats won midterm elections in campaigns centered on reproductive rights.

Abortion Rights and Elections

However, this year’s presidential election, the first in the post-Roe era, will put Democrats and abortion rights supporters to the test.

Mucarsel-Powell, who served one term in Congress before being defeated in a close race in 2020, has made abortion access a cornerstone of her campaign, frequently citing the state’s six-week abortion ban as an example of how Scott and Republicans are undermining the freedom her family sought when they immigrated from Ecuador to the United States.

Her campaign has held roundtables with Floridians, released digital advertising, and discussed the subject on social media ahead of her August primary. Mucarsel-Powell raises more money and receives more endorsements than her opponents.

Mucarsel-Powell, 53, agreed that abortion rights are not a party issue, which is why she hopes to persuade people from all sides of the political spectrum that if they support the ballot referendum to repeal the abortion restriction, they should also support her.

“The choice is going to be so clear that if they’re coming out to vote to protect access to abortion, they’re going to vote for the candidate that’s going to make sure that we protect access to abortion at the federal level — not for the man that wants to pass a national abortion ban and has his name on the bill,” Mucarsel-Powell said in an interview, referring to Scott’s previous support for a nationwide prohibition.

“They need 60 percent,” she said, referring to the ballot proposal backers. “I think they’ll get 60 percent of the vote. “I need fifty plus one.”

Scott, who is running for another term and to succeed Mitch McConnell (Ky.) as Senate Republican leader, has sought to soften his stance on abortion as Republicans across the country grapple with the issue’s power in driving Democratic victories in the years since Roe was overturned.

Scott, 71, is opposed to Florida’s ballot measure and has stated that if he were still governor, he would have signed the state’s six-week moratorium into law. He has also shown support for in vitro fertilization and feels that abortion access should be determined by individual states.

Even if the abortion referendum is approved, “it doesn’t really matter for the Senate race if nobody knows who Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is,” said Chris Hartline, Scott’s senior strategist. “And that’s the problem that she has right now.”

Some Democratic operatives contend that the ballot proposal alone will not have a revolutionary impact in the state, especially as economic anxiety remains high across the country and voters continue to tell pollsters that the economy is the most pressing problem on their minds.

Democrats in the state likewise believe that turning around the party’s fortunes will take time, money, and organization. So far, longtime party operatives say they haven’t seen anything that suggests a real campaign to win a state where Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 900,000 in voter registration.

Florida has become a “mecca for MAGA.” It’s quite tough to locate and seek out any kind of silver lining,” said Fernand Amandi, who shaped former President Barack Obama’s Hispanic outreach in Florida and nationally in 2008 and 2012.

The Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee have consistently said that Donald Trump’s home state is in play, and they intend to invest money there this year.

However, when Puck News recently questioned Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon whether Florida is a battleground state, she responded with a single word: “No.”

Dan Kanninen, the Biden-Harris battleground states director, then walked back O’Malley Dillon’s statement, saying that the campaign feels Florida is “in play for President Biden and Democrats up and down the ballot.”