Richmond, Virginia. — Virginia Republicans intensified their criticism this week of the rhetoric utilized by their Democratic opponents in abortion-focused messaging in essential legislative elections this 12 months.
A latest wave of Democratic-sponsored adverts and mailers in battleground areas, which is anticipated to find out political management of the Normal Meeting, has warned that Republicans will use their newfound legislative majority to ban abortion, together with in circumstances the place the being pregnant outcomes from rape or Mom’s life. at risk. Virginia, presently below divided political management, permits elective first- and second-trimester abortions, and is the one Southern state to not implement new restrictions for the reason that finish of Roe v. Wade.
Of their letters, Democrats cited latest strict bans enacted in different GOP-led states, together with Republican candidates’ legislative information, previous public statements and information articles, to bolster their claims. Republicans, who’re campaigning largely on GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposal to ban abortions after 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest and the lifetime of the mom, say their opponents are misrepresenting these sources or the candidates’ previous statements in an exploitative try to push a shift.
“With no imaginative and prescient to current for the commonwealth on this election and nothing to encourage Virginians to vote for his or her extremist candidates, Virginia Democrats are returning to their drained techniques of outright lies and blatant fearmongering,” Youngkin’s political motion committee mentioned in a press launch Tuesday.
Each Normal Meeting seat is on the poll this 12 months, with early voting already underway, in an election cycle that may decide partisan management of the Home of Delegates, now led by the GOP, and the Democratic-controlled Senate. Virginia’s tight political divide and weird off-year schedule imply the contests sometimes appeal to important nationwide consideration and are sometimes seen as a possible indicator of subsequent 12 months’s federal election.
Republican staffers and marketing campaign operatives in Virginia have been arguing for weeks that Democrats are exaggerating or outright mendacity of their messaging. However the dialog escalated Tuesday after Joel Griffin, the Democratic candidate in a aggressive Senate race within the Fredericksburg space, revealed a brand new advert criticizing his Republican challenger, Tara Durant.
“Tara Durant helps permitting Virginia to ban abortions with none exceptions. … She helps permitting Virginia to pressure a 10-year-old rape sufferer to proceed to the tip,” the audio system warn within the video.
Citations for each statements had been included in a 2022 Fb put up from Durant praising the U.S. Supreme Court docket’s choice to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Durant, a present state Home member who mentioned she helps the governor’s 15-week proposal, responded by saying Griffin “went too far” with the brand new announcement.
The advert “smears Tara Durant — a mom of two younger girls — as eager to pressure a 10-year-old rape sufferer to hold a toddler. Such a troubling and baseless cost deserves nothing lower than clear condemnation,” her marketing campaign mentioned in a press release.
Griffin then responded partly by pointing to a put up from Durant’s aggressive main that described Durant as a “fetus-fixing champion” and “100% pro-life.”
Home Democratic Chief Don Scott argued in an interview Wednesday that Republicans are all of a sudden softening their rhetoric and longstanding opposition to abortion entry on the recommendation of pollsters. Anti-abortion teams have seen a string of losses in statewide poll battles for the reason that U.S. Supreme Court docket ended constitutional protections for abortion final 12 months.
Scott and different Democrats additionally say they’re skeptical that the Republican majority wouldn’t search to go additional than Youngkin’s 15-week proposal — which might nonetheless accommodate most abortions, in keeping with the most recent out there federal knowledge. They usually cite a Washington Put up report final 12 months that Youngkin advised a conservative viewers that he would “gladly and cheerfully” signal “any invoice…to guard life.”
Youngkin’s press workplace didn’t straight reply to questions from The Related Press on Wednesday about whether or not the governor would signal a harder ban, or laws containing no exceptions. However Home Speaker Todd Gilbert mentioned he did not consider a measure extra restrictive than the governor’s present proposal may clear the Legislature’s path.
“Let’s use me for example. I am no much less a pro-life member of the Legislature than I ever was. However I perceive that is not the place of nearly all of Virginians on this problem,” he mentioned in an interview, describing the governor’s proposal as an try to seek out consensus in Views.
He added that if Republicans preserve their majority within the Home of Representatives, “there will probably be no deviation” from the marketing campaign platform. Gilbert mentioned Democrats have proven lately that they’re outliers on the problem, whether or not of their help of eradicating restrictions on abortion later in being pregnant or of their protection of a proposal to enshrine a “elementary proper to reproductive freedom” in america. State structure.
In different swing districts throughout the state, discussions just like the Griffin-Durant commerce have taken place.
In a aggressive Senate race in suburban Richmond, Democratic candidate Schuyler Van Valkenburg’s marketing campaign ran an advert that includes a girl who mentioned his Republican opponent, Sen. Siobhan Dunavant, “needs to ban abortion and take away girls’s selection.”
Dunavant, an obstetrician-gynecologist, sponsored laws this session that might add restrictions on third-trimester abortions, and has since mentioned she helps authorized abortion at 15 weeks and later solely in circumstances of rape and incest to save lots of the mom’s life If this occurs. Circumstances of extreme fetal malformations.
“I don’t help abortion bans,” Dunavant mentioned in an advert that aired shortly after.
(Tags for translation) Politics