Lindsey Graham gifts Democrats an anti-abortion bogeyman in final stretch of campaign season

The South Carolina senator may just have thrown away control of Congress, writes John Bowden

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) speaks during news conference to announce a new bill on abortion restrictions (Getty Images)

If Democrats hold on to the Senate this year, they will have an unlikely ally to thank: Lindsey Graham.

A South Carolina Republican and Donald Trump loyalist who has continued to remain friendly with the former president even as he faces a bevy of criminal investigations, Mr Graham is hardly the person one would expect to hand Senate Democrats a gift roughly a month and a half before control of the Senate is decided for the next two years.

But that’s exactly what happened on Tuesday as Mr Graham, flanked by anti-abortion activists from the Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America group and other opponents of the practice, celebrated the end of Roe vs Wade and vowed to ban abortion after 15 weeks into a woman’s pregnancy should his party retake the Senate.

“If we take back the House and Senate, I can assure you we’ll have a vote on our bill,” the senator proudly declared.

He and others pointed to support nationwide for some restrictions on the practice, proclaiming that the sentiment of the American people was on their side. It was a clear reversal of policy for the recently reelected Graham, who will not face an election challenge until 2026 and stated just a few months ago that he thought abortion rights should be a state issue.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pointed that much out, as she told reporters: "I'm gonna quote Lindsey Graham from August 7, 2022 and he said ... 'I think states should decide the issue of abortion.'”

Some polls show a majority — albeit a slim one — of Americans support banning the practice of abortion with some exceptions after 15 weeks into the pregancy, roughly when the second trimester begins. Others show the opposite, including one from The Washington Post and ABC News this spring.

But those simple levels of support don’t tell the full story. When it comes to actually driving voters to the polls, opposition to new abortion restrictions has proven time and time again to be more likely to spur a voter to back a candidate than does support for such bans.

“Abortion is one of those issues where I think your average voters probably have very nuanced opinions on it. But politics doesn't lend itself well to nuance. And I can see the headlines about this bill, saying, “Republicans push for national abortion ban”, said J Miles Coleman, an associate editor with the election forecasting blog Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

Forecasters like Mr Coleman have “been really surprised” regarding how “much more of a common animating force in the electorate [fears of abortion bans] are than perhaps we initially thought”, he told The Independent in an interview.

Those realities were playing out day-by-day in congressional races around the country even before Mr Graham’s attention-grabbing legislation was unveiled on Tuesday. Several GOP candidates have notably walked back their positions on restricting abortion, or in the case of Arizona’s Blake Masters, the Senate hopeful attempting to unseat astronaut-turned-lawmaker Mark Kelly, have attempted to hide their positions entirely. Mr Masters walked into a storm of controversy in recent weeks after it was discovered by several news outlets that he had entirely erased any mention of support for a federal “personhood” bill or amendment on his campaign website.

The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, seemed all too aware of those realities on Tuesday, just minutes after Mr Graham’s press conference. Speaking at his own presser, he seemed to dismiss the idea that such a ban would even have the support of a majority of his caucus.

“I think most of the members of my conference prefer that this be dealt with at the state level,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju.

Democrats, meanwhile, are leaning in to the issue with enthusiasm.

Introducing himself onstage this weekend as “John Fetterwoman”, Pennsylvania Lt Gov John Fetterman has sniped at his Republican opponent over his abortion stance for weeks, using as ammunition a clip of his celebrity TV doctor opponent, Mehmet Oz, calling the practice “murder”. And in New York, Democrat Pat Ryan won a special election in a redrawn district (that nevertheless in a previous incarnation had soundly supported Donald Trump in 2016) by framing abortion rights as a central part of his campaign.

Republicans were already facing grim realities regarding their hopes to retake the Senate. The open seat in Pennsylvania, held by a retiring Republican, is trending clearly in the direction of the Democratic candidate while Dr Oz has flailed in poll after poll and struggled to depict himself as authentic.

In Ohio, JD Vance struggles with some of those same issues, and trails Congressman Tim Ryan in polls of that state’s Senate race where another retiring Republican currently holds a seat. The party remains favoured to take the House, but without control of both chambers could at best hope to stymie Joe Biden’s legislative agenda and launch investigations of his family from the lower chamber.

Now, it appears that the South Carolina senator has lobbed a hand grenade into his party’s already-damaged campaign to win the upper chamber and opened a can of worms that candidates in tough races around the country will almost certainly wish he hadn’t.

“We were already seeing high turnout on the Republican side,” Mr Coleman explained. “So it's like, okay, you know, maybe this will help them with turnout, but it's, you know, how much more they gonna get? So, I agree, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't on its face seem to make too much political sense.”

And while some pollsters warn that candidates such as Mr Fetterman are benefiting from a “blue mirage” that overstates their lead in voter surveys, Sabato’s analysts say that Pat Ryan’s victory in New York could indicate that it could be the left’s turn to defy polling data and overperform expectations.

“[M]aybe this time it's the Democrats who ended up outperforming expectations. I think there are...there are certainly the ingredients there for that,” Mr Coleman said.

Quoting a fellow forecaster, he added: “Republicans have basically pissed off the largest voting demographic in the country.”