One leading anti-abortion group thinks it can convince Latinos to vote Republican, even in the Donald Trump era.
Susan B. Anthony List is planning to knock on the doors of several hundred thousand Democrats and Hispanics in Florida by November to make sure they know presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton supports expansive abortion rights.
It’s the first time SBA List, which aims to elect abortion opponents and women in particular, has specifically targeted Hispanics, a demographic that has swung strongly toward Democrats for the past decade, but which feels more uncomfortable with abortion than the general public.
SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser admits winning them over could be especially tricky this year, with Trump at the top of the GOP ticket. Trump, who often calls for a wall on the Mexican border, recently outraged even Republicans when he suggested a Hispanic judge shouldn’t decide a lawsuit against Trump University.
Yet Dannenfelser knows that for Republican candidates to win in Florida, they need to appeal to Hispanics. She says her group has done internal testing showing they can sway Hispanic voters by 7 percent to vote for Trump if they appeal to Clinton’s opposition to a mid-term abortion ban, a margin that could swing a battleground state like Florida.
Her resolve was only strengthened, she says, by the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday striking down Texas’ abortion clinic regulations and sharply limiting how states may regulate providers.
There are other legislative venues open to Republicans — like getting more states to pass midterm abortion bans — but the ruling also reconfirms that if conservatives don’t get abortion-opposing candidates elected, they’ll never get conservatives on the bench and win their battles in the courts.
“The court just made argument number one for why electoral politics is vital for the health of this nation, and why right now is such an inflection point in where our nation is headed,” Dannenfelser told the Washington Examiner.
“We have to available ourselves of this power right now, that is to elect lawmakers that will only affirm the right to life,” she added.
SBA List launched its Florida ground game last October, enlisting 200 canvassers managed by full-time staff in the state’s major metropolitan areas of Miami, Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville. National Field Director Tim Edson said he plans to add more staff in Fort Meyers and along the panhandle.
As of last week, the canvassers had knocked on more than 200,000 doors. Edson said that six weeks ago, they started focusing more of their efforts on reaching around 10,000 Democrat and Hispanic voters in the remaining months before the election.
They’ve got their work cut out, as President Obama won Florida in 2012 with 60 percent of the Hispanic vote. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is likely to do well among Hispanics, although he’s facing a tough reelection battle. But Trump isn’t likely to pull in more Latinos than Mitt Romney did in the last presidential election, and some polls suggest the real estate mogul could do much worse.
SBA List hasn’t endorsed Trump, something Dannenfelser says she’s still considering. Despite a history of supporting abortion rights, Trump has promised conservatives lately that he’s had a change of heart and would nominate only abortion-opposing judges.
Her group’s internal research shows that Democratic voters could be motivated by 8 percent to vote for Trump when hearing a message about taxpayer funding going to groups that provide abortions, Dannenfelser said.
But SBA List is mainly focusing on turning Hispanic voters against Clinton with the abortion issue.
Fifty-one percent of Hispanics feel abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, compared to 43 percent of the population, according to a 2014 survey by the Pew Research Center. In a 2014 survey by Univision, 54 percent of Hispanics said abortion should be always illegal or legal only to save the mother’s life.
When canvassers knock on doors in Florida, they tell residents that Clinton opposes banning abortions midway through pregnancy and on the verge of when a fetus could survive if born, a prohibition that more than a dozen states have passed in recent years.
“We’re probably doing more than any other outside group in the country to make sure Hillary loses,” Dannenfelser said. “Right now, it’s Hillary’s name that is the great motivator at every door.”
