The Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman called the race for Lipinski with 94 percent of precincts reporting and Lipinski leading his challenger, Marie Newman, 50.9 percent to 49.1 percent. While more voters in suburban Will County backed Newman, Lipinski’s advantage in the city of Chicago put him over the top. Over the weekend, the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List deployed 70 canvassers to target pro-life Democrats to get out to vote.
It’s not surprising that Democrats who disagreed with Lipinski’s stance on abortion would want a representative in a safe Democratic seat who shares their views. What was remarkable about the intensity of left-wing primary challenge is that just 15 years ago, many moderately pro-choice Democrats would have voted the same way as Lipinski has on the actual legislation that’s come up over the last decade concerning abortion—specifically on taxpayer-funding for abortions and late-term abortions.
As THE WEEKLY STANDARD recently reported:
The Democratic party has moved so far left on the issue of abortion that what was once considered a moderately pro-choice position is now embraced only by self-described pro-life Democrats in Congress. When the partial-birth abortion ban passed the Senate 64-34 in 2003, it did so with the support of 17 Democrats, including supporters of Roe v. Wade like Pat Leahy, Joe Biden, and Tom Daschle. It passed the House with 218 Republican and 63 Democratic votes. When the House voted in 2017 to ban most abortions after the fifth month of pregnancy—when infants can feel pain and survive if born prematurely—it had the support of only three Democrats. And the bill has the support of just three Democrats in the Senate: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. In 2016, the Democratic party platform explicitly called, for the first time, for the repeal of the Hyde amendment, which would open the door to unlimited taxpayer funding of abortion for Medicaid recipients. Groups like NARAL and Planned Parenthood are laying the groundwork to repeal the Hyde amendment—which has been on the books since 1977 and has decreased the number of abortions by hundreds of thousands over the years—the next time Democrats control Congress and the White House. Despite increasing Democratic conformity on the issue, the Lipinski primary is still causing a rift in the party. When Congressman Kurt Schrader of Oregon, a member of the moderate and conservative Democrats’ Blue Dog coalition, was asked about Kirsten Gillibrand’s endorsement, he told McClatchy: “It’s bullshit. . . . She used to be a Blue Dog, and then miraculously turns around?” Gillibrand, the former moderate, appears likely to run for president as a staunch progressive.
Lipinski is arguably the last pro-life liberal in the House (the two other pro-life Democrats have more conservative records). He has a 7 percent NRA rating and voted for Obamacare when it included an amendment prohibiting taxpayer-funding of abortion but against the final version of Obamacare when that amendment was dropped.
