Democrats across the country are once again bullish that abortion politics will propel them to electoral nirvana following the party’s blowout victory in the Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election.
But the operatives behind that successful campaign are warning that the calculus isn’t quite so simple.
Four top aides to Justice-elect Janet Protasiewicz’s campaign — campaign manager Alejandro Verdin, general consultant Patrick Guarasci, media consultant Ben Nuckels and top spokesperson Sam Roecker — said that running on abortion doesn’t work without tying it to a larger message. They argued that the candidates’ own values matter when making abortion an issue. So too do the legislation or laws at stake.
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“We were careful to create a narrative early on about who Janet was, what was at stake in this election and who Dan Kelly was, and abortion fit within that,” Guarasci said. “Our paid media ends with ‘he’s an extremist that doesn’t care about us.’ Everything related back to that.”
The insights from Protasiewicz’s campaign team offers a note of caution — and a roadmap — to Democrats who think abortion has transformed the electoral landscape in their favor. Broadly speaking, the issue plays in their favor, but the experience in Wisconsin suggests that it will take a nuanced strategy to fully reap the political benefits.
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Protasiewicz’s team clearly believed it had the right formula to make abortion work as an issue after their 11-point, 200,000-plus-vote win.
Over 35 percent of general election TV spots from her and her allies mentioned the topic, according to data provided to POLITICO by the ad tracking firm AdImpact. But it wasn’t a “one-size-fits-all message” on abortion rights, Nuckels said. Their messaging on abortion rights played into the larger campaign strategy of painting their opponent, conservative former state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly, as an extremist more broadly.
Focusing on abortion was a message that “encouraged turnout and persuaded voters, particularly suburban voters,” in regions like Madison, Milwaukee and La Crosse, he said.
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But, notably, the reaction was regional. “In Green Bay,” said Nuckels, “it wasn’t a factor there.” In fact, he said, the campaign believed a broad advertising push on abortion in and around Green Bay would motivate more people to vote for Kelly over Protasiewicz. The campaign did not run a single broadcast television spot on abortion in the Green Bay media market.
“We didn’t want to drive out voters for our opponent or solidify them behind him,” Nuckels said. “We needed to have much more targeted communication in places like Green Bay.”
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Instead, the campaign relied on targeted cable and satellite ads, along with digital and social media, to reach the most pro-abortion rights voters residing in the Green Bay market, an area that is still heavily Republican and remains key in any Republican turnout machine. According to data compiled by Daily Kos, Trump won over 57 percent of the vote in that market in 2020 — and Kelly won by a smaller margin, taking 53 percent of the vote.
Protasiewicz’s team also attributed its success to a strategy to advertise early in a race where the two candidates started with fairly low name identification; “Define early, don’t play defense, be aggressive,” as Guarasci put it.
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They were able to adopt that aggressive posture in large part because they had a war chest that was basically unheard of for a down ballot statewide election. The campaign spent $15 million on TV ads alone, an unprecedented amount for a judicial race, and the campaign and state party combined to spend over $600,000 just on research efforts.
The campaign made an effort to reach voters beyond Democratic diehards. Guarasci said it was important to reach all voters where they were, from expansive broadcast buys to even advertising on conservative radio to — in part — needle Kelly. That also meant moving off of abortion when needed. Protasiewicz’s campaign talked about crime and public safety early and often.
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In fact, crime was the top issue that Protasiewicz and her allies mentioned in TV ads, according to AdImpact data. Over 60 percent of total TV ads from her camp were about crime. Until recently, Republicans have viewed the issue as a key advantage they have over Democrats.\
“For us, abortion was the single largest driving factor for most of the state. For the Republicans, for Dan Kelly, it was crime,” Nuckels said. “And so part of our early strategy was not to give Dan Kelly a free ride on public safety and crime.”
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Protasiewicz was attacked relentlessly by Republicans on the issue — over 90 percent of their ads mentioned crime, often targeting her as a soft on crime jurist who gave too lenient sentences — but aides say their early advertising start helped inoculate her.
Her ads often highlighted her history as a prosecutor and a judge, saying she knows what it takes to keep a community safe. Her campaign also attacked Kelly for never overseeing a criminal case and for some clients he defended as a private attorney.
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“A top line for me is do not cede public safety,” Guarasci said. “We knew that they were going to try to run up the score on that point, and if we could kind of neutralize it or not lose that issue overwhelmingly, we knew that people would hear us on abortion and all these other issues.”
The advice that Protasiewicz team gave to Democrats heading into 2024 was, ultimately, not to be afraid to go after Republicans as too extreme — and not just on abortion. Democrats win, they said, when they establish an overarching media strategy about tying the campaign to a fight against extremism.
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“The extremism of the right is rejected by American voters writ large,” said Guarasci. “Don’t be afraid to point out this and label it an extremist agenda.”
The campaign also benefited, they said, from having the airwaves to themselves early in the general election. Kelly’s campaign was absent on the airwaves in the early goings of the general election, while Protasiewicz went up almost immediately.
That is not an advantage most Democrats will have in 2024. While this year’s state Supreme Court race had over $45 million of spending — the most for any judicial race in American history — that amount of money will be a small drop in the bucket next year.
Still, Protasiewicz’s aides said, there are valuable lessons for Democrats here.
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“It’s what the electorate wanted. They wanted normalcy, they wanted common sense,” Verdin said.
