'A seismic event': This Democrat-elect views abortion as a winning issue in competitive swing districts

30 August 2022

On Tuesday, August 24, Democrat Pat Ryan won two separate U.S. House of Representatives elections in Upstate New York: a special election in which he defeated Republican Marcus Molinaro in New York’s 19th Congressional District and a congressional primary in which he defeated fellow Democrats in New York’s 18th Congressional District. Ryan’s next challenge is going up against Republican nominee Colin Schmitt in the general election in the 18th.

In both of the races that Ryan won — the special election against Molinaro and the primary against other Democrats — he aggressively campaigned on the abortion issue, emphasizing that he is pro-choice and voicing his displeasure over the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade after 49 years with its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling. The word “bellwether” has been used a great deal in connection with the special election, as Ryan defeated Molinaro in a swing district — not a deep blue district like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district in parts of The Bronx and Queens. And he made abortion a high priority in that race, as he will surely do in the general election race against Schmitt.

Interviewed by Newsweek for a Q&A article published on August 30, Ryan laid out some reasons why his special election victory is good news for Democrats and good news for abortion rights.

Ryan, a military veteran, told Newsweek, “When the government tries to tell women what to do with their bodies, when the government tries to tell people and families how to make these personal decisions with lifelong consequences in every dimension, that's not who we are as a country…. We're just seeing an extreme, extreme ideology on the right that's increasingly disconnected from the vast preponderance of the American people. And I think what we're basically seeing is when those sort of guardrails get hit, like in the Dobbs decision, Americans stand up and say, regardless of party, frankly, 'This is not who we are as a country.'”

Newsweek asked Ryan how the abortion issue “played out with male voters” compared to female voters in that special election. And he responded, “I think people understand — men and women, all people, understand — that when a fundamental freedom is taken away from one of us, it affects all of us. And that when the right to have access to abortions is taken away, it's the beginning, as telegraphed by Justice (Clarence) Thomas, of potential grabs and taking away of other rights: LGBTQ rights, for example, in marriage equality. I mean, the fact that the vast preponderance of Republicans in Congress wouldn't support a measure making contraception legal in the country — talk about extreme, talk about disconnected from reality.”

When Thomas voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in Dobbs, he also called for the U.S. Supreme Court to “reconsider” decisions that offer nationwide protection for contraception (1965’s Griswold v. Connecticut) and gay rights (2003’s Lawrence v. Texas, 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges). Subsequently, most Republicans in the House voted against a measure that sought to codify Griswold.

Ryan told Newsweek, “Clearly, there was there was either a willful ignorance or a complete miscalculation, or both, by Republicans. It's like they didn't actually talk to people about this. They just foisted this extreme idea on folks, and once people understood the consequences, it was like, 'Well, no way. That is not what we want.'”

In 2022, countless pundits have predicted that Democrats would suffer a major red wave and lose both branches of Congress. Now, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is acknowledging that Democrats have a good chance at holding the Senate, although he is still bullish on the GOP’s prospects for “flipping” the House. And Ryan believes that the Dobbs ruling has done a lot to improve the environment for Democrats in the 2022 midterms.

“Certainly, the catalyst was the Dobbs decision; there's no doubt about it,” Ryan told Newsweek. “It was a seismic event. And what I think has really happened is people who believe in that right — not just Democrats, a wide coalition of people who agree with the concept of reproductive freedom — are on the offensive and able to say, 'Look, look at this blatant power grab of a fundamental freedom from tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of Americans.' And the threat became very real, not theoretical.”

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