The Problem of Transgenders: The Post-Dobbs Campaign on Probolic Abortion Right Across Suburban Kentucky

Suburban voters outside of the state’s biggest cities voted overwhelmingly to establish the right to an abortion. Democrat Andy Beshear, who was elected Governor of Kentucky in 2010, has run hard on certain issues like abortion rights, and won the state’s two largest counties. He defeated his Republican opponent in both Campbell and Kenton counties, places where the Republicans used to reside.

Two years ago, Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the race for Governor of Virginia had some democrats concerned about their lock on the suburbs outside the nation’s capital. Those same suburbs on Tuesday made Danica Roem, a Democrat, the first transgender state senator in the South, while helping Democrats seize a majority in the Virginia General Assembly and hold control of the State Senate.

“We let the Democrats drive the message and make it all about abortion,” said John Whitbeck, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia who lives in Loudoun County, a Washington exurb. “The Republican Party has to modernize its message on this issue if we’re going to convince Democrats and independents to cross over and vote Republican. The reality is Virginia has some districts that vote blue. There is no way that we can win those districts.

According to Heather Williams, who is interim president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, Mr. Youngkin’s victory may have been a result of the parents’ concern about the school closings that happened during the coronavirus outbreak.

She said that parents recoiled from Republican efforts to ban books that contained L.G.B.T.Q. themes, and more generally inject socially conservative views into the school system.

The Republican Party base expects its candidates to prioritize abortion prohibitions. To ignore these calls is to risk a demoralized base on Election Day next year, making the path to victory that much narrower for a party that has won the national popular vote for the presidency only once in the past 35 years. In the ensuing elections, it has been proven that protecting abortion rights makes voters more liberal and swings them towards Democrats. Given that Mr. Trump faces the challenge of expanding his coalition beyond that of his 2020 shortfall, such a development could doom his hopes of returning to the White House.

The post-Dobbs political battles have been only fought at the state level. Republicans in Congress, with control of the House of Representatives, have shown little appetite for passing a federal ban, saying the issue is best left to the states to decide. The implausible path for such legislation through a Democratic majority in the Senate, not to mention a certain veto from Mr. Biden, has spared the Republican majority in the House from any substantial pressure to advance such legislation. The Republican senator in Ohio called for a 15-week abortion ban after his state’s overwhelming support of abortion rights.

The impact on elections of abortion rights has been the most consequential in the last year and a half, where voters think that abortion rights are in danger and that their vote is used to protect or protect abortion access. The effects of abortion on the ballot in states like Pennsylvania and Nevada have been similar, although it was the issue at the forefront of campaign messaging.