Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz signed a bill into law Tuesday that enshrines the “fundamental right” to access abortion in the state.
Abortion is already legal in Minnesota, but in the aftermath of the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, the Protect Reproductive Options Act goes a step further by outlining that every person has the fundamental right to make “autonomous decisions” about their own reproductive health as well as the right to refuse reproductive health care.
“This is very simple, very right to the point,” Walz said Tuesday on “CNN Tonight.” “We trust women in Minnesota, and that’s not what came out of the [Supreme Court’s] decision, so I think it’s critically important that we build a fire wall.”
With the passage of the bill, Minnesota is now the first state to codify abortion via legislative action since Roe v. Wade was reversed, the office of the bill’s lead author in Minnesota’s state Senate, told CNN.
“Last November, Minnesotans spoke loud and clear: They want their reproductive rights protected – not stripped away,” Walz said in a news release. “Today, we are delivering on our promise to put up a firewall against efforts to reverse reproductive freedom. No matter who sits on the Minnesota Supreme Court, this legislation will ensure Minnesotans have access to reproductive health care for generations to come. Here in Minnesota, your access to reproductive health care and your freedom to make your own health care decisions are preserved and protected.”
The bill states that local government cannot restrict a person’s ability to exercise the “fundamental right” to reproductive freedom. It also clarifies that this right extends to accessing contraception, sterilization, family planning, fertility services and counseling regarding reproductive health care.
“The Pro Act also goes beyond just granting those rights to abortion, it really says all reproductive healthcare decisions aren’t our business, including access to contraception, including access to really anything that is related to personal and private decisions about your reproductive life,” Megan Peterson, the executive director of pro-abortion rights campaign UnRestrict Minnesota, told CNN following Walz’s signing of the bill.
In a letter to Walz ahead of the signing, Republican legislature leaders argued that the bill went too far and urged the governor to veto what they called “an extreme law.”
“As the PRO Act was being rushed through the legislature, Republicans offered reasonable amendments with guardrails to protect women and children,” state Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson and House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth wrote, “Sadly, each of these amendments were struck down by a Democrat majority.”
In 1995, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in Doe v. Gomez that abortion was a fundamental right protected under the state’s constitution. The Protect Reproductive Options Act ensures that even in the event of a new state Supreme Court reversing the ruling, the right to abortion will be protected under state law.
“By passing this law, Minnesotans will have a second layer of protection for their existing reproductive rights. A future Minnesota Supreme Court could overturn Doe v. Gomez, but with the PRO Act now in State law, Minnesotans will still have a right to Reproductive healthcare,” Luke Bishop, a spokesperson for Democratic State Sen. Jennifer McEwen, the bill’s author in the Senate, told CNN over email.
Following the governor’s signature of the bill, the White House applauded Minnesota’s efforts, pointing to the popular support for women’s rights to make their own health care decisions.
“Americans overwhelmingly support a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions, as so clearly demonstrated last fall when voters turned out to defend access to abortion – including for ballot initiatives in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, and Vermont,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
“While Congressional Republicans continue their support for extreme policies including a national abortion ban, the President and Vice President are calling on Congress to restore the protections of Roe in federal law,” she wrote. “Until then, the Biden-Harris Administration will continue its work to protect access to abortion and support state leaders in defending women’s reproductive rights.”
This story has been updated with additional information.
Women living in states that restrict or ban abortion face greater economic insecurity than those living in states where they have access, new research finds.
Since the nearly seven months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, half of all states – 26 in total – have implemented new abortion restrictions or all-out bans.
In nearly all 26 states, there are lower minimum wages, unionization levels, access to Medicaid and unemployment benefits, as well as higher rates of incarceration than states with more lenient abortion policies, according to new research by the Economic Policy Institute.
“These economic policies all compound on each other. And you add to that an abortion ban, it just compounds this financial stress, this economic insecurity,” said Asha Banerjee, an economic analyst with the institute and the author of the report.
Last year, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made a similar argument to the Financial Oversight Council.
“I believe that eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades,” Yellen told lawmakers in May.
The lack of abortion access has the greatest economic impact on women of color, especially those already in dire financial conditions, according to Banerjee.
“In many of these states, especially the states which have banned abortion, many of the women who are facing economic challenges already are also women of color,” she said.
Raising the minimum wage is a powerful tool that has been known to have significant impact on closing racial income gaps. But nearly two-thirds of abortion restrictive states have a $7.25 minimum wage, the lowest legal hourly wage for most workers in the United States.
The average minimum wage across the 26 states is $8.17, lower than the average $11.92 for states with no restrictions. (Many of those states also have a higher cost of living, however.)
“If the person denied an abortion is also working a minimum wage job, the negative economic effect is compounded,” the report states.
Many of those low-wage jobs also do not offer benefits like health care, which is why access to Medicaid is critical.
“Medicaid is a lifeline for low-income families and low-income women when jobs might not offer adequate healthcare. Medicaid in the immediate postpartum period is especially important,” said Banerjee.
Just 12 states have not expanded Medicaid benefits since the 2010 Obamacare law, and all of them have restrictive abortion policies.
However, some states with total abortion bans, with few exceptions, have expanded Medicaid, including Missouri. And in five other abortion restrictive states (Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and South Dakota later this year) residents voted to expand the benefit.
Access to unemployment insurance is another key indicator of a state’s commitment to economic support for residents. Forty-two percent of residents have access to unemployment benefits in states that have abortion protections. Compare that to 30% in states with abortion restrictions.
Even if unemployment is accessible, the amount differs from state to state. For example, in Mississippi, a state with a total abortion ban with limited exceptions, weekly unemployment checks average $217. Meanwhile in Massachusetts, which has a more protective 24-week abortion ban – checks average $556 weekly.
“When you have unemployment insurance it helps create financial stability. These states which have abortion bans also have really terrible unemployment insurance systems with really low benefits which do not help one support oneself,” said Banerjee.
Although women make up a smaller percentage of those incarcerated than men, it is the economic category with the greatest difference between abortion protected and abortion-restricted states. The rate of incarceration in states with restrictive or total bans on abortion is more than one and a half times higher than the rate of incarceration for states with abortion protections.
“It’s very much a racial justice issue because Black and Hispanic women are very disproportionately incarcerated. And that has huge economic impacts on future earnings and the ability to get a job,” said Banerjee.
In some states with abortion restrictions and higher rates of incarceration – legislation has suggested also criminalizing women, doctors or anyone aiding a woman in seeking an abortion.
“The incarceration argument is especially important because in these states where abortion bans have come into play, there’s a huge criminalization aspect,” said Banerjee.
Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams faced off in their second and final gubernatorial debate Sunday night, with a little more than a week to go before Election Day amid record high early voting.
They sparred over the state’s economy, abortion rights and, in a sign of the race’s national implications, whose party should be blamed for the country’s woes.
Kemp has led in most polling of the race, but Abrams – who came within a few thousand votes of pushing their 2018 race to a run-off – has a strong base of support and has succeeded in helping to mobilize Democrats in her campaigns and those of other high-ranking Democratic candidates, including President Joe Biden and Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in their 2020 campaigns.
There are 36 states voting for governor this year, with 20 – including Georgia – being defended by Republicans. The state legislature is controlled by Republicans, who, with Kemp’s sign-off, passed into law three years ago an abortion bill that bans the procedure as early as six weeks of pregnancy with some exceptions. Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned by the Supreme Court, that law is in effect and further restrictions could be on the way.
Abrams fiercely criticized Kemp on the issue, noting his refusal to state clearly whether he would sign off on new legislation from anti-abortion rights Republicans. Kemp, in turn, repeatedly sought to pivot the conversation back to the economy – specifically, inflation and Georgia’s relative prosperity in spite of it – while trying to portray Abrams as a progressive radical who wants to defund the police. (Her position is considerably more complicated.)
Here are five takeaways from the second gubernatorial debate in Georgia:
Is Georgia booming, as Kemp says, or nearing a calamitous bust, as Abrams argued?
The candidates painted vastly different portraits of the economic situation in the state, with Kemp pointing to higher wages and low unemployment – and blaming any pain on inflation, which he attributed to Democratic policies in Washington – while Abrams singled out a low minimum wage and Kemp’s refusal to accept Medicaid expansion funds under Obamacare as twin albatrosses being worn by Georgia’s working class.
Kemp summed up his view at the beginning and end of the debate. His closing statement cheered the “lowest unemployment rate in the history of our state,” “the most people ever working in in the history of our state” and “economic opportunity, no matter your zip code or your neighborhood because we’ve been focused on strengthening rural Georgia and many other things.”
Abrams saw something dramatically different.
“The economic pain people are feeling, it’s real,” Abrams said. “As governor I will not only lower costs, I will put more money into the pockets of working Georgians, of middle class Georgians, but I will not do is give tax cuts to the wealthy and the powerful.”
Kemp argued that the state’s one-off billion-dollar tax credit this year was only possible because of his maneuvering during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, when he was among the first to re-open businesses, and pointed to a recent gas tax holiday as emblematic of his work to make life more affordable for middle class voters.
Where that failed, he tried to shift the blame north – to the White House.
“The problem (facing Georgians) is, (wages are) not going up fast enough to keep up with Joe Biden’s inflation,” Kemp responded when Abrams challenged his depiction of the state’s economic situation.
In some sense, the abortion debate is at a standstill in Georgia. The state has a law on the books, passed three years ago, that bans the procedure after about six weeks. And with the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, it’s now in effect.
But Abrams, and the debate moderators, had another question for Kemp: with no federal limits in place, would the Republican, if re-elected, sign further restrictions into law?
Kemp didn’t give a straight, yes or no answer, saying he didn’t want to pre-judge “any specific piece of legislation without actually seeing exactly what it’s doing,” before adding: “It’s not my desire to go back, to go move the needle any further.”
“He did not say he wouldn’t,” Abrams responded – underscoring the uncertainty that lingers around the issue, which, as the moderators noted, remains a divisive one in the state, where more than half of those polled in a recent survey support abortion rights.
Abrams framed her argument around concerns over privacy and women’s health, describing abortion as “a medical decision,” one that should only be made by “a doctor and a woman, not a politician.”
Kemp, in a back-and-forth over limits and exceptions, described his own wife’s miscarriage and difficulties they encountered in having children (he now has three daughters).
“It is a tragic, traumatic situation,” he said of miscarriages, pushing back against Abrams’ warning that the state could, under GOP control, end up investigating women who have them under suspicion they might have received an abortion. Kemp denied that women would ever be punished for undergoing the procedure.
Abrams, seeking to tie the issue to broader concerns over access to health care in the state, noted that under the current state law, the ban kicks in “before most women know they’re pregnant” – an especially troubling fact given the diminishing number of OB-GYNs in Georgia.
They’re not running for governor, but they are top of mind for many in Georgia.
For Democrats, it’s GOP Senate nominee Herschel Walker, who has become a symbol of what his critics describe as Republican hypocrisy on issues like abortion, support for law enforcement and business acumen.
On the Republican side, President Joe Biden is the go-to boogeyman for most economic issues, with GOP candidates and their surrogates relentlessly trying to tie Democratic nominees to the President and the soaring inflation that’s occurred during his time in office.
“Americans are hurting right now because of a disastrous policy agenda by Joe Biden and the Democrats that have complete control of Washington DC,” Kemp said when his economic record came under attack.
Abrams, in turn, called out Kemp’s support for Walker during their abortion tussle.
“(Kemp) refuses to defend us and yet he defended Herschel Walker, saying that he didn’t want to be involved in the personal life of his running mate, but he doesn’t mind being involved in the personal medical choices of women in Georgia,” Abrams said.
Walker, who said repeatedly in the past that he favors a full abortion ban with no exceptions, faces allegations from two women who say he urged them get abortions. Walker has denied their claims.
During their first debate, Abrams said Kemp shouldn’t get too much credit for following the law and not giving in to former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 loss in Georgia.
There was less talk about two years ago this time – and hardly any mention of Trump throughout the night – but voting rights, in particular a new law known as SB 202, came under harsh scrutiny from Abrams.
“The right to vote is sacred to me. … It is an abomination, SB 202, that has allowed racists, White supremacists to challenge the legal authority of citizens to vote,” she said.
In response to news of record early voting turnout, Abrams argued that “the fact that people are voting is in spite of SB 202, not because of it.”
Kemp, like he did in their first debate, accused Abrams of trying to “manipulate and scare people at home” and defended the state as a place where it’s “easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
When asked, both candidates said they would accept the results of the November election, no matter the outcome – a question notable mostly because it has become a staple of campaign debates around the country in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
The crime debate, both nationally and in statewide races, tends to follow similar tracks.
Republicans blame Democrats for going soft on criminals and hard on police, often invoking the short-lived movement to “defund the police” against their opponents. Democrats push back, touting their support for law enforcement, before pivoting to GOP opposition to new gun restrictions.
And so it went in Georgia on Sunday night.
“Go check the record, because Ms. Abrams on CNN got asked the question, would she defund the police? And she said, yes, we have to reallocate resources. That means defunding the police,” Kemp said.
Abrams denied the claim, saying Kemp was “lying again” about her record – which, indeed, is more nuanced – before turning to the Republican’s record of loosening gun restrictions.
“Guns are the number one killer of our children. We have the ninth highest gun violence rate in the nation. Family violence with guns has gone up 18% under this governor, and his response was to weaken gun laws in the state of Georgia,” Abrams said.
In reality, both Abrams and Kemp have gone out of their way during this campaign to highlight their support for law enforcement. Abrams has proposed $25 million in state grants to local agencies that would go to raise wages for police officers, while Kemp repeatedly touts his support from leading law enforcement officials, the vast majority of whom have endorsed his campaign for a new term.
This story has been updated with additional information.
Democrat John Fetterman’s debate performance has intensified the focus on his recovery from a stroke, leading some supporters to worry that his current post-stroke limitations could affect his narrow lead in the critical Pennsylvania Senate race against Republican Mehmet Oz.
If Fetterman’s showing changes the trajectory of the race, the debate could have nationwide ramifications, with Pennsylvania representing the best chance for Democrats to pick up a Senate seat in the evenly divided chamber. A CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released earlier this week found that 51% of likely voters support Fetterman, compared to 45% for Oz, an advantage narrowly outside of the survey’s margin of error. And a CBS News poll also released this week found a tightening race, with 51% of likely voters in Pennsylvania backing Fetterman and 49% backing Oz.
Though the effects of Fetterman’s stroke dominated some post-debate conversations, Oz’s comments about abortion – saying “local politicians” should contribute to women’s medical decisions – also rocked the boat. Abortion rights have been a flashpoint across the country, including in the commonwealth, and Oz’s words could hurt him with the suburban women voters both campaigns believe could be decisive on Election Day.
Overnight Tuesday and into Wednesday, Fetterman’s campaign was doing double duty, explaining again the lingering auditory processing and speech issues from his May stroke that caused him to request closed captioning on Tuesday night – but ultimately provided only limited aid, as he dropped thoughts, pushed words together and, at times, repeated phrases. But the campaign was also making sure no Pennsylvania voters missed Oz’s comment, announcing within hours of the debate’s end a new ad highlighting them.
At a Pittsburgh rally Wednesday evening, Fetterman conceded, “To be honest, doing that debate wasn’t exactly easy.”
“I knew it wasn’t going to be easy having a stroke after five months. In fact, I don’t think that’s ever been done before in American political history,” he said.
To cheers from the crowd, Fetterman announced that his campaign raised more than $2 million following the debate, which campaign aides say they intend to invest into TV ads highlighting Oz’s comments on abortion.
“I may not get every word the right way, but I will always do the right thing in Washington, DC,” Fetterman said.
But as the Fetterman campaign seeks to change the subject to abortion rights, Pennsylvania voters are left to draw their own conclusions about the debate for the closing stretch of the race.
“Dr. Oz kind of picked on him, that’s how I looked at it,” said Craig Bischof, a fervent Fetterman supporter from Bedford. “He’s still having trouble from his stroke, so I thought he did a great job, I really did.”
Asked whether he demonstrated that he was ready to serve six years in the Senate, he said: “Oh, yes. He gets healthier every day. He’s come a long way. A stroke is a hard thing to get over.”
That was not a widely held view in lunchtime conversations with a half-dozen other residents of Bedford, a Republican-leaning town, in central Pennsylvania.
“It was embarrassing,” Jan Welsch said, offering a pointed critique of Fetterman’s performance on the debate stage. “Pennsylvania is in deep trouble, if they vote for Fetterman.”
While Welsch said she was uncertain about Oz’s candidacy before the debate, she said he demonstrated to her that he was a serious candidate, not just a former television celebrity.
“I really liked what Oz had to say,” Welsch said. “I had questions about Oz earlier, but after listening with him against Fetterman, it’s definitely Oz.”
In conversations with CNN, multiple Fetterman voters said that, while his performance made them anxious about his prospects with swing voters, they still planned to cast a ballot for him. In fact, none of the voters who entered the night planning to vote for the Democrat said they were planning to change their vote.
“It was tough,” said Karin Tatela, an educator from Chester County who was at the May event Fetterman had to cancel last minute because of his stroke. “I told my friend, I said, ‘I don’t really want to watch, it is kind of like looking at a car accident. You want to look, but you don’t want to look.’”
Tatela, however, said she still plans to vote for Fetterman.
“I cannot vote for that,” she said, talking a long pause to stop herself from attacking Oz. “I would never vote for Oz. I don’t care if they had to wheel Fetterman into the Senate in a hospital bed. But I think we could be in a little bit of trouble here.”
She is not alone.
“My opinion of who I am voting for hasn’t changed but I feel a little less comfortable in his ability to win the election because of how he performed,” said Andrew Charles, a Fetterman supporter who lives in Millersville, Pennsylvania, and works in manufacturing. “I just see a lot of red flags raising for people about his capabilities.”
Charles, who earlier this year attended a Fetterman event wearing a homemade T-shirt supporting the candidate, said he will still vote for Fetterman, but he found himself thinking about swing voters last night.
“If they were on the fence, they are probably not on the fence anymore,” he concluded, believing those voters will now back Oz.
Joe Pozzini, a union carpenter, said he had no concerns about Fetterman’s health when CNN spoke with him at a rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, earlier this month. But after the debate, Pozzini worried about how the Democrat’s health could impact the race.
“I know how I’m voting. I’m Fetterman all the way, but it was kind of worrisome,” the lifelong Pennsylvanian said. “His message is still there, he’s still a strong candidate, it’s just I was kind of worried about the on-the-fence people.”
He added: “He got his point across I think, but it’s just, it was rough, it was rough, and someone on the fence might lean the other way and that’s worrisome.”
Fetterman acknowledged his stroke at the outset of the debate, seeking to humanize his recovery.
“Let’s also talk about the elephant in the room. I had a stroke. He’s never let me forget that,” Fetterman said, referring to Oz and his campaign’s frequent commentary on his recovery. “And I might miss some words during this debate, mush two words together, but it knocked me down and I’m going to keep coming back up.”
Influential Fetterman supporters, like Ryan Boyer, the first Black leader of the Philadelphia Building & Construction Trades Council, called the Democrat’s performance “a profile in courage.”
“Particularly my people in the African American community, know all too well that people have strokes. I have an uncle who had one and he’s a very intelligent guy, but it took him about a year and a half to get all the thoughts that he had in his head out of his mouth,” Boyer said.
He also told CNN that the union’s political arm, in a meeting immediately after the debate, had a “brutally honest” call and discussion about the candidates’ performances.
“To a person, I mean, listen, it was hard to watch, but they said that they understood him. We asked the question, ‘Did you understand what he was saying?’ And that’s the most important thing. ‘Did you understand his feelings?’And yes, it came off,” Boyer said.
Meanwhile, Boyer said Oz’s statement that abortion policies should be left up to “women, doctors, local political leaders” stunned him.
“They talk about cringeworthy because of Fetterman? It was cringeworthy when I heard that (from Oz). But it was a window into his soul,” Boyer added. “It was really amazing … So, now I want my local ward leader deciding something that’s going on with my daughter?”
While Oz avoided attacking Fetterman’s stroke recovery explicitly – unlike many of his campaign aides, who have mocked Fetterman’s recovery – the Republican did sprinkle seemingly derisive comments into the debate.
“John, obviously I wasn’t clear enough for you to understand it,” Oz said during otherwise benign questions about vocational education.
Whether the debate will matter, however, is an open question.
Several Democratic operatives noted that very few undecided voters watch debates live, and while some will watch their local news coverage of the contest, most aren’t plugged into the day-to-day machinations of the Senate race, even less than two weeks out from Election Day.
“I thought he would have been better, but I don’t think it hurts him,” said Mike Mikus, a Democratic consultant in Pittsburgh who led Katie McGinty through the state’s Democratic Senate primary against Fetterman in 2016 before she lost to Republican Sen. Pat Toomey in the general election. “I think people understand that Fetterman had a stroke, and it affects his speech. But, they also think he’ll get better.”
He added: “At the same time, most swing voters are not very political and most likely didn’t watch … The undecideds at this stage of a campaign are completely unplugged.”
Additionally, ahead of the debate, almost 640,000 pre-election votes had already been cast in Pennsylvania, according to data from state election officials, and Democrats make up a wide majority of voters who have already cast a ballot in the Keystone State. As of Monday, 73% of Pennsylvania voters so far have been Democrats, while 19% have been Republicans. While the scale is smaller, the breakdown is similar to this point two years ago, according to data from Catalist.
To focus the post-debate coverage on Oz, Fetterman’s campaign announced minutes after the debate ended that it would put money behind an ad highlighting Oz saying that the debate over abortion should be left to “women, doctors, local political leaders.”
The Oz comment is a continuation of his argument that states, not the federal government, should decide the issue. But when pressed repeatedly during the debate about a bill proposed by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham that would limit abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, Oz dodged, arguing he didn’t support federal legislation on the issue but wouldn’t give a firm answer on how he would vote were he in the Senate.
Top Democrats saw the comment as an opening to link Oz with Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, a state senator who introduced a bill in 2019 prohibiting an abortion procedure if a heartbeat is detected.
Their argument: Oz thinks politicians like Mastriano – either as state senator or possibly as governor – should decide the issue.
“Our campaign will be putting money behind making sure as many women as possible hear Dr. Oz’s radical belief that ‘local political leaders’ should have as much say over a woman’s abortion decisions as women themselves and their doctors,” said Joe Calvello, campaign spokesman. “After months of trying to hide his extreme abortion position, Oz let it slip on the debate stage on Tuesday.”
The ad was out by midday Wednesday, telling voters, “Oz would let politicians like Doug Mastriano ban abortion without exceptions – even in cases of rape, incest, or life of the mother. Oz is too extreme for Pennsylvania.”
Oz, for his part, barely mentioned the debate at a Wednesday event.
But to Republicans – and even some doctors who specialize in cardiology – Fetterman’s performance was concerning and raised questions about how transparent he has been about the impact of his stroke.
“He disgraced himself and is unfit for office,” said Ryan Costello, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania. “He hasn’t demonstrated any ability to handle the physical and communication obligations of being a U.S. Senator.”
Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a CNN medical analyst and interventional cardiologist who has treated several high-profile politicians, said the debate was “difficult to watch.”
“Fetterman’s residual neurological injury is substantial,” Reiner said. “Much greater than his campaign has led the public to believe. It’s more than just processing hearing. It’s incredibly sad to watch.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and Democratic Rep. Val Demings demonstrated in Tuesday’s Florida Senate debate why they are considered two of the brightest stars by their respective parties.
In a spirited and testy 60-minute debate – the first and only of the race – they traded quick barbs, sharp rebukes and pointed answers, covering a range of issues from abortion and guns to the economy and nuclear war.
Rubio, a one-time presidential candidate who is no stranger to the debate stage, leaned into his legislative achievements and policy proposals while calling his opponent a creature of the political left who hasn’t passed any meaningful bills. Demings, a House impeachment manager during former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment proceedings, painted Rubio as a politician who will say and do anything to get reelected and compared his long career in elected office to her time on the police force in Orlando.
The race has largely flown under the radar compared to other hotly contested matchups that could control the fate of the evenly divided Senate. And neither party had plans going into Tuesday to spend much on airtime in the final three weeks. That reality favors Rubio in a state where Republicans have consistently held the electoral edge and now outnumber Democrats in registered voters, putting the onus on Demings Tuesday to seize momentum before early voting begins on Monday in many counties.
Here are five takeaways from the debate.
On a day when President Joe Biden moved to recast the midterm election as a referendum on abortion access, Demings and Rubio tried to pin each other down on where they would draw the line in a post-Roe world.
Rubio said that he is “100% pro-life,” including in cases of rape or incest because “I don’t believe that the value of human life is determined by the circumstances.” But he said he would support legislation with exceptions if it helps get something passed. He is one of nine Republican co-sponsors of a Senate bill to ban abortion nationwide at 15 weeks, which Sen. Lindsey Graham filed in response to the US Supreme Court decision in Dobbs earlier this year.
“We’re never going to get a vote on a law that doesn’t have exceptions, because that’s where the majority of the American people are,” Rubio said. “And I respect and understand that.”
Demings in her response invoked her law enforcement background (she is a former Orlando police officer and chief of police) for the first of several times.
“As a police detective who investigated cases of rape and incest, no, Senator, I don’t think it’s okay for a 10-year-old girl to be raped and have to carry the seed of her rapist,” Demings said.
Pushed by Rubio to define the week she would limit abortion, Demings said she would “support a woman’s right to choose up to the time of viability,” and would let doctors decide when that is. Rubio said that wasn’t good enough.
“She supports no limits of any kind,” he said. “That is out of the mainstream. That is radical.”
In a country perpetually rocked by gun violence, Florida still manages to stand out as a state uniquely affected by mass shootings. Rubio served in the Senate for two of the most notable, which stand as key moments in his political biography. Rubio said he decided to run for reelection to the Senate after the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre. After the 2018 tragedy at a Parkland high school, Rubio faced a crowd at a CNN Town Hall that demanded action and he promised he would work on solutions.
In that town hall event, Rubio said, “I absolutely believe that in this country, if you are 18 years of age, you should not be able to buy a rifle, and I will support a law that takes that right away,” adding, “I think that’s the right thing to do.”
Asked on Tuesday about his vow at that forum to consider age restrictions for certain firearms, Rubio said, “That doesn’t work.”
“I think the solution of this problem is to identify these people that are acting this way and stop them before they act,” Rubio said, pointing to the so-called red flag bill he proposed that would give states tools to implement a process to take guns out of the hands of people flagged as threats by law enforcement. But Rubio voted against a bipartisan gun safety bill that Biden signed into law.
“The fundamental issue is why are these kids, why are these people going out there and massacring these people?” Rubio said. “Because a lot of people own AR-15s and they don’t kill anyone.”
To which Demings responded: “People who are families of victims of gun violence just heard that and they’re asking themselves, ‘What in the hell did he just say?’”
Demings, whose Orlando-based district includes Pulse, said Rubio has done “nothing to help address gun violence and get dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people.”
Rubio replied that it’s impossible to legislate criminals.
“The only people that follow these laws are law-abiding citizens,” he said.
Demings responded: “Why don’t we just stop arresting murderers since we can’t find them all?”
Out of the gate, Rubio and Demings were asked about Hurricane Ian, the massive Category 4 hurricane that pummeled Florida’s Southwest coast last month, and what the country should do to prepare for future super storms.
Demings wasted no time mentioning climate change.
“If we don’t do something about it, we’re going to pay a terrible price for it,” Demings said. “The federal government has got to make sure that FEMA has the resources that it needs to adequately respond, but we gotta get serious about climate change.”
Rubio declined to look ahead, or discuss climate change, and instead focused on emergency response and recovery.
Asked later about the crumbling property insurance in the state, a focal point in the wake of Ian, Rubio called it “a state issue.”
Demings shot back that if it is a state issue then Rubio had a chance to address the problem when he was speaker of the Florida House.
“He’s been in elected office since 1998 and insurance of Florida has tripled and people are suffering,” Demings said. “I sent a letter to Governor (Ron) DeSantis saying, ‘Yes, I know it’s a state issue. But how can we work together to lower the costs of property insurance for Floridians because people are suffering?’”
Rubio said he did address it in the Florida House.
“You know who the governor was at the time? Charlie Crist, your gubernatorial candidate,” Rubio quipped. “I think you’ve endorsed him. So you should ask him if it didn’t work, but we certainly supported it.”
While Trump has loomed large in many of the midterm contests this cycle, he was hardly mentioned in a debate in a race that will determine who will represent the former President in Washington.
Demings, in fact, never mentioned Trump at all.
Nor did DeSantis, the state’s consequential Republican governor, get much airtime.
But the other top Republican in the state – Sen. Rick Scott, the head of the Senate GOP campaign arm – was the topic of discussion on Social Security and Medicare.
Rubio was asked about Scott’s 11-point “Rescue America” plan, which included a provision to sunset all federal programs every five years, including the popular entitlement programs.
Rubio quickly dismissed the idea. “That’s not my plan.”
“You should ask him,” Rubio said.
A segment focused on immigration policy started with the moderator asking Rubio about Biden’s new policy to stem the flow of Venezuelan migrants by having them apply to arrive in the US at ports of entry, not the Mexico-US border.
Rubio summarized it thusly: “Joe Biden just instituted Trump’s ‘Return to Mexico’ policy.”
“This cannot continue. It has to be fixed,” he added. “That needs to happen with everyone that’s trying to come across but we’re gonna have 10,000 people a day coming. And we can’t afford it. No country in the world can tolerate that.”
The Republican then put Demings on the defensive over the number of people who have crossed into the United States since Biden took office while also attempting to appear sympathetic to the people fleeing brutal regimes in South America. Florida is home to many Latino communities, including the largest population of Venezuelans living in the US.
“No one has done more on the issue of Venezuela than I have,” Rubio said. “And Cuba and Nicaragua.”
Demings, too, attempted to straddle her party’s support for migrants seeking asylum without appearing indifferent to the concerns about the activity at the Southern border. She said she supported adding border patrol agents, investing in unspecified technology and hiring more people to process migrants moving through the legal immigration system.
“We’re a nation of laws,” Demings said. “We have to enforce the law but we also obey the law that says people who were in trouble can seek asylum in this country.”
President Joe Biden on Tuesday made a major promise on a push to put abortion rights into law as his party looks to seize on the politically divisive issue in the final push ahead of the midterm elections.
At an abortion-rights-focused speech at a Democratic National Committee event on Tuesday, Biden said that if Democrats elect more senators and keep control of the House in the midterms.
“The court got Roe right nearly 50 years ago and I believe the Congress should codify Roe, once and for all,” Biden said.
He then implored voters to elect more Democrats in order to make sure that bill could pass.
“If we do that, here’s the promise I make to you and the American people: The first bill I will send to the Congress will be to codify Roe v. Wade. And when Congress passes it, I’ll sign it in January, 50 years after Roe was first decided the law of the land,” Biden added.
Dating back to the 2020 campaign, Biden has called for codifying Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a federal constitutional right to abortion. The Supreme Court overturned it earlier this year, transforming access to reproductive health care in the country. It is unclear how politically effective such a promise of prioritizing such a bill will be, given that Democrats have an intensely tough battle in November to keep both the Senate and House.
Biden has not been able to fulfill that campaign promise in part because he needs more than just a simple majority in the Senate to overcome the chamber’s filibuster rules. While Biden has voiced support for ending the 60-vote threshold to codify abortion rights, Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona remain opposed to such a carveout. Biden has previously said he would need at least two more Democrats elected to the Senate to change the filibuster rules and pass abortion rights legislation.
Biden’s promise to prioritize abortion in the new legislative term is an indication he is exhausting executive steps to protect those rights, even as some activists call for more action. The White House was accused of being caught flat-footed on the issue in the spring, despite a draft of the opinion striking down Roe v. Wade leaking more than a month before it was officially decided.
Biden has signed an executive order defending the ability to cross state borders to obtain an abortion, sought to ensure access to medication abortion and issued a reminder to universities last month that they cannot discriminate on basis of pregnancy. But he has stopped short of declaring a public health emergency, which some activists have called for, and ruled out other options like allowing use of federal lands for abortion.
The White House has been skeptical that some of those steps would prove effective, and has been wary of provoking legal battles. Even before the Supreme Court ruled, White House officials were open in acknowledging there was little they could do to unilaterally restore the nationwide right to abortion.
Instead, Biden and other top officials have cast abortion rights as a moral question to voters.
In remarks at the DNC event at Howard Theatre in Washington, DC, Biden plans to speak broadly about what he sees as the choice voters confront in the midterms between Republicans who are pushing for a national abortion ban and going after doctors who perform abortion services, versus Democrats who want to codify Roe v. Wade.
The official also said that the context they want to keep making clear with Biden’s speech Tuesday is that “nearly half the states in the United States have either passed a ban on abortion or will shortly and in many states, abortion is already banned even in cases of rape and incest.”
Since the Supreme Court ruling earlier this year, Democrats have hoped that abortion rights would galvanize and mobilize voters and have seen some signs of this dynamic.
For example, 50% of registered voters in a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey said the Supreme Court’s decision has made them more motivated to vote next month – up 7 percentage points from July, when the same question was asked just a few weeks after the ruling came down. About half of voters in states with full abortion bans also said their states’ abortion laws have made them more motivated to vote.
Women are especially motivated by the Supreme Court decision, the new survey found: About 3 in 5 women ages 18 to 49 who said they are more likely to head to the polls next month cited the overturning of Roe as a motivating factor.
However, a recent CNN/SSRS poll found that the economy remains the central focus for voters, with 90% of them saying it was extremely or very important to their vote. Fewer – 72% – said the same about abortion.
And a New York Times/Sienna poll showed that likely voters see the economy (26%) and inflation (18%) as the most important problem facing the country, with just 5% picking abortion as their top issue.
The economy and inflation take on added importance in competitive congressional districts. While 59% of registered voters nationally called the economy extremely important to their vote, that rose to 67% in those districts, and the share calling inflation that important rose from 56% to 64%.
Abortion has been a complicated issue for the President, who has witnessed the changing politics around it over the half-century span of his career and reckoned with personal qualms rooted in his Catholic faith. As a candidate in 2019, Biden reversed his long-held support for an amendment preventing federal funds from being used for abortions.
As his administration unveiled new steps to enhance abortion protections earlier this month, Biden said he would not “sit by and let Republicans throughout the country enact extreme policies.”
The White House has seized on a proposal from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina that would impose a federal ban on most abortions at 15 weeks of pregnancy. At a Democratic fundraiser in New York City last month, the President described Graham’s bill as emblematic of Republicans becoming “more extreme in their positions.”
As the midterm elections approach, Biden has argued that voters need to elect more Democrats in order to codify the protections of Roe v. Wade into law. He’s also pledged to veto any bill that would ban abortions on the federal level if Republicans take control of Congress.
More than a dozen states have seen abortions bans come into effect since the Dobbs ruling, affecting nearly 30 million women of reproductive age.
Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams sparred over health care, crime and punishment, and voting rights in a Monday debate as they made their closing arguments to voters in a reprise of their fiercely contested 2018 race for the same job.
The stakes for this night were arguably higher for Abrams, who has trailed in most recent polling of the race. Kemp, one of the few prominent Republicans to resist former President Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen election in 2020, has positioned himself as a more traditional, pro-business conservative – a tack that his gentle resistance to Trump reinforced with swing voters. Abrams has argued that Kemp shouldn’t get any special credit for doing his job and not breaking the law.
Kemp and Abrams were joined by Libertarian nominee Shane Hazel, who took shots at both his opponents and plainly stated his desire to send the election to a run-off. (If no one receives a clear majority on Election Day, the top two finishers advance to a one-on-one contest.) But it was the two major party candidates, who ran tight campaigns four years ago with Kemp emerging the narrow victor, who dominated the debate stage. Their disagreements were pointed, as they were in 2018, their attacks and rebuttals well-rehearsed and, to a large degree, predictable.
Here are the four main takeaways from the Georgia governor’s debate:
Like Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker did in his debate with Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock last week, Kemp took every opportunity – and when they weren’t there, tried anyway – to connect Abrams to Biden, who, despite winning the state in 2020, is a deeply unpopular figure there now.
“I would remind you that Stacey Abrams campaigned to be Joe Biden’s running mate,” Kemp said, referring to the chatter around Abrams potentially being chosen as his running mate two years ago.
During an exchange with the moderators about abortion, Kemp pivoted to the economy – and again, invoked Biden and Democrats on Capitol Hill.
“Georgians should know that my desire is to continue to help them fight through 40-year high inflation and high gas prices and other things that our Georgia families are facing right now, quite honestly, because of bad policies in Washington, DC, from President Biden and the Democrats that have complete control,” he said.
Abrams, unlike so many other Democrats running this year, has not sought to distance herself from the President and recently said publicly that she would welcome him in Georgia. First lady Jill Biden visited last week for an Abrams fundraiser, where she criticized Kemp over his position on abortion as well as his refusal to expand Medicaid and voting rights.
Early on in the night, Kemp was questioned about remarks he made – taped without his knowledge – at a tailgate with University of Georgia College Republicans in which he expressed some openness to a push to ban contraceptive drugs like “Plan B.”
Asked if he would pursue such legislation if reelected, Kemp said, “No, I would not” and that “it’s not my desire to” push further abortion restrictions, before pivoting to an attack on Biden, national Democrats and more talk about his economic record.
Pressed on the remarks, Kemp suggested he was just humoring a group of people he didn’t know.
On the tape, Kemp, though he didn’t seem enthusiastic, said, “You could take up pretty much everything, but you’ve got to be in legislative session to do that.”
When asked if it was something he could do, Kemp said, “It just depends on where the legislators are,” and that he’d “have to check and see because there are a lot of legalities.”
Georgia in 2019 passed and Kemp signed a so-called “heartbeat” bill, which bans abortions at around six weeks, and went into effect soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade. Before the ruling, abortion was legal in the state until 20 weeks into pregnancy.
Abrams has promised to work to “reverse” the law, though she would face significant headwinds in the GOP-controlled state legislature, and called the state law “cruel.”
One of the first questions posed to Abrams centered on her speech effectively – but not with the precise language – conceding the 2018 election to Kemp.
In those remarks, Abrams made a symbolic point in arguing that she was not conceding the contest, because Kemp, as the state’s top elections official, and his allies had unfairly worked to suppress the vote. Instead, Abrams said then, she would only “acknowledge” him as the winner.
Some Republicans have tried to make hay over the speech, in a measure of whataboutism usually attached to Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 results. Abrams, apart from a court challenge, never tried to overturn the outcome of her race.
Still, she was asked on Monday night whether she would accept the results of the coming election – and said yes – before again accusing Kemp of, through the state’s new restrictive voting law, SB 202, seeking to make it more difficult for people to cast ballots.
“Brian Kemp was the secretary of state,” Abrams said, recalling her opponent’s old job. “He has assiduously denied access to the right to vote.”
Kemp countered by pointing to high turnout numbers over the past few elections and, as he’s said before, insisted the law made it “easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
When the candidates were given the chance to question one another, Kemp asked Abrams to name all the sheriffs who had endorsed her campaign.
The answer, of course, was that most law enforcement groups in the state are behind the Republican – a point he returned to throughout the debate.
“Mr. Kemp, what you are trying to do is continue the lie that you’ve told so many times I think you believe it’s true. I support law enforcement and did so for 11 years (in state government),” Abrams said. “I worked closely with the sheriff’s association.”
Abrams also accused Kemp of cynically trying to weaponize criminal justice and public safety issues by pitting her against police. The reality, she said, was less cut-and-dry.
“Like most Georgians, I lead a complicated life where we need access to help but we also need to know we are safe from racial violence,” she said, before turning to Kemp. “While you might not have had that experience, too many people I know, have.”
Kemp, though, kept the message simple. “I support safety and justice,” he said, often pointing to his anti-gang initiatives – especially when he was pressed on the effect of his loosening gun laws on crime.
When Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker met to debate in the already contentious Georgia Senate race, all the focus was on how personal allegations against Walker would roil the first – and likely only – debate in the campaign.
Walker continued to deny allegations that he paid for a woman to terminate her pregnancy and then, two years later, encouraged the same woman to have the procedure a second time, calling them “a lie.” That, however, was just a blip in the hour-long contest, which instead centered on Warnock’s ties to President Joe Biden, the vast differences between the two candidates on abortion and even, however briefly, Walker’s use of what appeared to be a sheriff’s badge.
Warnock, as he has on the campaign trail, did not engage on the controversy over the allegations against Walker, instead choosing to question his Republican opponent’s relationship to the truth.
“We will see time and time again, as we have already seen, that my opponent has a problem with the truth,” Warnock said. “And just because he says something doesn’t mean it’s true.”
For Walker, the debate was as much about touting his own candidacy as it was about tying Warnock to Biden, who was invoked early and often. His effort, in the closing moments, to assuage fence-sitting voters about his readiness to serve also included a jab at Warnock and Biden.
“For those of you who are concerned about voting for me, a non-politician, I want you to think about the damage politicians like Joe Biden and Raphael Warnock have done to this country,” Walker said.
Here are five takeaways from Friday’s debate:
Biden wasn’t on the stage Friday night, but Walker tried repeatedly to convince viewers that the Democratic President was ostensibly there with his Democratic opponent.
From the outset of the event, Walker repeatedly invoked Biden, hoping to tie his Democratic opponent to the President’s low approval ratings.
“This race isn’t about me. It is about what Raphael Warnock and Joe Biden have done to you and your family,” Walker said at the top of the debate.
Later, when pressed on voter fraud in the 2020 election, he added, “Did President Biden win? President Biden won, and Sen. Warnock won. That’s the reason I decided to run.”
He then synthesized his point: “I am running because he and Joe Biden are the same.”
Warnock did little to distance himself from Biden, even at times touting the legislation he passed with the President’s help. But during a question on foreign policy, he took the chance to note a specific time he stood up to the Biden administration.
“I am glad we are standing up to Putin’s aggression and we have to continue to stand up, which is why I stood up to the Biden administration when it suggested we should close the Savanah Combat Readiness Training Center,” Warnock said. “I told the President that was the exact wrong thing to do at the exact wrong time. … We kept that training center open.”
Walker went back to his message in response: “He didn’t stand up. He had laid down every time it came around.”
“It is evident,” said a somewhat exasperated Warnock, “that he has a point that he tried to make time and time again.”
Headed into the debate, the focus was on how Walker – and arguably less predictably, Warnock – would address the accusations that the Republican candidate allegedly paid for a woman to terminate her pregnancy and then, two years later, encouraged the same woman to have the procedure a second time.
Walker did what he has done repeatedly as the allegations roiled an already contentious Senate race: Label the allegations a lie.
“As I said, that is a lie,” Walker said in response to a question from the moderator. “I put it in a book, one thing about my life, I have been very transparent. Not like the senator, he has hid things.”
Walker added: “I said that is a lie and I am not backing down. And we have Sen. Warnock, people that would do anything and say anything for this seat. But I am not going to back down.”
CNN has not independently verified the allegations about Walker.
Warnock, as he has done previously, did not address the allegations, instead choosing to let Walker fight them off without pushing them himself.
Instead, the senator took a broad approach, focusing on Walker’s “problem with the truth” and less on the specific allegations.
The candidates also clashed on abortion rights more generally, with Walker insisting he did not support a federal ban, in contrast to past statements, and pointing to the state’s restrictive “heartbeat” law. The law prohibits abortions as soon as early cardiac activity is detectable, which can be as early as six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant.
“On abortion, I’m a Christian. I believe in life. Georgia is a state that respects life,” Walker said.
The Georgia law makes exceptions for cases of rape or incest, pending a timely police report, and in some cases where the pregnant person’s health is at risk.
Before the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, state law had allowed abortions up to 20 weeks.
Warnock, who supports abortion rights, repeated an argument he’s made on the trail: “A patient’s room is too narrow and small and cramped for a woman, her doctor and the US government. … I trust women more than I trust politicians.”
Walker then shot back, invoking Warnock’s support for the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality.
“He told me Black lives matter… If Black lives matter, why are you not protecting those babies? And instead of aborting those babies, why aren’t you baptizing those babies?,” Walker said.
Warnock, as he did throughout the debate, didn’t directly answer Walker’s provocation. Instead, he repeated his position.
“There are enough politicians piling into the rooms of patients,” the senator said, “and I don’t plan to join them.”
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Georgia is one of 12 states not to expand Medicaid and currently has an estimated 1.5 million uninsured residents.
Walker, when asked by the moderator if the federal government should step in to make sure everyone has access to health care, began a confusing non-response.
“Well, right now, people have coverage for health care. It’s according to what type of coverage do you want. Because if you have an able-bodied job, you’re going to have health care,” he said. “But everyone else – have health care is the type of health care you’re going to get. And I think that is the problem.”
Walker continued to say that Warnock wants people to “depend on the government,” while he wants “you to get off the government health care and get on the health care he’s got.”
To note: Warnock, as a US Senator, is on a government health care plan.
Walker also gave a puzzling response to Warnock’s attack on his opposition to federal legislation capping the price of insulin for people with diabetes.
“I believe in reducing insulin, but at the same time, you have to eat right,” Walker said. “Unless you have eating right, insulin is doing you no good. So you have to get food prices down and you got to get gas prices down so they can go and get insulin.”
Warnock responded by telling viewers who require the drug that Walker was, in effect, blaming them for their struggles accessing it.
Warnock, on the subject of his pledge to close the Medicaid gap, was asked how he would pay for it.
“This is not a theoretical issue for me,” he replied, invoking the story of a nurse in a trauma ward who lost coverage when she became sick and, as he put it, died “for lack of health care.”
“Georgia needs to expand Medicaid,” Warnock continued. “It costs us more not to expand. What we’re doing right now is we’re subsidizing health care in other states” – a reference to the state’s refusal to accept federal funds that residents already pay into.
The debate within the debate over Warnock’s support for police, in which the senator pointed to his support for legislation that backed smaller departments, was briefly derailed when Walker pulled out what appeared to be a police badge.
The moderator quickly admonished Walker, reminding him that props were not allowed onstage.
“You have a prop,” the surprised moderator said. “That is not allowed, sir.”
Moments earlier, Warnock – in response to Walker’s claims that he has “called (police officers) names” and caused “morale” to plummet – said that his opponent “has a problem with the truth.”
Warnock then hit Walker with a callback to a more than two-decade-old police report in which the Republican discussed exchanging gunfire with police and a subsequent false claim from Walker that he previously served in law enforcement.
“One thing that I haven’t done is I haven’t pretended to be a police officer and I’ve never, ever threatened a shootout with police,” he said.
Warnock also argued that his support for greater scrutiny of police didn’t undermine his support for law enforcement.
“You can support police officers, as I’ve done, through the COPS program, through the invest-to-protect program, while at the same time, holding police officers, like all professions, accountable,” he said.
The woman who said Georgia Senate hopeful Herschel Walker paid for her 2009 abortion, setting off a controversy that has rocked his campaign, told The New York Times that the Republican nominee asked her to terminate a second pregnancy two years later.
She refused the request, and their relationship ended, she told the Times, which said it was withholding the name of the woman. Walker was unmarried at the time. Their son, she said, is now 10 years old.
Walker, who said in May he supports a full ban on abortions, with no exceptions, has denied an earlier report from The Daily Beast, in which the woman first alleged that the former football star reimbursed her for an abortion she sought at his urging.
Speaking to the Times, the woman said she decided to come forward with new details about her relationship with Walker after his Republican allies rallied around him in the aftermath of the first report.
The Times said that interviews it conducted with the woman and documents provided to the newspaper “together corroborate and expand upon an account about her abortion first published on Monday in The Daily Beast. The Times also independently confirmed details with custody records filed in family court in New York and interviewed a friend of the woman to whom she had described the abortion and her eventual breakup with Mr. Walker as those events occurred.”
CNN has not independently confirmed the woman’s allegation about the abortion or that Walker urged her to terminate a second pregnancy.
CNN has reached out to the Walker campaign for comment. The Times left messages Friday afternoon with Walker’s spokesman and campaign manager.
Walker vehemently denied the initial report about paying for the abortion in the Daily Beast, in the “strongest possible words” and said it was a “flat-out lie.”
The Georgia race between Walker and Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is among the most competitive Senate contests on the 2022 midterm slate and could be instrumental in deciding control of the evenly divided chamber. Walker, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, won the GOP nomination in May despite some Republicans’ concerns about past allegations that he threatened women with violence. Walker has denied at least one of those allegations and has spoken publicly and written about his struggles with mental illness.
With the stakes set so high, Republican groups have vowed not to abandon Walker, even as the scandal sent his campaign scrambling. Campaign manager Scott Paradise, addressing staff earlier this week, acknowledged that the initial Daily Beast report was a setback, but pointed to Trump’s victory in 2016 – despite the initial backlash to the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which he spoke crudely about groping women – as evidence that Walker remained a viable candidate.
Warnock has mostly refused to weigh in on the allegation, dodging a question about its implications earlier this week.
“I’ll let the pundits decide how they think it will impact the race,” the senator said, before pivoting to his broader message on abortion rights. “But I have been consistent in my view that a patient’s room is too narrow and cramped a space for a woman, her doctor, and the government. … And my opponent, on the other hand, is talking about a nationwide ban with no exceptions.”
The Times, like The Daily Beast, reported that Walker gave the woman a check for $700 for the procedure, which took place at a clinic in Atlanta. According to both outlets, Walker also sent the woman a “get well” card afterward.
Earlier Friday, Walker’s campaign split from its political director, Taylor Crowe, over suspicions that he was leaking information to the media, two people familiar with the matter told CNN. Crowe did not respond to multiple requests for comment from CNN. It is unclear if there were other factors at play or if the move had any connection to the abortion allegations.
Though Walker’s campaign remains otherwise intact and his support from national Republicans has stayed in place, one of his own sons, Christian Walker, 23, a conservative social media influencer, has turned on him.
“Every family member of Herschel Walker asked him not to run for office, because we all knew (some of) his past. Every single one. He decided to give us the middle finger and air out all of his dirty laundry in public, while simultaneously lying about it,” Christian Walker tweeted shortly after the Daily Beast report was published on Monday, the first in a series of posts denouncing his father. “I’m done.”
Walker has brushed off that criticism, saying at a Thursday news conference of his adult son, “He’s a great little man. I love him to death. And you know what, I will always love him, no matter what my son says.”
Christian Walker has not responded to an email and social media messages from CNN seeking comment on his criticism of his father.
While trying to distance himself from his own party, Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly warned during an hour-long debate on Thursday that the “wheels” could “come off our democracy” if candidates like his GOP opponent, Trump-backed Blake Masters, are elected in November.
But Masters aggressively pushed back on those attacks, portraying Kelly, who’s running for a full six-year term, as a rubber stamp for the Biden administration, while refusing to acknowledge that he has attempted to moderate his positions on abortion and the 2020 presidential election.
The Arizona Senate race is among the most competitive in the country, and with the chamber currently split 50-50, every race matters. But Kelly appears to have strengthened his position over the past two months as Masters has struggled to keep up with the Democrat’s fundraising prowess. A new CNN poll released Thursday found that 51% of likely voters are behind Kelly, with 45% backing Masters.
Masters – a venture capitalist and political novice who won the primary in large part because of former President Donald Trump’s endorsement and the financial backing of billionaire Peter Thiel (his former boss) – released a campaign video last year proclaiming that he believed Trump won the 2020 election. But after the primary, he removed language from his website that included the false claim that the election was stolen.
Masters attempted to maneuver around questions about the election during Thursday’s debate – just days before Trump, whose 2020 loss in Arizona set off a cascade of election denialism in the state, heads there to campaign for Masters and other Republicans.
When the moderator asked him whether President Joe Biden, who narrowly carried Arizona, is the “legitimately elected President of the United States,” Masters replied: “Joe Biden is absolutely the President. I mean, my gosh, have you seen the gas prices lately?”
“Legitimately elected?” the moderator interjected.
“I’m not trying to trick you,” Masters said. “He’s duly sworn and certified. He’s the legitimate president. He’s in the White House and unfortunately for all of us.”
When the moderator followed up by using Trump’s language, asking whether the election was “stolen” or “rigged in any way” through vote counting or election results, Masters replied: “Yeah, I haven’t seen evidence of that.”
But Kelly argued that Masters has espoused “conspiracies and lies that have no place in our democracy.”
“I’m worried about what’s going to happen here,” Kelly said. “This election in 2024. I mean, we could wind up in a situation where the wheels come off of our democracy, and it’s because of folks like like Blake Masters that are questioning the integrity of an election.”
Masters insisted that he does not want to get rid of mail-in voting as Kelly alleged. He said he believed military service members should be able to mail ballots back from overseas and said he’d be fine with other voters sending their ballots back by mail if they included a copy of their driver’s license.
Masters and Kelly repeatedly clashed over immigration, with Masters claiming Kelly supports “open borders” and Kelly rejecting those attacks as he insisted that he’s brought more resources to Arizona to deal with that issue.
When asked whether he had done enough to address immigration concerns, Kelly distanced himself from national Democrats.
“When I got to Washington, DC, one of the first things I realized was that Democrats don’t understand this issue. And Republicans just want to talk about it, complain about it, but actually not do anything about it. They just want to politicize that. We heard this tonight from my opponent Blake Masters.”
Masters charged that Biden and Kelly have put out “the welcome mat” to migrants. “We treat these people better than we treat our own US military service members. I find that shameful.”
Kelly said he’s pushed back on the Biden administration multiple times on immigration issues, including when the administration planned to end Title 42, the pandemic-era policy that allowed border patrol agents to send migrants back to their home countries.
“I’ve stood up to Democrats when they’re wrong on this issue … including the President.”
“When the President decided he was going to do something dumb on this, and change the rules,” Kelly said, “I told him he was wrong.”
Some of the sharpest exchanges were over abortion as the moderator and Libertarian candidate Marc Victor drew attention to the fact that Masters scrubbed some of the language about his anti-abortion stances from his website as he tried to pivot toward the general election.
Abortion rights have been a subject of fierce controversy in Arizona since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, because there are conflicting abortion laws in the state – leading to debate over which one should take precedence.
The state legislature passed a 15-week ban earlier this year that does not include exceptions for rape or incest, only medical emergencies. Masters has said he supports that plan, which was signed into law by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey.
But Arizona also had a pre-statehood law on the books banning nearly all abortions that was enjoined in 1973 after the Roe decision. A Pima County Superior Court judge recently ruled that it could go back into effect at the urging of the state’s GOP attorney general.
Kelly argued that Masters wants to make decisions for Arizona women and curtail their rights. “I think we all know guys like this,” said Kelly, also faulting Masters for supporting a national ban on abortion at 15 weeks that has been proposed by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.
“You know, guys that think they know better than everyone about everything,” Kelly continued.
“What I’m doing is I am protecting your constitutional rights,” he added.
When the moderator pressed Kelly to explain what limits he would support on abortion, Kelly said he supports the kind of framework contemplated by the Roe v. Wade decision where “late term abortion in this country only happens when there is a serious problem.”