Florida Democrats bet abortion will motivate swell of voters who feel bans go ‘too far’

Democrats in Florida are teaming up with operatives from Joe Biden’s re-election campaign in an all-out assault on Republicans’ extremist positions on abortion, believing it will bring victory in presidential and US Senate races in November.

They fired an opening salvo on Tuesday, tearing into Donald Trump’s “boasting” about overturning federal abortion protections a day earlier, and assailing the incumbent Republican senator Rick Scott for supporting Florida’s six-week ban that takes effect next month.

Ron DeSantis, the Republican Florida governor and former candidate for the party’s presidential nomination who signed the ban into law, also found himself under fire.

“The word is accountability,” Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic party, told an online launch meeting attended by Jasmine Burney-Clark, state director of the Biden-Harris campaign, and Democratic state representative Anna Eskamani, a former regional senior director of Planned Parenthood.

“We are here because Donald Trump bragged about overturning Roe v Wade. Then we got here in Florida because we had an individual who wanted to run for president and wanted to take our state into extremism, the Republican legislature who voted for it, and Rick Scott … who said on the national stage he will push for a national abortion ban.

“It’s incumbent on all of us, the party, the candidates, the campaigns, to make sure that we are making that very distinct link.”

The Florida supreme court ruled last week that the six-week ban will take effect on 1 May, as well as allowing a ballot measure for November that could see voters enshrine the right to the procedure into law.

The moves instantly propelled the state to the forefront of the national abortion debate, and allowed Democrats, all but wiped out in Florida in successive national elections, to seize on the issue as vote-winner.

“What we’ve seen across our state, since the falling of Roe, is a very broad coalition of Republicans, independents, Democrats, coming together to make sure we had the requisite signatures to get in front of the supreme court and ultimately on to the ballot,” Fried said.

“That is the kind of coalition that you’re going to continue to see, people across the spectrum, in Key West or Pensacola, different demographics coming from different backgrounds … the coalition is broad.”

Fried and Eskamani were both careful to point out that the Democratic party was independent of the campaign supporting the ballot initiative, but Eskamani said they could provide information for voters.

“Even Republicans agree what has happened in Florida, and across the country, is too far, and in fact 35% of those who signed the petition to help codify abortion rights are Republican,” she said.

“So these are completely separate campaigns, but I do think we’re going to see a continuation of a broad coalition of support for reproductive rights and holding all these different bad actors accountable.”

Burney-Clark’s presence, meanwhile, was further indication that Democrats believe Florida, won comfortably by Trump in 2020, could be back in play for Biden this year.

“Donald Trump owns Florida’s abortion ban, and he owns every single thing that happens as a result,” she said.

“President Biden said it best, if Trump is elected, and Republicans in Congress put a national abortion ban on the Resolute Desk, Trump will sign it into law. Trump is endorsing dangerous abortion bans across the country like Florida’s that are only possible because of him.

“Bans that go into effect before women know they are pregnant, like the one that will soon happen here in Florida; women turned away from emergency rooms, forced to go to court to seek permission for medical attention they need to survive; doctors threatened with criminal charges for doing their jobs.

“President Biden and Vice-President Harris are the only choice for Floridians who want to make sure they get to make their own reproductive decisions. It is just that simple.”

The next broadside of the Florida Democrats’ campaign will come on Wednesday, when former congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who is challenging Scott for his Senate seat, launches her statewide, abortion-themed “Florida freedom tour” in West Palm Beach.

Her campaign believes Scott, who ousted the incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson by only 10,033 votes from the 8.2m cast in 2018, is vulnerable. “If Rick Scott thinks that he can push a national abortion ban in the Senate and back a near-total abortion ban in Florida without facing any consequences, he has another thing coming,” she said.