A job led Amy Bloodworth away from home in Monmouth County to relocate in Texas six years ago. But it was politics — and the freedom to work remotely — that convinced her to move back to New Jersey this summer.
Bloodworth said she could no longer tolerate the prevailing “complacent” attitudes over the near-abortion ban in Texas last year, which the U.S. Supreme Court reinforced by overturning Roe v. Wade in June and let each state set its own abortion laws.
Bloodworth joined more than 100 others on a “Women’s Wave” march in downtown Red Bank on a recent sunny Saturday to protest the loss of abortion rights, with one goal in mind: channel the outrage from the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision into action by encouraging people to vote in the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
“This is my first time (marching). I should have done it many times before, but finally I am in the right place at the right time. I feel very strongly about the cause,” said Bloodworth, 30, of Red Bank. Carrying her Chihuahua, Rita, she walked with her mother, who described herself as a veteran of “too many” demonstrations in her lifetime to count.
“I’m here to pass the baton,” said Amy’s mom, Valerie Bloodworth, 70, of Eatontown.
Nancy Rodriguez, the mother of two daughters ages 18 and 25, said she was looking to channel her anger over how women’s rights are backsliding. She had never done anything overtly political before, but when she read about the march in Red Bank — one of five pro-abortion rights’ rallies that day around the state and scores of others nationally — she knew she needed to be there.
“This is not an area that wants to listen to what women have to say,” said Rodriguez, 55, of Middletown, said of Monmouth County, which skews Republican. “If we just get together, women could make something happen. People need to get out here and do something.”
Abortion has rarely been a pressing campaign issue in a New Jersey, and midterm elections traditionally fail to inspire huge voter turnout because they lack the draw of a governor or president at the top of the ballot.
But things could be different this year as the fallout from the Supreme Court ruling has introduced suspenseful unpredictability in a race Republicans had expected to win big and take control of Congress.
“Fired up and angry”
Voter registration among women has been rising since June in New Jersey and across the country.
Enthusiasm is palpable. Coffee klatches and other meetings hosted by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund of New Jersey that used to draw a dozen or more people now have to be relocated to larger venues to accommodate the growing group of eager volunteers, Executive Director Jackie Cornell said.
“Our volunteers are fired up and angry. They’re scared. There’s a whole host of emotions,” Cornell said before a Statehouse rally in Trenton on Sept. 30, calling for action on a stalled bill that would expand access to abortion and other reproductive health services.
“Part of why we are here today is in response to the demand of our supporters saying, ‘You’ve got to give us something to do. We want to come to Trenton and engage with legislators. We want them to know that even if they think this is over, it isn’t over for us,’” Cornell said.
The stakes rose even higher for people on both sides of the abortion debate last month when U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey introduced a nationwide 15-week abortion ban. The proposal offered a preview of what a Republican-controlled Congress may mean even for New Jersey, where abortion rights are enshrined under a state law that Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy signed in January.
Women who support abortion rights “look forward to Election Day the way I looked forward to the holiday season when I was a kid,” Democratic consultant Mo Butler said.
The Dobbs decision “will prove to be a game changer for the election in November. It’s motivating women to organize, to register to vote. You’re going to see the outcome of that on Election Day in November,” Butler added.
Two elections in August appeared to show a Dobbs backlash.
Pat Ryan, a very publicly pro-abortion rights Democrat, defeated Republican Marc Molinaro in a congressional race in the New York Hudson Valley that many viewed as the first test of voter response to the overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision. In deeply-red Kansas, voters defeated a ballot question by an 18-point margin that would also stripped abortion protections from the state constitution.
League of Women Voters member, Peggy Dellinger, left, presents her speech to demonstrators to register and vote for the upcoming midterm elections at Riverside Gardens Park in Red Bank during the Women's Wave on Saturday, October 8, 2022.Neil H. Davis | For NJ Advance M
Democrats in New Jersey and throughout the country are counting on the issue of reproductive rights to energize their base.
Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-7th District, in the fight of his political life against former state Sen. Tom Kean Jr., has pounded Kean’s voting record on reproductive freedom as a state Senator.
And Democrats who pundits say are in easier races, including Reps. Mikie Sherrill, D-Dist. 11, Josh Gottheimer, D-5th and Andy Kim, D-3rd, have highlighted abortion in their ads
Sherrill is running a TV ad in heavy rotation blasting her challenger Paul DeGroot for saying, “You got it,” in response to a question about whether abortion should be banned without exceptions.
In a recent editorial board meeting and other interviews, DeGroot said he does not oppose exceptions and agrees with the Dobbs decision that restrictions are up to individual states.
Next door in Pennsylvania, abortion is center stage in Democratic ads against U.S. Senate candidate Mehmet Oz and gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, for example, ran an ad featuring rheumatologist Gary Gordon who says, “We can’t let Mehmet Oz take women back to a very dangerous time.”
Across the nation, abortion was the focus of 28% of the 266,504 pro-Democratic candidate ads as of Sept. 30, more than any other issue, according to the Wesleyan Media Project. The issues brought up most often in pro-Republican ads are inflation and public safety, both at 32%.
In an election season dominated by concerns over inflation and the economy — issues that voters believe Republicans are more adept at handling — “Dobbs can be a motivator,” said Debbie Walsh, director for the Centers for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
“This is a pretty emotional issue. In many ways, (the election) is all about turnout and who shows up. The people who feel they have the most at stake will vote,” Walsh said.
Prior to the Supreme Court ruling, Democrats were hemorrhaging thousands of registered voters. According to the state Division of Elections website, registered Democrats lost about 70,000 registered voters from January to May.
With an unpopular Democratic president in the White House, the ranks of Republicans were growing everywhere.
“Any party out of power will be invigorated to regain prominence. This is just history,” said Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.
The Supreme Court rendered its landmark decision overturning abortion rights in America on June 24. From June to October, Democrats in New Jersey gained 22,315 registrants, although the Republican rolls grew faster with a net increase of 34,753, according to state Division of Elections data. The total number of people who registered without party affiliation declined by 14,078.
As of Oct. 1, New Jersey was home to 2.5 million registered Democrats, 2.35 million unaffiliated registered voters and 1.5 million registered Republicans.
Saily Avelenda, executive director for the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, said after the draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion in the Dobbs case leaked in May, the party assembled a “Choose Choice” phone and text banking drive that connected with 3,000 women “who are not frequent voters” but committed to voting for Democrats in November.
Among the newly registered Democrats who volunteered to reveal their gender, nearly 60% are female, according to data from the New Jersey Democratic State Committee.
“Taken together with the uptick in women registering to vote as Democrats across the country, we believe that this kind of direct action will be critical in protecting our House majority and standing up for abortion rights,” Avelenda said.
National Democratic strategist and Target Smart CEO Tom Bonier has flooded social media with his analysis that Dobbs is driving a huge surge in women registering to vote — especially those who are under 25.
In conservative Idaho, “women outnumber men by 20 pts” since the Dobbs decision, he tweeted. Before Dobbs, men held a 2-point edge in registrations, Bonier wrote. In Pennsylvania, women represent 56% of the new registrants since June., with more than half under 25, Bonier said in another tweet. “The numbers are jaw-dropping,” Bonier tweeted on Aug. 19.
Uncertainty prevails
Koning warns that voter registration numbers aren’t a reliable predictor of who actually turns out to vote.
Consider the governor’s race last year, when Murphy defeated Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli, but by only a 3.5% margin, Koning said.
“Democrats outnumbered Republicans 2 to 1. Still we saw an extremely close race,” Koning said. Ciattarelli’s focus on New Jersey’s notoriously high property taxes and the state’s lack of affordability in the final weeks helped him narrow the gap, she said.
Marie Tasy, executive director for New Jersey Right to Life, predicted the people who support the Dobbs decision and any future abortion restrictions will be motivated to vote for a candidate who supports “reasonable, common sense limits.”
“The Pro-Life Community is in sync with the majority of voters who are motivated to vote against President Biden’s party and their repugnant, obsessive advocacy for abortions,” Tasy said.
A recent Rutgers poll found 68% of people in New Jersey disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, while 28% agreed with it.
State Sen. Holly Schepisi, R-Bergen, predicted New Jersey voters will once again focus on pocketbook issues. Unlike her Republican colleagues in other states in which abortion is illegal or available under very narrow circumstances, that threat is not an issue here.
“In New Jersey, the economy and inflation are the pressing issues,” Schepisi added.
Another recent Rutgers poll suggests she may be right.
Reproductive rights was a distant second to the economy when pollsters asked likely voters what was the most important issue in the campaign. Abortion was the top issue for Democrats (13%) while the economy was number one with unaffiliated voters and Republicans, at 17% and 23% respectively, according to the poll conducted Aug. 30-Sept. 8.
At the same time, abortion has never ranked this high in the list of priority issues on New Jersey voters’ minds, Koning said.
And making the economy the top priority doesn’t voters are not thinking about abortion, too, Koning added. “Voters are going to the polls with an enormous amount in their minds,” she said.
What matters strategically is “who is doing a better job of messaging and persuading those in the middle,” Koning said.
Tom Malinowski sign, 7th district race 2022, in Scotch Plains, N.J., Wednesday, October 12, 2022Ed Murray | NJ Advance Media for
The message appears to have reached Michael Murphy, 42, whom NJ Advance Media recently interviewed in downtown Somerville. If enough Republicans take seats in the House, Murphy, a Somerville resident who plans to vote for Malinowski, said he said he was worried they could “pass a complete abortion ban.”
One of the most stirring moments at the Red Bank rally came from high school senior who won’t be old enough to vote on Nov. 8.
Nevaeh Sickles from Ocean Township said she was grateful she lived in a state that won’t interfere with a person’s right to choose if and when they want a child. “Just because I am protected, does not mean I will not fight for those women who are not,” Sickles said.
“In 2022, I should not be fighting the fight that women have fought before me already,” Sickles said. “...I will keep making noise — no matter how many people tell me I am going to hell.”
“We will go with you!” a protester responded, the crowd erupting in cheers.
Hundreds of people joined a coalition of grassroots New Jersey groups for the “March to ROEvember” rally in Montclair in support of reproductive rights on Saturday, November 8, 2022.Jeff Rhode | For NJ Advance Media
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NJ Advance Media staff writers Nicolas Fernandes, Camille Furst, and Jonathan D. Salant contributed to this report.
Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanKLivio.