Abortion rights leader gears up for 2018 fights

It’s been one year since Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, addressed the Women’s March in Washington. 

Hogue’s message was short but blunt, drawing battle lines for the years ahead.

“We have one message for Donald Trump,” she said at the time. “We will not be punished for owning our lives.” 

The past year has been busy for Hogue, one filled with both successes and setbacks for her organization. She’s been at the center of some of the marquee fights in the first year of the Trump administration and within the Democratic Party, as issues such as sexual assault and pay equity have skyrocketed to the top of the national conversation. 

{mosads}With women’s groups taking to the streets once again this weekend for the one-year anniversary of the Women’s March, Hogue told The Hill in an interview that she sees “an enormous number of reasons” for supporters to be hopeful as progressive groups mobilize for an ambitious 2018 midterm push.

“Part of it are the sheer numbers, part of it are concrete data points like Virginia … and Alabama,” she said, pointing to Democratic successes in Virginia’s 2017 elections and the Alabama special Senate election. 

But Hogue said she’s more interested in the “intangibles” — how legacy organizations are joining up with new activists and groups to multiply their impact. 

Those partnerships played a major role in one of NARAL’s largest organizing pushes this year: The People’s Defense, a coalition of progressive groups that opposed Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation. 

While the coalition helped turn up the heat on Democrats and backed the Democratic filibuster, Gorsuch ultimately won confirmation anyway, after Republicans eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. 

Hogue admitted that Democrats have been far slower to mobilize around the courts compared to Republicans — the promise of nominating a strong conservative judge such as Gorsuch was one of largest motivators for Republicans to rally behind President Trump’s candidacy. And she acknowledged that Democrats haven’t yet been “mobilizing at the same scale on the lower court nominations.”

But Hogue was encouraged by the progressive energy around the anti-Gorsuch push, which she believes will translate to future battles on judges and court cases. And she felt heartened about how concerns about the fate of the landmark abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade resonated with progressives. 

“Roe is symbolic of abortion rights as abortion rights is symbolic of gender equity,” she said.

“Roe became the thing where the court said, ‘You are entitled to your own decision-making, you’re entitled to your own private life.’ And that is meaningful to people.”

Hogue has a long career in progressive activism, but aside from considering a bid to chair the Democratic Party after the 2016 election, Hogue hasn’t worked within the party structure. Instead, she worked for groups such as Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network and MoveOn.org before taking the helm of NARAL in 2013.

After years of working in relative tandem with an Obama administration that shared many of its views on abortion rights, things have changed for NARAL.

Trump counts evangelical Christians as a major piece of the coalition that helped usher him into the White House. And his administration has made good on many of its campaign promises on abortion issues — expanding restrictions on international aid to groups that support abortions, rolling back ObamaCare’s birth control mandate and enacting other policies embraced by anti-abortion advocates.

The Women’s March anniversary comes right after the March for Life, the annual rally that calls to protect the rights of unborn children by overturning Roe v. Wade. Both Trump and Vice President Pence addressed marchers. 

“Under my administration, we will always defend the very first right in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life,” Trump said. 

“We are protecting the sanctity of life and the family as the foundation of our society.” 

It’s that intense disagreement that has prompted abortion rights advocates to focus so heavily on the 2018 midterm elections.

NARAL has already endorsed candidates, including Senate hopeful Rep. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and a handful of congressional candidates. But Hogue specifically pointed to the group’s endorsement of a Georgia gubernatorial hopeful, state Rep. Stacey Abrams (D), who is running a competitive primary against state Rep. Stacey Evans, as a pivotal piece of the 2018 plans. 

There, NARAL is organizing a ground game meant to boost turnout among the typical Democratic base — a “durable, multi-ethnic coalition” — while working to win over moderate white women who could be souring on the GOP in the age of Trump. 

“We are making big investments in Georgia. We really want to help Stacey Abrams win, she meets all the criteria about being a champion,” Hogue said.

“But we also feel like, while no one is suggesting the Georgia state legislature is going to flip this year, that’s the long game.”

The strategy is based on the group’s 2016 success in Nevada, where investment helped Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D), Rosen (D) and Rep. Ruben Kihuen (D) win, while flipping the state legislature. 

Kihuen is not running for reelection after sexual harassment allegations were leveled against him. NARAL immediately called for Kihuen to resign after the allegations emerged in December.

And it’s similar to the path Democrats took to mount an upset in Alabama — although the sexual misconduct allegations against the Republican candidate there likely had more to do with the surprising result.

Hogue has also been focused on the fights within her party as Democrats chart their path forward. 

There’s a stark disagreement about what mold of candidates the party should rally around as Democrats target Republican-leaning seats in 2018. Those divisions spilled into the open a handful of times in 2017, including when Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) told The Hill that Democrats won’t treat abortion as a litmus test for candidates. 

That’s long been the Democratic Party’s position. The party won the majority in 2006 in no small part thanks to moderate Democrats who didn’t toe the party line on issues like abortion. And it’s continued to help lawmakers like Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-Ill.), who does not support abortion rights. 

“People are sick of parties going so far to the left and so far to the right,” said one House strategist who works with moderate Democratic candidates. 

The strategist added that moderate Democrats, some of whom may not share the party’s view on abortion, should be the obvious choice for Democrats trying to win these deep-red districts.

But Hogue is adamantly against Democrats supporting anti-abortion candidates. She considers distancing from the party’s abortion stance “unilaterally disarming on something that should be our greatest strength” and a tactic that could send the wrong message to women who are mobilizing politically.

And she dismissed the notion that electing Democrats like Lipinski in an effort to take back the House can still be a win for the abortion rights movement. 

“What incentive do we have to make sure there is a Democratic majority if there’s an open conversation about whether abortion rights matters?” she said.

“This party is strongest when it stands for the values it articulates and we’ll work it out as we go along,” she said.

It’s under that banner that NARAL has organized around one of its top electoral objectives in 2018 — dethroning Lipinski. 

NARAL, joined with a smattering of prominent progressive groups, are rallying around Lipinski’s Democratic challenger, Marie Newman, ahead of the March primary. 

Lipinski has rarely faced a primary challenge in his safely Democratic district, and recently rolled out a bevy of endorsements from 30 mayors in his district. 

And with his views on abortion no secret, Lipinski and his allies have argued that his constituents have repeatedly approved of his voting record with each reelection to Congress.

Hogue stressed that she does not take issue with Lipinski’s personal stance on the issue, arguing that “personally pro-life people” have always been and will always be a part of the Democratic Party.

But she believes his votes are not in line with the party’s values and is encouraged by Newman’s candidacy.

“Lipinski has been bad since he came into office in 2006 and you haven’t seen this kind of mobilization in this race otherwise,” she said.

“This isn’t an ‘anybody but Lipinski’ thing. It’s that Marie happens to really, really fit the district and is an unabashed champion on all these issues.” 

Those battles within the Democratic Party underscore the careful line that Hogue walks as she and other progressives try to shape the party in the age of Trump. 

“We are not an appendage of the party. We see our interests advanced, there is no doubt, when Democrats have a majority,” she said.

“But only if the Democrats have internalized the values that we stand to as core to their victories.”