Minnesota GOP faces balancing act on abortion ahead of 2024

Republican Scott Jensen now says his campaign-trail promise to ban almost all abortions cost him the 2022 Minnesota governor's race and the issue could hurt future candidates if the party doesn't rethink its strategy.

At the same time, his running mate, former Vikings player Matt Birk, is redoubling his efforts in the anti-abortion movement, telling activists to not "back down" in a recent op-ed and fundraising blast to raise money for a crisis pregnancy center.

"It's time to focus on efforts in our own backyard and make the case for why the pro-life movement isn't going away anytime soon," Birk wrote.

The differing stances from the former members of the GOP ticket is a microcosm of the party's challenge following Roe v. Wade's reversal and a Democratic sweep of all Minnesota government in the midterm election. Given the chance by the U.S. Supreme Court after waiting decades to shape abortion policies, Republican-led states continue to pass strict bans on the procedure even as the issue hurts them electorally. Most recently, voters in Ohio overwhelming rejected a ballot measure that would have made it harder to guarantee abortion access in the state's Constitution.

Ahead of the 2024 election, in which Republicans have a chance to flip control of the Minnesota House and end Democrats' trifecta, some activists want party leaders to confront the balancing act they face in energizing the Republican base without pushing away swing voters on the abortion issue.

"We have to put this issue on the table," said Jennifer DeJournett, a GOP activist and president of Ballot Box Strategies. "There is no winning statewide and there is no winning in these suburban congressional seats — and some of these legislative seats — unless the voter trusts us and we have some kind of cohesive position and answer to this question."

Minnesota Republicans struggled to find that answer in 2022, including Jensen. His comment to several news outlets that he would work to ban abortions as governor helped him win the party's endorsement but fueled a multimillion-dollar ad campaign labeling him extreme before the general election. While he later shifted his stance to support exceptions for rape or incest, he lost to Gov. Tim Walz by 7 points.

"One statement that our top of the ticket made was 'I will ban abortion,' and that became the campaign slogan that the Democrats used to tie a weight around the neck of every single Republican running down ballot," said Kelly Fenton, a former Republican Party deputy chair and legislator who ran unsuccessfully for a House seat in Woodbury last fall.

"The reality is our position was pro-life with compassion for women who find themselves in a difficult situation, and we never really got a chance to get that message out there," she said.

The Minnesota Republican Party attempted to craft a cohesive messaging strategy when it sent out a memo to candidates advising them to refer to abortion as a "protected constitutional right" in the state before pivoting to crime, the economy and education. Abortion access is protected in the state by a 1995 state Supreme Court ruling, but that talking point rang hollow against the backdrop of Roe's demise and Democrats' attacks.

The story is different in 2024, according to Republicans and anti-abortion groups, after a session where Democrats passed an expansive agenda to codify abortion rights. That included no gestational limits on the procedure and eliminating a 24-hour waiting period and an informed-consent requirement, which abortion opponents argue went further than most Minnesotans wanted.

"Most Minnesotans are reasonable when it comes to abortion policy and they don't want the abortion absolutism and the radical and extreme agenda that was imposed on them," said Cathy Blaeser, executive director of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, the state's largest anti-abortion group. "This is not what Minnesotans asked for in the 2022 election."

Jensen's recent reflections on abortion, both in an op-ed and podcast interview, represent one of the biggest turnarounds on the issue since the midterm campaign. While he maintains he's still opposed to abortion, he said policy should be left up to the voters — which some Democrats are also pushing — in the form of a constitutional amendment.

As a physician, he's supportive of expanded access for birth control and contraceptives and paid leave for new parents. Jensen hasn't ruled out another run for governor in 2026.

National polling shows a majority of Americans are in favor of some access to the procedure. Those numbers increase when sampling younger voters and people who live in suburban and metro areas, two voting demographics that Republicans are struggling to capture, said Becky Scherr, a former Republican party staffer and campaign strategist.

"It's not necessarily that these women in the suburbs want to be advocating for all abortions all the time, but they think it's ridiculous not to have this choice," said Scherr, who supports abortion rights.

Scherr said Republicans were caught off guard in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe, despite working toward that goal for decades. "We were suddenly in this situation where we had no solutions in place, and Democrats really seized on that."

Looking ahead to 2024, she said the party should do a better job of coming at the issue with compassion and talking about policies that support families after children are born.

"For Republicans, you can't ignore it," Scherr said. "And we need to make sure we stop letting Democrats define us before we define ourselves."