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Cover Story
A crucial question for Republicans gathering here this week: Do pro-choice voters hold the key to the party’s presidential hopes?
Less than a year after a record-setting midterm election that ended 50 years of Democratic rule in Congress, Republicans are poised to jump on a weak president whose approval ratings are about as far south as his hometown of Hope, Arkansas.
But, as the Grand Poobahs of the Grand Old Party descend on Philadelphia this week for their annual summer meeting — feeling confident that the White House is all but theirs next November — a relatively unknown (outside the Beltway and GOP circles, that is) activist from suburban D.C. is about to throw a cold blanket on the Party’s party.
Ann E. W. Stone, an Alexandria, Va.-based political consultant, has a message for Bob Dole, Pat Buchanan, Arlen Specter, Phil Gramm, Bob Dornan and all the other GOP presidential hopefuls who will be in Philadelphia this week.
You want to win the White House?
Remove the anti-abortion plank that has been on the party platform since 1980.
So who is Ann Stone and why should anyone attending this week’s Republican National Committee’s annual summer meeting care about what she has to say?
She is founder and executive director of Republicans For Choice (RFC), a group, she says, that speaks for the silent majority of the Republican party — pro-choice political conservatives who make their stand at the ballot box, not in noisy public rallies. RFC, she claims, has “150,000 members who are some of the party’s biggest contributors.”
Massachusetts Governor William Weld and other supporters of presidential candidate Pete Wilson are card-carrying members. Stone won’t divulge the names of other members, or say just how much money group members donated to pro-choice candidates.
She is not shy, however, in talking about the group’s influence on GOP politics.
In 1992, RFC’s dissatisfaction with the party platform and George Bush’s stance on abortion torpedoed the already listing incumbent, says Stone. Instead of standing by their man, the group touched off a mini-tsunami of Republican support for Clinton and Perot.
And the group’s unhappiness with the party’s current stand on the issue, which hasn’t wavered since Ronald Reagan won the party nod for the first time, is likely to sink anyone opposed to a woman’s right to choose an abortion.
“Our people walked out on the Republican Party in 1992,” says Stone. “And unless the anti-abortion language is taken out of the platform when the Republican National Convention meets in San Diego next year, we are prepared to walk out again.”
Stone, citing an American Political Science Association post-1992 election study, says that almost one out of every three GOP women broke ranks and either stayed home or voted for Clinton or Perot because both avowed a pro-choice agenda.
Those figures, says Stone, should be a reminder to Republicans that, even though they crushed the Democrats across the country in the 1994 Congressional juggernaut, the presidential election will be much different.
“Any nominee of our party, this time around, will have to be someone who can heal the party,” says Stone. “If it is not healed, we cannot win. And that is the lesson of 1992. When we fight each other, we lose. And the lesson of 1994 is that, when we don’t, we win.”
The 1992 GOP convention in Houston was a particularly nasty affair. Though the platform committee overwhelmingly voted to retain the anti-choice plank, the events leading up to that vote left scars that still blemish the Republican body politic.
“We scared the living daylights out of them, because 55 percent of the convention members were pro-choice,” says Stone of George Bush’s supporters. “They assigned people to follow us around and do damage control whenever we spoke to a state committee meeting.”
The acrimony between RFC and the Bush campaign was so great, says Stone, that the party confiscated 5,000 RFC signs and refused to let them be displayed on the floor of the Astrodome.
“Since 1992,” she says, “we have been trying to get the Republican National Committee to compensate us for the signs or return them.”
There is no shortage of Republicans and anti-choice activists claiming that Ann Stone greatly overstates the importance of abortion in the 1996 Presidential election.
From the campaigns of Lamar Alexander and Phil Gramm to groups like the National Right To Life Committee and the Christian Coalition, anti-choice advocates say abortion will not be the defining issue in the outcome of the 1996 race. And, even if it is, the party’s only hope is to maintain its anti-choice stance, those people say.
“Abortion is not a defining issue in this campaign,” says Bryan Flood, spokesman for Lamar Alexander. “We are talking about jobs, economic opportunity, freedom from Washington D.C. to make decisions ourselves. More personal responsibility. Those issues are more central to the party.”
Like Flood, Gramm press secretary Howard Upinsky says that taxes, crime and welfare reform are the key issues in the ’96 GOP primary race.
“I don’t have any kind of statistics that tell me anything is going on” as Stone portrays it, with abortion a defining issue, Upinsky says. “Phil Gramm has based his pro-life position on what he believes personally. But there are a lot of differences in the party on a lot of issues.”
Even the campaigns of pro-choice candidates like Wilson and Specter say that abortion is not the all-important issue Stone makes it out to be.
Lynne Moten, Specter’s press secretary, says the reason abortion should not be a defining issue in the 1996 presidential race is that, under Roe v. Wade, abortion is no crime.
“Abortion is legal and constitutional and the focus will be on major issues that face the country that he has emphasized,” says Moten. “Less government, reduce expenses, lower taxes, strong crime control, a powerful national defense, and civil rights. [The Specter campaign] should not be drawn into a litmus test.”
Pete Wilson’s campaign people sing a similar tune.
“Abortion is an important issue, but Republicans are not a single-issue party,” says Wilson’s press secretary Sean Walsh. “There are a number of issues that are important to this country; creating jobs, welfare reform, illegal immigration. Pro-choice is important, but we have far too many issues to focus on just one.”
The only campaign to agree with Stone that abortion is the key issue is that of ultra-right-wing commentator Pat Buchanan — and that is about the only thing on which the two see eye to eye.
“I think one of the most fundamental pillars of Republican politics is represented by the pro-life plank,” says Terry Jeffrey, Buchanan’s campaign manager. “I think that any GOP candidate who waffles or walks away from that plank is doomed.”
So say Ann Stone is right.
Say that abortion is a defining issue.
Who wins?
The anti-choice crowd is confident that the voters, as well as God, are on their side.
Carol Long, PAC director for the National Right To Life Committee, minces no words when commenting on Stone’s claim that the GOP must eliminate the anti-choice plank if the party is to move back into the White House.
“That is overblown,” says Long. “In the 1992 race, of the people who voted for a candidate based on abortion, a larger percentage of Democrats voted for pro-life George Bush than Republicans who voted for Bill Clinton.”
As evidence, Long cites a 1992 exit poll conducted by Voter Research and Surveys, an association of ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN. The company collected data based on questionnaires completed by more than 15,000 voters at 300 polling locations nationwide.
According to that survey, about 2,000 respondents said that abortion was one of the two issues that mattered most. Of those, 29 percent were Democrats, 43 percent were Republicans and 28 percent were Independents. And of those people, 24 percent of the Democrats voted for Bush, while only 11 percent of Republicans voted for Clinton.
“For every 47 Republicans who left their party to vote for Bill Clinton because he supports abortion, 70 Democrats left their party to vote for George Bush because he opposes abortion,” says Long. “Ann Stone has no basis for saying that a pro-life Republican presidential nominee will be hurt by ‘pro-choice’ Republicans voting against the ticket. It hasn’t happened yet.”
Republicans, says Long, “continue to grow strong with the party’s pro-life position. I see no reason to think that maintaining that strong support for unborn children will hurt the party.”
What happens if Wilson or Specter wins?
“First of all, that won’t happen,” says Long. “If it does, hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers will stay home on Election Day and Bill Clinton will be re-elected.”
Any thought that the GOP is largely pro-choice, says Long, is largely the creation of the media.
Mike Russell, spokesman for the Christian Coalition, agrees with Long about that.
“I think there is a lot of attention right now about who the front runner will be heading into the convention,” says Russell. “Obviously, the media is really focused on that right now and, along with that, the issue of the day. I don’t think abortion will be the divisive issue in 1996 that perhaps the media and some pro-abortion advocates make it out to be.”
The bottom line, according to Russell, is this:
“The GOP has been the pro-life party for years and has won time and time again with its defense of innocent life in its platform.”
The party didn’t win in 1992.
The reason?
“It’s abortion, stupid,” according to Alan Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University.
In a post-election review prepared for the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Abramowitz wrote that “despite the general belief that the presidential election was decided on economic issues…[a]bortion had a stronger influence on candidate choice than any other policy issue…”
Abramowitz, in his report titled “It’s Abortion, Stupid,” cites a 1992 American National Election Study survey to show that 89 percent of Republicans believed that abortions should be allowed and that nearly half of those people identified themselves as pro-choice.
The survey has been conducted every presidential election year since 1952 by the University of Michigan’s Center for Political Studies, according to Abramowitz. About 2,000 voters responded to the 1992 poll.
He added that 35 percent of pro-choice Republicans voted against Bush: 23 percent for Perot, 12 percent for Clinton. But more telling is that, according to the National Election Study survey, only 5 percent of anti-choice Democrats voted for Bush — a clear contradiction of the numbers espoused by the National Right To Life Committee.
And the GOP’s view on abortion has not changed much since 1992, according to figures provided by Stone and Specter.
An Epic/MRA-Mitchell survey released last week shows that 52 percent of Republicans say that the party’s anti-choice plank should be eliminated.
Even more surprising, the poll shows that 30 percent of pro-lifers, 47 percent of “born-agains” and 49 percent of conservatives also favor eliminating the anti-choice plank.
The survey of 442 Republicans was conducted last month.
There is other data to support Stone’s position.
According to a Fox TV/New York Post poll of 506 New Hampshire Republicans, 69 percent characterize themselves as pro-choice while only 20 percent say they are anti-choice.
When asked how important it was to nominate a pro-choice Republican, 16 percent said “most important” while 33 percent said “very important.”
A Boston Globe/KRC poll of 400 New Hampshire Republicans taken in February has very similar results.
That poll had 52 percent describing themselves as pro-choice and 29 percent anti-choice. But, “more importantly,” according to the Specter campaign, 53 percent responding to the Globe/KRC poll said they were more likely to vote for a pro-choice candidate.
Pennsylvania’s state Republican Committee found itself in a similar quandary in 1990, when the party, divided over the abortion issue, was unable to push its gubernatorial candidate, Barbara Hafer, past Bob Casey.
Soon after the election, state chairwoman Anne Anstine convened an ad-hoc committee to develop a unified policy on abortion.
“The party was fractured so badly,” says Anstine, who describes herself as being pro-choice. “I appointed a committee of pro-lifers, pro-choice people, and those who were neutral. They traveled all over the state talking to people.”
The result, says Anstine, is that the state Republican party “believes in the sanctity of life.”
“That is acceptable to everyone,” she says. “We have got to move forward. We can’t allow one issue to divide and conquer for all the wrong reasons.”
Anstine, who is coordinating state representation at the Republican National Committee (RNC) meeting in Philadelphia, says that the national party must also reach consensus on abortion so that it can concentrate on selecting a candidate and, most importantly, beating Clinton.
There will be plenty of opportunity for the presidential candidates to discuss the issues in Philadelphia, adds Anstine.
Though she says that crime is still the number one issue among Republicans, Anstine admits that, like the 1992 national convention, the RNC summer meeting will likely be marked by much debate over abortion.
“At the convention, it probably played a bigger role than it should have,” she says. “You have extremists on both sides who want to be heard, so it couldn’t help but become a big issue.”
The RNC really doesn’t want to talk about how big an issue it might be — either at the summer meeting, or in 1996.
“You have to talk to the campaigns about that,” says RNC spokesperson Mary Crawford. “Every four years, the party platform is written by the platform committee.”
But Ann Stone says the GOP must get rid of the anti-choice plank if the party wants to recapture the White House. Does the RNC have a comment about that?
“It would be inappropriate for the RNC to comment on that,” says Crawford. “It would be presumptuous of me to interject myself into that debate.”
Crawford did say this much: The RNC chose Philadelphia as host of its summer meeting because of “the Spirit of ’96.”
“Philadelphia is appropriate for a lot of reasons,” she says. “It is a central place to what has led to great freedoms that we enjoy as a country.”
Though she does not want to comment on what role abortion will play, and though it is against party policy to handicap the race, Crawford says, “We will get down to the serious business of preparing for the elections we have this year and looking ahead to 1996.”
The Republican Party may want the abortion issue to go quietly into the night, but it won’t.
Not when you have Pat Buchanan, who is dedicated to ending the right to choose an abortion. And not when you have Arlen Specter, an advocate for choice.
Ann Stone and groups like Planned Parenthood Republicans for Choice (not affiliated with Stone’s group) have promised to keep the issue on the front burner.
And the Christian right has vowed to fight an ideological death match with Specter and Stone over the issue of abortion.
“The Christian right is going to have a lot to say in the GOP primary and the convention,” says noted political scientist Jim Reichly, author of The Life Of The Party, a 1992 tome on our national political structure. “The abortion issue has the potential to be the most contentious issue at the convention. It depends on how much the two sides insist on the platform favoring their positions.”
And insist they do.
“Specter’s whole campaign is to malign and distort the role of the religious conservatives in this process,” says the Christian Coalition’s Mike Russell. “There is no audience for that.”
Both Russell and Buchanan campaign chief Terry Jeffrey point to the polls showing Specter hovering around the 5 percent mark as evidence that the Christian Right is right.
Specter, whose campaign unofficially began in early 1995 with forays into Iowa where he took on the Christian Right, has a different spin.
“The strength of the religious right in Republican primaries is overestimated,” says Specter advisor Roger Stone (no relation to Ann).
“I believe abortion is an issue to be decided by women, not by big government. I will lead the fight to strip the strident anti-choice language from the Republican national platform,” Specter said in his March 30 speech announcing his candidacy. “Let me say it as plainly as I can: Neither this nation — nor this party — can afford a Republican candidate so captive to the demands of the intolerant right that we end up re-electing a president of the incompetent left.”
Specter’s scenario to capture the multi-candidate primary, and change the party’s position on abortion, is to do well early in states where moderates win.
“The religious right can’t coalesce behind any one candidate early,” says Roger Stone. “At least in the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, and probably well into March, their votes will be split, with Buchanan, and possibly Dornan, appealing to the most radical elements and Dole and Gramm courting Pat Robertson to vie for that support.”
At this point, most observers believe that the 1996 GOP presidential primary is Bob Dole’s to lose. And Dole has yet to make a definitive statement on where he stands on the platform. But if his legislative record is any indication, it is likely he will come down on the side of the Christian Right.
Between 1991 and 1994, Dole’s voting record was given a 100 percent rating by the Justlife Education Fund, a 67 percent rating by the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment, an 80 percent rating by the National Right to Life Committee and a 0 percent rating by the National Abortion Reproductive Rights Action League.
Last week’s Epic/MRA-Mitchell poll that showed 52 percent of Republicans calling for an end to the anti-choice plank also showed Dole far, far ahead of the pack.
The poll has Dole at 41 percent, a full 30 percentage points ahead of the number two candidate, Phil Gramm. And, even with Ross Perot figured in, Dole still commands a 38-13 lead over the number two candidate, in that case Perot.
Arlen Specter barely registers on either chart, polling only 2 percent of the voters.
But Specter is not alone in his optimism.
“I think Specter will suprise people,” says Ann Stone. “He will do very well in the Northeast and finish much better than people expect.”
So well, says Stone, that Specter will force his way into the new White House as either vice president, or as a member of Bob Dole’s cabinet.
All because of abortion, she says.
But that is not good enough for Ann Stone.
“Either the party has to change its platform, or give us the number two slot.”
What good is a pro-choice vice president if the president and the platform are both anti-choice?
“Does the year 2000 ring a bell?”
That is a long way off.
In the meantime, as the candidates come to Philadelphia to talk about the issues, Stone says her group will not be there to greet them.
“We are having training sessions that week,” she says “We want to teach our people how to handle themselves when confronted by the Christian Right at local meetings.”
But out of sight is definitely not out of mind.
“We are poised to make some noise where it counts,” says Stone. “At the ballot box.”
