Democrats Hope Abortion Will Save the Senate, but It Might Not Be Enough

As Debbie Mucarsel-Powell revved up the Democratic faithful successful a edifice named for Thomas Edison, she was looking for a small energy successful her run to unseat Senator Rick Scott of Florida.

So she turned the attraction of the assemblage astatine Edison’s Lab Restaurant and Bar successful Fort Myers, wherever the inventor had a wintertime property and laboratory, to the termination referendum successful Florida that could determine the destiny of her bid.

“The antheral has ne'er tally successful a statesmanlike predetermination erstwhile our voters crook out,” she said of Mr. Scott. Perhaps much important, she added to the boisterous crowd, “he has ne'er tally against the millions of women and men that are acceptable to travel retired to the ballot container to support reproductive freedom.”

Ms. Mucarsel-Powell, a erstwhile aesculapian schoolhouse dean who was swept into the U.S. House by the 2018 bluish wave, and past swept close backmost retired 2 years later, is an underdog. Mr. Scott, a affluent fixture of Florida authorities who served for 8 years arsenic governor, has the precocious crushed successful the red-tinted authorities arsenic helium seeks his 2nd word successful the Senate.

But she has 1 happening connected her side: Floridians volition beryllium deciding by referendum whether to overturn the state’s unpopular six-week termination ban.

Beyond Florida, Senate candidates from crossed the governmental spectrum successful Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Nebraska, Maryland and Arizona will look connected the ballot alongside measures to support termination rights. The way grounds of specified measures, which person passed everyplace they person been introduced since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade successful 2022, would look to bode good for candidates who enactment them.