Inflation allows Republicans to flip suburban voters.
Aaron Zitner, Scott Calvert, and Daniella Cheslow 7-1-2022, Aaron Zitner is a reporter and editor in The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau, focusing largely on how politics are driven by demographic and economic change. He helped lead presidential campaign coverage for the Los Angeles Times and served as the paper’s White House and Washington economics editor. Scott Calvert is a Baltimore-based reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Daniella Cheslow covered breaking news and national security in audio and print at the Wall Street Journal. She is a 2018 Burns Fellow. “”Abortion Ruling Scrambles Voting Calculus for Suburban Women” [The Wall Street Journal] https://www.wsj.com/articles/abortion-ruling-scrambles-voting-calculus-for-suburban-women-11656684001 /MDC
Mary Schultz says the Supreme Court decision to eliminate the constitutional right to abortion left her shaken. “I can’t believe they took us back 50 years, that my girls have less rights than I had,” she said. One of her two grown daughters cried over the news, she said.
Yet, Ms. Schultz, 61, who lives in suburban Atlanta, said she is likely to vote this fall to re-elect Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, even though he signed a bill that would ban most abortions once fetal cardiac activity is detected, at about six weeks into a pregnancy.
Ms. Schultz sees abortion as a medical procedure best left primarily to a doctor and patient. But she gives Mr. Kemp credit for guiding the state through the Covid-19 crisis and thinks he would manage the state better than his Democratic challenger, Stacey Abrams.
The nation’s suburbs have voted increasingly Democratic in recent years, in part because of women with shifting political allegiances such as Ms. Schultz, who backed Donald Trump in 2016 and then Joe Biden four years later. This year, though, concerns over inflation and disillusionment with Mr. Biden’s leadership have made these swing voters top targets for Republican candidates. Democrats are hoping anger over the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling will override those concerns and prompt them to turn out on Election Day and stick with the Democratic Party.