Related Articles
The campaign against the most contentious ballot question in Florida this year — an abortion-rights measure known as Amendment 4 — was relatively quiet until recently. But on its side all along was the most powerful figure in Florida politics: Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has gone all in on leveraging his considerable executive power to try to defeat the proposal.
Mr. DeSantis signed a ban last year on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, revving the Amendment 4 campaign into overdrive and putting fellow Republicans in the difficult position of having to defend an unpopular ban or defy the popular governor.
Last month, he gave shout-outs to Florida Republicans who had opposed the abortion amendment or contributed to the campaign against it, putting those who had not on the spot.
“Every one of our elected representatives needs to say where they stand on this,” he said at a state party dinner. “Some are not saying anything or offering to help us defeat this.”
The governor’s offensive might work. Under Florida law, ballot questions must receive 60 percent support to pass, a higher threshold than abortion-rights ballot measures have had to meet in other states.
Most public opinion polls show support for Amendment 4 barely reaching the threshold or just under it, though a recent poll by The New York Times and Siena College found support among likely voters much lower, at 46 percent.
Florida is the most populous of the 10 states with abortion measures on the ballot this year, making it a coveted prize for abortion-rights groups. Abortions had been allowed up to 24 weeks of pregnancy until 2022 in the state; the amendment would guarantee the right to an abortion “before viability” — about 24 weeks — “or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s health care provider.”
The “Yes on 4” campaign, which has relied on women sharing personal abortion stories and doctors describing obstacles to providing care for patients under the six-week ban, has called Mr. DeSantis’s effort “desperate.”
“It’s clear the state is hellbent on keeping Florida’s unpopular, cruel abortion ban in place,” Lauren Brenzel, the campaign’s director, said in a statement. “Their extreme attacks on Amendment 4 are an anti-democratic tactic to keep Floridians from being able to make their own choice about whether Amendment 4 should become law.”
Mr. DeSantis signed the six-week ban as he prepared to seek the Republican presidential nomination, perhaps anticipating that voters in conservative states like Iowa would appreciate his hard line. He will still be young when his second term as governor ends in 2027 and likely still has national ambitions.
Since June, he has raised more than $6 million for Florida Freedom Fund, his political action committee, which is headed by his chief of staff, James Uthmeier. The committee is separate from Florida Voters Against Extremism, which has raised more than $3 million for the “Vote No on 4 Florida” campaign.
Floridians Protecting Freedom, the organization running the “Yes on 4” campaign, said it has raised more than $100 million, though much of that went to getting the measure on the ballot with a petition drive.
Mr. DeSantis has held official events against Amendment 4, and several state agencies have opposed, threatened or questioned its legality.
A Republican-controlled state panel added a financial statement beneath the question on the November ballot, warning that it could result in high litigation costs and reduced revenues because it would result in fewer live births in the state. Amendment 4 organizers said the statement was biased and speculative.
Last month, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, which regulates medical providers, including abortion clinics, published a website and advertisement opposing Amendment 4.
Then the Florida Department of Health sent threatening letters to television stations that aired a political ad in favor of the amendment’s passage. A federal judge declared the threat unconstitutional; the health department lawyer who signed the letters resigned and said that they had been written by Mr. DeSantis’s counsel.
The Florida Department of Statepublished a preliminary report accusing Amendment 4 organizers of committing “widespread petition fraud,” an accusation organizers denied.
The state had certified the petition signatures in February. The report led opponents of the amendment to sue in state courts seeking to remove it from the ballot or declare its results null and void. The cases are pending.
While the attacks on the proposal by Mr. DeSantis and his administration have drawn more attention, anti-abortion groups have worked for months behind the scenes, urging pastors and priests to oppose Amendment 4 from the pulpit.
In August, Liberty Counsel Action, an anti-abortion lobbying group, held a bilingual training session for a group of mostly Hispanic pastors. They met at an evangelical church in the heavily Cuban American city of Hialeah, outside Miami.
One of the presenters was Erik Dellenback, Mr. DeSantis’s faith and community liaison. He shared a phone number for the pastors to call the governor’s office and told them that he viewed them as “warriors.”
“We desperately need your help,” he said. “We cannot go backwards.”
Catholic bishops, some of whom have been at odds with Mr. DeSantis in the past, have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the anti-Amendment 4 effort and campaigned openly. That surprised Robert Klucik, a lawyer in his 50s who lives in Ave Maria, a largely Catholic planned community east of Naples. Mr. Klucik opposes the amendment.
“I’m tickled pink that they had the guts to take a really, really firm position that was overt,” he said of the bishops. “I’ve never seen that before, where there’s political signs on church property. And that’s because this is not partisan.”
On Sunday, more than 500 people gathered inside a basketball arena in Ave Maria for a large anti-Amendment 4 rally. Many wore their Sunday best as they listened to members of the clergy, laypeople, politicians and a Mexican actor say it was their moral duty to vote “No.” Afterward, many attendees prayed the rosary outside.
This week, Mr. DeSantis crisscrossed the state with anti-abortion doctors, holding campaign-style events at the state’s expense. At one event in Coral Gables, an affluent suburb of Miami, the political blurred with the religious.
Thomas Wenski, the Miami archbishop, offered a prayer. And after one doctor said his stance against Amendment 4 was not religious, Jeanette M. Núñez, the lieutenant governor, said hers was.
“We cannot go to church and pray like Christians and turn around and vote like atheists,” she said.
<
