How abortion could affect Central Valley elections with vulnerable House Republicans

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California has some of the strongest abortion protections in the country — but in some of the state’s closest congressional races, the battle over abortion rights could make a big difference.

Races in three central and northern California districts with Republican incumbents could be where abortion views matter.

Reps. John Duarte of Modesto, Kevin Kiley of Roseville and David Valadao of Hanford face competitive races, according to nonpartisan analysts. In each case, their Democratic opponents are labeling them as unwilling to get tough and champion abortion rights.

“I think that this election is unusual in the sense that there are things Congress could do that would actually matter, even in a state like California that has state level protections for reproductive rights,” said Mary Ziegler, a University of California, Davis law professor who is an expert on the legal history of abortion in the U.S.

While California has strong abortion protections, federal legislation would override state law.

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“So if you had a Republican majority in the House and Senate, which seems more likely than not at this point, passing some kind of national ban isn’t out of the question,” Ziegler said.

“I don’t know how much (abortion) will be what gets people to the polls,” she said of the close races. “But again, when they’re really close races, any amount of difference could be determining the outcome.”

Washington and abortion

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has repeatedly taken credit for overturning Roe v. Wade by installing three conservative Supreme Court justices. Trump has declined to say whether he’d sign a national ban, but boasts that abortion law is now regulated by states.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, has made reproductive health a central presidential campaign issue, calling state laws limiting abortion access “Trump abortion bans.”

While a simple majority in the House could pass a ban, it would probably need at least 60 Senate votes. That’s considered highly unlikely with the current and projected makeup of the chamber.

In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the precedent that had set federal abortion policy for nearly 50 years, in its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Roe v. Wade had protected abortion access until fetal viability, generally regarded at about 24 weeks of pregnancy. This 2022 decision allowed states nationwide to enact and enforce laws restricting abortion access.

Abortion rights became a key issue in the 2022 midterm elections, helping stave off a predicted “red wave” and instead handing Republicans a razor-thin House majority.

That year, California voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure that enshrined abortion and contraceptive protections in the state’s Constitution.

Not all parts of the Central Valley wanted to add reproductive rights to the California Constitution. Some Central Valley counties voted no on slim margins; in some others, the ballot proposition prevailed on tight margins.

Central Valley and abortion

There are two tossup congressional districts in the Central Valley, California’s politically purple agricultural center, held by Republican incumbents. Close to Sacramento is another GOP congressional district that nonpartisan analysts have their eye on as demographics are expected to shift bluer overtime.

Issues that are important in the presidential race will impact congressional ones, nonpartisan election analysts have said. With the nationalization of elections and reduction in split-ticket voting, where people choose candidates from different parties for different offices, abortion and similar issues that are important at the top of the ticket have become more important locally.

In California’s 3rd Congressional District, freshman Kiley is likely, but not definitely, going to win in November against Democrat Jessica Morse.

The 3rd stretches from the northern Sierra Nevada along the Nevada border into Death Valley, taking in Alpine, Inyo, Mono, Nevada, Placer, Plumas and Sierra counties plus parts of El Dorado, Sacramento and Yuba counties.

Voters in the 3rd supported California’s 2022 reproductive health ballot measure by 16 percentage points.

The tossups are both rematches in California’s 13th and 22nd Congressional Districts. In the 13th, it’s freshman Duarte and former Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced. In the 22nd, it’s Valadao and former Assemblyman Rudy Salas, D-Bakersfield.

The 13th includes all of Merced County and chunks of Madera, Stanislaus, Fresno and San Joaquin counties. It has more registered Democrats than Republicans. It would have voted for President Joe Biden over Trump in 2020 by 11 percentage points had current legislative maps been in place. Congressional districts were redrawn after the 2020 election to reflect census data.

The 22nd, which has more registered Democrats than Republicans and would have picked Biden by 13 percentage points in 2020, includes most of Kings County and parts of Tulare and Kern counties.

The 13th supported the 2022 ballot proposition by just 6 percentage points. The 22nd, by 8 percentage points.

Analysts are also watching the Democrat-held 9th Congressional District which they say is likely, but not definitely, going to incumbent Rep. Josh Harder, D-Tracy. Voters there approved the 2022 ballot measure by 16 percentage points.

Three congressional districts in California voted no on the ballot proposition: the 20th, 23rd and 48th, all safely Republican districts.

House Republicans

Valadao and Kiley currently have an A-plus from anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. Most House Republicans do. Only eight score lower than an A, including Duarte, who got a C.

Duarte has said he supports abortion access through the first three months of pregnancy.

Valadao and Kiley have both said they are pro-life, the term used by the anti-abortion movement, but that they support exceptions in instances of rape, incest and to protect the life of the parent.

Their three opponents support codifying Roe v. Wade protections into federal law. Gray and Salas, as members of the Assembly, voted to get the proposition for abortion rights onto the 2022 ballot. Salas was a principal co-author of the measure.

There are several congressional votes praised by Pro-Life America and denounced by abortion rights advocates.

All three Republicans voted yes on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act in 2023, which would have required health care providers to try to preserve an infant’s life if born alive from a failed abortion, a rare circumstance. Health care providers who failed to do so could have faced fines or up to five years in prison. The legislation did not became law.

It is already illegal to intentionally kill a baby that is born alive. Opponents of the bill said it was meant to intimidate health care providers who offer abortions. All House Republicans who cast a vote on the bill supported it.

In 2023, all three Californians voted for an annual defense spending bill that had an amendment to bar the Department of Defense from reimbursing service members for travel to receive abortion care. Duarte was one of two Republicans who opposed adding the amendment, but still voted for the overall bill with it. Valadao and Kiley voted yes on adding the amendment. The abortion measure was removed from the version that was signed into law.

The provision was added to the House’s defense bill again this summer, with Duarte again one of two Republicans voting no on the abortion amendment, but he supported the overall legislation. Valadao and Kiley voted yes on both adding the amendment and the overall bill.

Unlike the freshmen Duarte and Kiley, Valadao has been in the House for most of a decade.

Since 2013, he has repeatedly voted on federal efforts to limit abortion access, including multiple efforts to prohibit abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy with exceptions for instances including rape, incest and to save the life of the parent. If the bill became law, health providers who conduct an abortion after this face a fine and a prison term of up to five years.

In 2022, Valadao cosponsored the Life at Conception Act, which would have banned abortion without those exceptions. He did not cosponsor the legislation again in 2023.

Messaging

“Kevin Kiley wants to ban abortion nationwide, with no exceptions for rape or incest,” says an ad from Morse, the wildfire resiliency specialist who’s seeking Kiley’s congressional seat.

The 30-second Morse ad features a woman identified as Miranda who explains that she was the victim of sexual assault. She says Kiley’s support of a ban includes “no exceptions for survivors like me. It’s disgusting and cruel.”

But Kiley said abortion policy is up to the states and he supports exceptions to abortion limitations in answering a questionnaire from The Bee for its primary election voter guide, “The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the issue of the legality of abortion should be left up to individual states. Last election, California voters enacted a Constitutional Amendment making abortion services broadly legal in the state.”

“While I personally believe in protecting life and am opposed to late-term abortions, I am mindful that our state’s voters have spoken on this issue,” Kiley said.

The Morse campaign argues that his congressional votes, including ones mentioned above, illustrate support for a national ban.

Dean Wallace, Morse’s campaign manager, also cited Kiley’s support for the Dobbs decision that allowed states to start passing laws restricting abortion access: “States have actually started passing these bans. And they are bans without exceptions for rape and incest in many cases. If Kiley supports overturning Roe then he supports these bans without exceptions,” he said.

Another issue they pointed to: Republican group membership. Kiley was a steering committee member of the Republican Study Committee, a conservative congressional group that has taken a hard line on abortion.

Dave Gilliard, a consultant to the Kiley campaign, countered, “While Kiley is a member of the RSC he had absolutely nothing to do with this proposal and was unaware of its existence. He never voted for it, nor did he introduce or co-sponsor any legislation to implement this budge.”

The ad, he said, is false: “Kevin Kiley has never voted or expressed support for a national ban on all abortions and he has consistently and publicly said that he supports the rape, incest and mother’s life in danger exceptions.”

“The Republicans and their candidates, they’re not in any way pro-choice, and so them pretending to be is insulting to our intelligence,” said Pablo Rodriguez, the founding Executive Director of Communities for a New California Education Fund, which is part of a coalition to help Democrats of color turn out in November.

He said their polling of Latina women in the Central Valley shows reproductive rights as one of their top issues, and that Latina women are registered at higher rates to vote than Latino men, with a growing contingent being no-party preference. The 13th and 22nd are Latino-majority voting-age districts.

“They don’t necessarily automatically go to vote for the Democrats,” Rodriguez said. “They still need to be convinced. And so on issues like abortion and access to abortion, that’s one issue. But there’s an array of issues like jobs in the economy and health care and access to housing, specifically, where the candidates need to demonstrate a plan.”