IOWA FALLS, Iowa — When a voter here urged Kirsten Gillibrand to take on abortion rights as her “personal fight,” the New York Democrat made it clear that she needs no invitation.
A string of rigid new anti-abortion laws championed by Republican state lawmakers across the country have created an opening in the presidential campaign for Gillibrand, who’s struggled to break out in the 23-candidate Democratic field.
She’s seized on the national coverage of the new laws, traveling to Georgia’s statehouse days after the Republican governor signed one there and rolling out Facebook ads that call her a “champion” for American women “in the face of an onslaught of Republican attacks on reproductive rights.”Gillibrand took that pitch to Iowa this weekend, telling two-dozen voters gathered at one stop in a coffee shop that “a women should be able to decide when she’s having children, how many children she’s having and under what circumstances she’s having.”
“This is a human right,” Gillibrand said, to a round of applause from a crowd of largely female attendees.
But four months into her presidential run, Gillibrand is still struggling to carve out support. She’s averaging less than 1 percent support in national polling, and she landed in the bottom half of the field in first-quarter fundraising. Gillibrand also hasn’t yet crossed the 65,000-donor threshold, set by the Democratic National Committee as one of two criteria to reach the debate stage in June.
“I do know that I’m a voice for all women in this country, and that my leadership on these issues matter,” Gillibrand said following a roundtable with women’s health care providers in West Des Moines.
“Maybe more supporters will notice that, and that I’ve been working on it for the last decade.”Gillibrand, who has already qualified for the first two DNC debates through polling, said she’s “very optimistic” about hitting the 65,000-donor criterion as well, because her campaign her campaign “had a really good response over the last few weeks, now that we’ve been telling people we do need their help,” she said. (Gillibrand has previously complained that the DNC’s criteria is “random and inaccurate, but it’s their choice.”)
Gillibrand predicted this “all-out assault by the Republican Party” on abortion will change voters’ calculus for who they might support for the Democratic nomination, adding that she’s “[led] the debate, not just on reproductive freedom, but on whether we value women.”
Gillibrand put women at the center of her presidential campaign from the outset, calling herself a “young mom” during her presidential launch who would “fight for other people’s kids as hard as I would fight for my own.” She was the first presidential candidate to commit to a litmus test for judicial nominees by pledging to only nominate judges who consider Roe v. Wade as settled legal precedent. This weekend, Gillibrand rolled out a major policy plank: a “Family Bill of Rights,” a slate of proposals that focus on maternal health care, national family paid leave and universal pre-kindergarten.
Gillibrand has “actually put it all into a plan, so she might gain more traction from that,” said state Sen. Amanda Ragan, who attended the senator’s meet-and-greet in Mason City on Saturday afternoon.
The New York senator is also getting involved in local-level political fights on the issue: Last month, Gillibrand endorsed Marie Newman, a Democratic congressional candidate in Illinois who is challenging incumbent Rep. Dan Lipinski, one of the few anti-abortion Democrats left in Congress. That puts Gillibrand at odds with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is supporting Lipinski.
Gillibrand said on Friday that she planned to “get involved in” other Democratic primaries as “candidates begin to emerge to run in places where members of Congress are not pro-choice and don’t support the values that I support.”
“Any overt ‘war on women’ helps her,” said one Democratic national strategist, granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly. “She’s at the forefront, and been at the forefront of this for a long time, [so] it tracks with everything she’s been talking about.”
But plenty of obstacles still remain. Among them: There isn’t much daylight amongst the Democratic candidates on abortion rights.
All four female senators running for president — Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar — recently appeared alongside Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams in a short video, seeking to rally support against the wave of state legislation restricting abortion access. Sen. Cory Booker penned an open letter in GQ magazine, calling on men to not let women “face this fight alone.” Former Vice President Joe Biden said last week he would support enshrining abortion rights into federal law “should it become necessary,” a move that’s several other 2020 candidates have also endorsed.
“All the Democratic candidates are saying the right thing on it, so I don’t see that as a breakout issue for her,” said Cindy Herring, a 40-year-old Democrat who heard Gillibrand’s speak at ShinyTop Brewing in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on Friday night.
Still, Gillibrand’s message struck a chord with Danielle Bessman, a 32-year-old Democrat from Alden, Iowa, who said she feels like women “are treated like second class citizens.”
“Everything she’s rallying for is what I care about,” said Bessman, though she’s holding off throwing her full support behind Gillibrand for now. “I need to do more research on her and all of the candidates,” she said.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine