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In competitive House districts across the country, vulnerable House Republicans have “settled on a strategy: airbrushing or at times flatly misrepresenting their” staunch anti-abortion records.
Reporting from the New York Times showcases vulnerable House Republicans who are misleading voters about their unpopular records on the campaign trail:
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CA-45 – Rep. Michelle Steel repeatedly tried to cover up her support for the Life at Conception Act, a total abortion ban without exceptions that would likely ban IVF.
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NY-04 – Rep. Anthony D’Esposito tried to cover up his support for a national abortion ban in a recent ad.
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CA-27 – Rep. Mike Garcia misled voters in a recent ad, insinuating that he cosponsored the legislation that reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act when he actually opposed the bill.
REMINDER: This isn’t the first time vulnerable House Republicans have been caught lying about and hiding their anti-abortion records.
Read more about House Republicans’ latest attempts to cover up their out-of-touch anti-abortion, anti-family, and anti-freedom agenda below:
New York Times: G.O.P. Candidates Distort Records on Women, Seeking to Blunt a Liability
By Annie Karni and Robert Jimison | Sept. 6, 2024
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With just nine weeks to go until the election, many [Republicans] appear to have settled on a strategy: airbrushing or at times flatly misrepresenting their records in gauzy, family-focused television ads apparently aimed at those voters.
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Some Republicans are claiming that they support protections for in vitro fertilization that they voted against, or that are at odds with legislation they have backed in the past. Others are vowing they would never ban abortion, though they previously said they would support doing so. One states that he cosponsored pro-woman legislation that he actually opposed.
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What the advertisements have in common is that they mislead voters about the positions Republicans have taken on reproductive rights and other protections for women — topics that have become politically toxic for the G.O.P. in elections across the country, particularly since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
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Ms. Steel… twice cosponsored the Life at Conception Act, a bill that would grant legal personhood to fertilized eggs, effectively criminalizing abortions and potentially aspects of I.V.F. treatments, which typically involve the destruction of embryos.
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In 2022, Mr. D’Esposito was pressed by the news website Semafor about whether he would vote for a 15-week ban. “Probably,” he said, then tried to take it back after a spokeswoman asked that he not be quoted saying so. “I rescind what I say when I say ‘probably,’” he said then.
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“House Republicans will stop at nothing — including restricting I.V.F. access and lying to their own voters about it — to reach their ultimate goal: banning abortion and gutting reproductive rights nationwide,” said Dan Gottlieb, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
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Representative Mike Garcia, a Republican whose California district sits just north of Los Angeles, released a new ad featuring a woman who tells voters: “Mike Garcia cosponsored the Violence Against Women Act to protect us against domestic violence. That’s why we need Mike Garcia in Congress.”
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But Mr. Garcia did not cosponsor the reauthorization of the landmark legislation that President Biden signed into law in 2022 as part of a sprawling spending package.
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In fact, he joined Republicans in opposing it.
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