TITLE: Meet The TikTok Billionaire Whose Campaign Cash Is Fueling the GOP’s Abortion Fights
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/tiktok-billionaire-yass-gop-donor-abortion-1234859270/
EXCERPT: According to a widely circulated origin story, Jeff Yass’ investing career started with a poker game in a SUNY-Binghamton dorm room. Yass went on to found the options trading firm Susquehanna Investment Group, and is now worth a cool $28 billion. One of Susquehanna’s richest bets was purchasing a 15 percent stake in TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, in 2012; according to the Wall Street Journal, Yass’ personal stake in the company is about seven percent.
A longtime member of the advisory board at the Cato Institute and a top donor to Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Yass, 67, self-identifies as a libertarian — a political philosophy that would seem to be at odds with the desire to increase government control of women’s health care decisions.
A person familiar with Yass’ political spending insists that the single issue animating his largess is “school choice” — if the candidates funded by the groups he funds happen to also hold anti-abortion views, that is simply incidental, this person said. The same person did not respond when asked what Yass’ own position on abortion is.
ProPublica reported that Yass has avoided paying more than $1 billion in taxes in recent years. He’s also emerged as a GOP megadonor. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, his donations to outside groups funding GOP candidates have soared from $5.25 million in 2016 to an eye-watering $56 million in 2022. Yass, with his wife Janine, were the largest donors to outside political organizations in the country last year, behind George Soros, Richard Uihlein of the shipping supply company Uline, and Kenneth Griffin, CEO of the hedge fund Citadel.
This year, a significant portion of money already disbursed by groups Yass funds has gone to GOP candidates in critical abortion races.
Yass’ most direct involvement is in Virginia, where he has injected $2 million into a PAC steered by fellow “school choice” advocate Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Yass’ contribution makes him the second most-generous benefactor of the group, Spirit of Virginia, which has funneled contributions to anti-abortion hardliners in the state. Those contributions could have a major impact: Every seat in the General Assembly is up for grabs this year. If Republicans win control of the legislature, advocates worry about the fallout for women across the South.
TITLE: In deep red Kentucky, Democrats bet abortion will be a winning issue in the governor's race
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/kentucky-democrats-abortion-governors-race-beshear-cameron-rcna120652
EXCERPT: In April 2022, before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, [Gov. Andy] Beshear vetoed a ban on abortion after 15 weeks, but the veto was overridden by the GOP-controlled Legislature.
[Atty. Gen. Daniel] Cameron and Republican groups have moved to make the race about anything other than abortion, focusing instead on issues like the economy and Joe Biden's presidency.
Abortion “is not going to be the deciding issue in this race,” a Republican strategist involved in the race said.
GOP groups, including Kentucky Values, a Republican Governors Association affiliate that plans to spend at least $10 million on the race, have largely aimed the bulk of their own messaging at trying to tie Beshear , whose above-60% approval rating is among the highest for any governor in the country, to Biden, who, an Emerson College poll this month found, has a dismal 22% approval rating in the state.
Beshear has largely avoided discussing Biden, and at a debate last week, he criticized Cameron for so doggedly trying to link the two Democrats.
Beshear’s campaign and Defending Bluegrass Values have outspent Cameron and GOP-allied groups on the airwaves since the May Republican primary by $35.6 million to $21.6 million, according to AdImpact.
Meanwhile, polling shows Beshear with a sizable lead in the race: An Emerson College survey this month showed Beshear leading Cameron among Kentucky registered voters 49% to 33%, with 13% undecided.
Polling specifically about abortion rights has been sparse in Kentucky, though a survey published in June by the Democratic Governors Association found that 62% of registered voters in the state opposed the 2019 ban, while 14% said abortion should be illegal in all situations.
But even without nonpartisan polling on the question of abortion rights, reproductive rights groups say the 2022 ballot measure defeat should have been a wake-up call for Republicans to understand that voters didn’t support hard-line abortion policy in their state.
Their failure to do so, however, reproductive rights groups said, has allowed Democratic-aligned groups to seize on the issue in a state that many national groups had long seen as hostile territory for abortion messaging.
“We’ve been written off a lot of times in the national discourse on what issues can win in states like Kentucky, and we don’t always get the investment to be able to run full-fledged campaigns. But we were able to last year, so we were able to change the narrative a bit,” said Wieder, of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates. “And that has continued to some degree into this race.”
TITLE: Abortion is on the ballot in November. The outcome will shape 2024.
https://www.vox.com/2024-elections/23910990/abortion-midterms-elections-dobbs-roe
EXCERPT: For many on the left, the question of whether abortion rights serve as a winning issue has already been decisively answered. Activists and progressive leaders point to the fact that abortion rights ballot measures won in all six states where they appeared in 2022, including red and purple states that otherwise elected Republican candidates. They point to a slew of special elections in battleground states that Democrats have won over the past 18 months, a closely watched Wisconsin state supreme court election where the pro-choice candidate won, and polls showing voters appear to have grown even more supportive of abortion rights than they were before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
Still, anti-abortion groups and some Republican officials continue to argue this electoral confidence in messaging that supports abortion rights is misplaced. After the midterms last year, anti-abortion leaders were quick to point out that Democrats failed to unseat incumbent anti-abortion governors, and that candidates who promised to aggressively restrict abortion access, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, prevailed in their contests, compared to Republican candidates such as Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Adam Laxalt in Nevada who shied more from the topic. More recently, activist groups have argued that Republican presidential candidates must double down on anti-abortion bans, contending that any electoral losses the party has suffered to date have been driven by meek commitment and insufficient spending.
The outcomes this November will play a key role in shaping the narratives and expectations headed into 2024. If abortion rights prove salient once again, advocates will be able to more confidently rebut those who worry the earlier wins were driven primarily by other factors.