Your Best Midterm Bets in the Dobbs Era

Protests in Austin by supporters of abortion rights, Friday, June 24 (Photos by John Anderson)

It took less than 48 hours for "Vote harder!" to become a mordant punchline all over social media, mocking the White House and Congress for having no real plan to respond to the Dobbs decision and defend Americans' human and civil rights from a rogue Supreme Court (more on that in "Austin at Large"). That said, there is an election coming up. Who should we vote harder for? Where should we direct our donations and volunteer hours? Where can we get the best bang for our civic buck? Let's go to the map!

Travis County

Being a one-party county means most of our local races for partisan offices have already been decided, and almost all of those Democrats are firmly committed to reproductive freedom. There's an important race for the last Republican-held seat on the 3rd U.S. Court of Appeals, where Rosa Lopez Theofanis is the Democratic nominee and likely could use your help and your votes. That court will almost certainly be hearing abortion-related matters in the years to come, and candidates for 3CA have consistently told the Chronicle that even in the current Texas partisan environment, it matters who writes the court's opinions.

Central Texas City Councils and School Boards

Austin has both of these coming up. Most viable contenders for mayor, Council, and AISD trustee are, or will be, pro-choice; the question to ask them is how far they're willing to go to defend reproductive freedom within their purview. We direct your attention to Council District 8, where Paige Ellis is running for reelection as a progressive in one of the three districts that a Republican has a chance of winning. On the AISD Board, a conservative candidate would have a shot in District 4 (Kristin Ashy) or District 7 (Yasmin Wagner) or maybe even District 6 (Geronimo Rodriguez), coming up through the Latino right. It's a small chance but we don't know who's running yet, and MAGAs have gotten really organized to go after Central Texas school boards, and this would be their time to strike and own the AISD libs. It only takes one or two of these to completely disrupt things; look at Round Rock ISD, which has been essentially held hostage by its two MAGA trustees and which also has important board elections coming up.

Protests in Austin by supporters of abortion rights, Friday, June 24

Statewide

There are plenty of reasons to vote out Gov. Greg Abbott, but would-be Gov. Beto O'Rourke would not have much power to do anything about Texas abortion law without a cooperative Texas Legislature. Someone who would is the attorney general, and Democratic nominee Rochelle Garza – who as an ACLU staff attorney focused on reproductive rights cases – is exactly the champion needed at this moment, but is totally underfunded in her quest to unseat sleazy seditionist and dominionist Ken Paxton. Bucks sent to Beto will doubtless help Garza and all other downballot Dems as he lifts the ticket (as he did in 2018), but she in particular needs to be getting the giant checks from rich pro-choice women all over creation. Like, now.

Congress

You know nothing is in play in Texas on this front, so which sexy celebrity Democrat in another state should be getting our small-dollar donations instead? In descending order of likelihood, the best chances to flip a GOP Senate seat are Pennsylvania (John Fetterman) and Wisconsin (primary is Aug. 9), followed at some distance by North Carolina (Cheri Beasley), Florida (Val Dem­ings), and Ohio (Tim Ryan). The most at-risk Dem seats are in Arizona (Mark Kelly), Georgia (Raphael Warnock), and Nevada (Catherine Cortez Masto). Fetterman and Warnock, and to a lesser extent Kelly, are already Dem celebs and sex symbols, so they're getting plenty of cash, but like Beto they will help lift their tickets.

Other State Capitals

Those coattails will be really important in Pennsylvania, where the GOP nominee for governor, Doug Mastriano, is absolute batshit MAGA and a forced-birth booster. Josh Shapiro is your dude in that race. The statehouse that's closest to being flipped by Democrats is Arizona, where the GOP controls both chambers by a single vote. Actually, Ari­zona is a great play for creating reproductive freedom all the way down, including its open-seat governor race and even the Maricopa County district attorney contest.

Unlike Arizona, the Great Lakes states currently governed by Democrats have legislatures where gerrymandered GOP control is firmly entrenched. Throwing some help toward the women running Michigan (Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, A.G. Dana Nessel, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson), and toward Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, is always appreciated and not wasted. And, of course, Georgia, where Stacey Abrams is running for governor.