Republicans in Wisconsin, Minnesota Pick Anti-Abortion Candidates For Governor

Reuters: Abortion Foes Win Republican Governor Nods In Wisconsin, Minnesota 
Republican voters in Wisconsin and Minnesota on Tuesday nominated abortion foes for governor, ensuring the issue will be central to what are expected to be two of the most high-profile races in November's general election. In Wisconsin, Republican construction magnate Tim Michels will face Democratic Governor Tony Evers, Edison Research projected, while in Minnesota, former Republican state Senator Scott Jensen will challenge Democratic Governor Tim Walz. (Ax, 8/10)

Coloradopolitics.com: Abortion Ban Fails To Make Colorado's November Ballot
The proposed ballot measure seeking to ban abortion in Colorado will not appear on the November ballot, the Colorado Secretary of State's Office told Colorado Politics. According to the Elections Division, backers of Initiative #56 informed the office Monday they would not be submitting petition signatures ahead of the 5 p.m. deadline. The ballot measure sought to define "murder of a child" and ban abortion, save in a few narrow cases. Both anti-abortion advocates and abortion rights activists noted the measure offered no legal carve out for women who get an abortion. (Goodland, 8/8)

Politico: Republicans Turn On Each Other Amid Post-Roe Chaos
Republican state officials have been waiting decades for the chance to ban abortion. Now that they can, red state lawmakers are mired in partisan infighting and struggling to agree on how far to go. The most fervently anti-abortion lawmakers are accusing their colleagues of capitulating on rape and incest exceptions, while those calling for compromise or moderation believe more strident Republicans are ignoring political realities. (Messerly and Ollstein, 8/9)

The Hill: GOP Shrugs Off Kansas Abortion Vote — But It Got Their Attention 
Republicans are not yet sweating the idea of abortion issues swaying the midterm elections in favor of Democrats. But with Kansas voters decisively rejecting an anti-abortion ballot initiative, the room is getting warmer. National GOP groups are brushing off the idea that the Kansas vote last week is a warning sign for November, confident that concerns about economic issues prevail as the driving force in the election. (Brooks, 8/8)

The Washington Post: Before Michigan Abortion Ballot Measure, Democrats Seek Edge With Women
Sitting next to her two teenage daughters at the county fair — a luxury as rising prices squeezed the family budget — Lois Smith said she was worried about the end of Roe v. Wade. She calls herself “pro-life”; she calls President Biden a “puppet”; she wants former president Donald Trump to run again. But Smith is not sure how she’ll vote in this year’s midterm elections, as many Republican candidates in Michigan back a near-total ban on abortion that is still working through the courts. On one thing, 52-year-old Smith was confident — she would vote to make abortion a constitutional right in her state. (Knowles, 8/9)

The Washington Post: Post-Roe, State Supreme Court Races Raises Stakes For Voters 
Mary Kay O’Brien had been working for a year to drum up interest in her campaign for Illinois Supreme Court, struggling to convince voters that it would affect them as a presidential or gubernatorial race would. But “within 24 hours” of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to end federal protections for abortions, levels of interest in judicial races like hers skyrocketed, said O’Brien, a Democratic appellate judge. (Bikales and Somasundaram, 8/9)

KHN: Newsom Pins Political Rise On Abortion, Guns, And Health Care 
Gavin Newsom is fed up with Republicans for attacking abortion rights and blocking gun regulations — and with his own Democratic Party for failing to boldly and brashly take on the conservative right and push a progressive agenda. And as California’s first-term governor positions himself as the national Democratic Party pit bull, no other issue is defining his political rise like health care. (Hart, 8/10)