Will the U.S. Supreme Courtroom Dobbs resolution overturning Roe v. Wade form the 2022 midterms?
One of many first checks of how public sentiment got here in a ballot within the First Congressional District race in Bucks County, a seat held by incumbent Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick.
Democratic challenger Ashley Ehasz hopes to capitalize on the anger that has energized many pro-choice voters because the Supreme Courtroom’s resolution final Friday. The ballot, carried out by Democratic polling agency World Technique Group, discovered Fitzpatrick leads Ehasz by seven factors with eighteen p.c undecided. Nevertheless, when voters had been advised Fitzpatrick “desires to limit abortion rights, even when the lady’s life is at risk and most often of rape and incest,” the outcomes modified to a ten-point lead for Ehasz, a first-time candidate.
“This simply echoes the conversations I’ve had with individuals at rallies and knocking doorways since Friday’s announcement, which is that when voters be taught their congressman had the chance to guard their proper to an abortion and he refused to, they really feel betrayed,” stated Ehasz. “Fitzpatrick may have voted to codify Roe v. Wade, however as an alternative he washed his fingers of it, and sided with essentially the most excessive members of his occasion. Individuals really feel deserted, and rightly so.”
Not so quick, the Fitzpatrick marketing campaign countered.
“The language on this partisan ballot’s script pertaining to Brian’s voting file on abortion is categorically false, they usually realize it. This push ballot is nothing greater than a determined fundraising ploy from a flailing marketing campaign supposed to mislead voters in an try to make their marketing campaign related,” stated Nancy McCarty, a Fitzpatrick marketing campaign spokesperson.
In accordance with World Technique Group, the ballot additionally reveals that 44 p.c of voters stated they disapproved of Fitzpatrick’s job efficiency whereas 33 p.c approve. That included 40 p.c of Republicans approving with 37 p.c disapproving.
The pollsters surveyed 626 possible 2022 Common Election voters within the First Congressional District on June 24 and 25. The findings have a margin of error of +/-3.9 p.c.
Nonetheless, Christopher Nicholas, a veteran Republican marketing consultant, stated Ehasz may have a troublesome time beating incumbent Fitzpatrick.
“Her ballot reveals that when individuals discover out Fitzpatrick is pro-life and she or he is pro-choice, her vote share goes up above his. Hassle is, nobody is aware of who she is and that received’t be the one subject that the campaigns will speak about,” Nicholas stated. “Along with having no title ID she additionally has no cash, so she has a tough highway in entrance of her.”
Ehasz graduated from West Level and is an Iraq Struggle veteran. She is a former Apache helicopter pilot and firm commander. A Bensalem resident, she left the Army to review for a grasp’s diploma at Oxford College.
Fitzpatrick, a former FBI agent and federal prosecutor, was embedded with U.S. Special Forces as a part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Within the 117th Congress, he was elected co-chair of the bipartisan Downside Solvers Caucus. Fitzpatrick is the rating member of the Home International Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Power, the Atmosphere, and Cyber, and he was appointed by Home management to presently serve on the Home Everlasting Choose Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and as a Commissioner on the Fee on Safety and Cooperation in Europe, often known as the U.S. Helsinki Fee.
He additionally serves on the Home Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and co-chairs the bipartisan Habit and Psychological Well being Process Drive.
Along with being an lawyer, Fitzpatrick is each a licensed public accountant and an authorized emergency medical technician.
“As state legislatures throughout America start to contemplate laws on this extraordinarily delicate matter in response to at the moment’s Supreme Courtroom resolution in Dobbs, I urge all state legislatures to at all times begin from a spot of empathy and compassion,” Fitzpatrick stated in a press release launched after the choice.
“Any legislative consideration should begin with the method of seeing the world via different individuals’s eyes, and strolling the world in different individuals’s sneakers. Any legislative consideration should at all times search to attain bipartisan consensus that each respects a lady’s privateness and autonomy, and in addition respects the sanctity of human life. These ideas aren’t mutually unique; each can and should be achieved,” he stated.
Linda Stein is News Editor at Delaware Valley Journal.
This text was republished with permission from the Delaware Valley Journal.
