Pro-Abortion Group Prepared to Spend $10 Million on 2008 Election Cycle

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Sep 27, 2007   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Pro-Abortion Group Prepared to Spend $10 Million on 2008 Election Cycle Email this article
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 27,
2007

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Abortion advocates won both houses of Congress in the 2006 elections and they are looking to complete the trifecta by capturing the White House next year. One leading pro-abortion group, NARAL, is holding a banquet in the nation’s capitol tonight to start its bid to raise as much as $10 million for that effort.

NARAL spent about $3 million on election efforts in 2006 and hopes to ramp up the figure to anywhere from $8 to $10 million in the 2008 elections.

The group also wants to increase the number of Congressional districts in which its advertising money and staff and mailing support plays a role.

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research pollster Al Quinlan has gotten involved with the pro-abortion group and he told The Hill that the kind of money NARAL raises could affect a small percentage of the voting population.

He believes NARAL “can swing that election” in certain districts with close races where a huge infusion of cash could switch voters to the pro-abortion candidate or motivate pro-abortion voters to turn out at the polls.

Quinlan told The Hill that NARAL can move about 1.5 percent of all voters to go to the polls or switch their allegiance to a pro-abortion candidate — a margin that could easily shift a handful of Senate or House seats.

“There’s an audience here that’s in play,” Quinlan said. “You can swing that election.”

States like Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and New Jersey are one the group plans to target and it may go after pro-life Democrats in primaries such as Rep. Daniel Lipinski of Illinois.

Senate races in places like New Hampshire, Oregon, New Mexico and Alaska are also likely targets.

But David O’Steen, the director of the National Right to Life Committee, told The Hill that NARAL will only be able to move its own membership and that most people who vote based on the abortion issue will vote for pro-life candidates.

He cited internal polling showing that 36 percent of voters say the issue of abortion affects their vote and that two-thirds of those voters side with pro-life candidates.

“The majority of people who vote on the basis of abortion vote for pro-life candidates," he said.