Abortion rights advocates in Kansas saw the deck as stacked against them.

The Kansas Supreme Court had found the state’s constitution protected a right to abortion in 2019, but anti-abortion activists moved swiftly to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot overturning that decision.

The issue would be decided in a midterm primary vote, the type of election in which independents and Democrats generally sit out while the Republican base shows up. Polling weeks before the vote predicted a narrow victory for the amendment.

An outside observer watching results Tuesday night wouldn’t have known this.

The Associated Press called the race for the “vote no” side before 10 p.m. Unofficial results showed 59% of voters rejecting the amendment and 41% supporting it. At least 47% of registered voters showed up.

“No” votes carried the day in Kansas’ most populous counties —Johnson, Wyandotte and Sedgwick— but it also had strong showings across rural Kansas, coming out on top in Osage and Franklin counties that haven’t voted for a Democrat for president since Lyndon B. Johnson.

U.S. Supreme Court ruling changed message, stakes in the race

When Politico reported on a leaked U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the Dobbs case that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the groups campaigning against the amendment seized on the uproar.

A month later, when the decision came down, the groups pointed to the bans in Missouri and Oklahoma as concrete examples of what could happen in Kansas if the amendment passed.

The “no” campaign built a message that appealed to Kansans’ libertarian sensibilities— protection of personal freedoms from government intrusion— and relied on support from a broad coalition of members, including national abortion rights groups, the League of Women Voters and youth and rural-based organizations. These groups focused on a message of keeping the government out of private health care decisions.

“It was important that we looked first at who are our voters, who are the people who will be motivated by this issue and those partisan political considerations were really secondary,” said Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, the primary “vote no” organization.

Their opponents, the Value Them Both Coalition, dismissed the Supreme Court decision as inconsequential to Kansas. Without the amendment, they argued, every existing abortion restriction in Kansas could be challenged and struck down— which they argued would make Kansas into New York or California.

They repeatedly refused to answer questions about what policies they’d seek if the amendment passes, instead reminding voters that the amendment itself wasn’t a direct abortion ban.

After results were in, advocates on both sides said the decision was a turning point.

“Then the other side was much more able to keep asking us what is the plan after this,” Rep. Susan Humphries, a Wichita Republican, said. “I got asked so many times, are we going to be like Missouri, Texas? What are you going to do?”

“If we hadn’t had the Dobbs decision that wouldn’t have been as much of a push… It would have been just as when we passed it to be put on the ballot, we’re just going back to these common sense regulations.”

Humphries said there was no way to know the answer without knowing who would be elected to the Kansas House in November.

But that choice resulted in muddled messaging from the “vote yes” campaign that voters didn’t like, said Ashley All, the spokeswoman for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom.

Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, the main “vote no” group, saw a surge in volunteering and donations after Roe was overturned. Kansas also saw a major jump in voter registration after the decision.

“I have four daughters and this campaign was for them. When I found out that Roe had fallen and they were going to grow up in a world with fewer constitutional rights than I had, I was motivated and I think a lot of other Kansans were as well,” said All said.

Building coalitions

Shortly after the race was called Tuesday night, Troy Newman, president of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, placed the blame at the feet of Kansans for Life.

Kansans for Life led the Value Them Both Coalition; it also included Kansas Family Voice and the Kansas Catholic Conference. The organization, Newman said, failed to find a message that could resonate with Kansans and didn’t build a broad coalition of anti-abortion activists.

“It was horrible messaging, horrible campaigning, despicable infighting. The decisions made by Kansans for Life were the most deplorable, disgusting, terrible, worst decisions possible,” Newman said.

“You have to hand it to the other side because they were very well organized and forget the funding because they were on message. They did the polling and they were on message.”

But Patrick Miller, a University of Kansas Political Scientist, said last week that the “vote no” organization wasn’t there from the beginning.

In his view, he said, the “no” campaign was ineffective prior to that moment. At the beginning of the summer the “yes” campaign appeared to have a lead in organization - leaning heavily on the Catholic Church - and the campaign finished 2021 with double the fundraising of the “no” side.

“Where was the messaging? Where were the yard signs? It seems it came together pretty quickly, started to at least, after the Supreme Court leak,” Miller said. “If no wins easily then maybe there’s a bigger picture here for the entire country.”

How they voted

This gradient map shows how strongly counties went for either "no" or "yes on the abortion vote. Many counties throughout the state had closer margins than expected. These results are unofficial until certified by the Kansas Secretary of State's Office and could change as provisional and late-arriving mail ballots are processed.
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The Value Them Both Coalition declined to take questions Wednesday, but blamed the loss on “an onslaught of misinformation from radical left organizations” and the “mainstream media” in a statement Tuesday.

The group barred The Kansas City Star and The Wichita Eagle from its election night party, which took place at Fiorella’s Event Center in Overland Park, in a possible sign that the coalition was bracing for an embarrassing defeat.

Bob Beatty, a Washburn University political scientist said the “yes” campaign “might have doomed themselves” by putting lines about rape and incest into the ballot language.

“They ran just a very traditional campaign of saying this is not a ban,” Beatty said. “When the logical conclusion for most people is, well it could be, that’s a difficult thing to argue… If there was a flaw in the yes campaign, they were not respecting the voters.”

While margins were kept low in Kansas’ rural counties, urban and suburban counties turned out in higher numbers.

Rep. Stephanie Clayton, an Overland Park Democrat, said she believed the vote yes campaign made a miscalculation and angered suburban voters with their messaging.

“The people who ran the ground game for Value Them Both just assumed that rural Kansas would turn out and they concentrated all of their efforts on canvassing in suburban areas,” Clayton said. “They don’t understand the suburbs.”

Despite this, she was still shocked by Tuesday’s results.

“It was like the ending of a John Hughes movie in the 80s,” Clayton said. “We’re like the rag tag kids that end up beating the bullies… We were not supposed to win because it was not a fair fight.”