Biden allies dust off Bush's 2004 playbook, subbing abortion for gay marriage on the ballot

WASHINGTON — Twenty years after George W. Bush won re-election with the help of ballot initiatives that rallied voters around a popular cultural issue, Democrats are dusting off his playbook and attempting a similar strategy to keep Donald Trump out of office.

In 2004, Bush’s team seized on popular opposition to same-sex marriage, with strategist Karl Rove encouraging allies to put initiatives to ban it on ballots in key swing states, hoping to stir up voters and enable the president to ride the measures’ coattails to re-election. It worked.

Now, President Joe Biden’s allies are seizing on fury over the end of Roe v. Wade and putting abortion rights on the ballot in swing states like Arizona and Nevada, as well as red-leaning states like Florida and Montana, where pivotal Senate seats are up for grabs.

“It is the exact same strategy we employed in 2004 on culture wars — in reverse,” said Mike Madrid, a political strategist who worked on Bush’s re-election bid. “Culture wars used to be the place Democrats went to die. That’s not the case anymore. They win on these issues.”

Culture wars used to be the place Democrats went to die. That’s not the case anymore. They win on these issues.

Mike Madrid, political strategist

The goal: Register and turn out Americans who are passionate about abortion rights and reap the rewards in presidential and congressional races. Abortion rights have already proven to be a boon to Democrats in the 2022 midterms and special elections since Roe was overturned that summer.

In 2004, Madrid said, Rove understood that Republicans were “scraping the bottom of the barrel” with historically Democratic-leaning white rural voters. They needed to rev up evangelicals and find new voters. So he secured