This Endangered Trump-State Democrat Is Betting On Abortion Rights

It was no accident that Sen. Jon Tester of Montana wound up on the campaign trail this week with the leader of Planned Parenthood’s national political action committee.

The endangered Senate Democrat, who’s running a tricky campaign that could determine whether Democrats keep control of the upper chamber, is leaning into abortion rights in a red state that most people do not associate with reproductive freedom or Democrats who can win statewide.

But Tester’s move is a sign of how abortion rights are at the center of the Democratic Party’s plan to cling to its one-seat Senate majority in November. In Montana and Florida , Democrats are betting that abortion ballot measures drive turnout among independent and left-leaning voters. They’re also hoping that Republicans are tempted to cross party lines for candidates who staunchly oppose a national abortion ban, which Democrats are warning is on the table if they lose control of the Senate.

That means not only talking up their own support for abortion rights — as Tester’s doing — but pointing out their opponents’ more extreme and slippery positions on the procedure that are generally out of step with many Americans.

“All of [the GOP] candidates have very strict positions on abortion,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, told reporters at the Democratic National Convention last month.

Tester, for example, has hammered his GOP opponent Tim Sheehy, the CEO of an aerial firefighting company, on abortion, claiming that Sheehy’s opposition to the procedure means he’d support a national abortion ban — which Sheehy has not directly come out in favor of, despite describing himself as “proudly pro-life” and calling abortion a