Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Republican presidential candidate, speaks at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, June 23, 2023. (Pete Marovich/The New York Times)
WASHINGTON — In a speech a year after Roe v. Wade was overturned, former Vice President Mike Pence challenged the entire 2024 Republican presidential field to support a national ban on abortion at 15 weeks, demanding that the party go beyond your main favorite. , former President Donald Trump, has so far been willing to go.
Pence made the call at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference, a major two-day evangelical gathering in Washington, D.C., that drew Trump’s main challengers while also showing the steep climb ahead.
Trump was a focus of attention for candidates and attendees alike. Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, was booed for chiding the former president for his lack of leadership. Pence was content to draw contrasts with Trump without naming him. And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s main challenger — though still trailing well in the polls — gave a speech that was well-received, in part because he referred to his disagreements with Trump only in passing. implied
Subscribe to The Morning newsletter from The New York Times
“Everybody’s running to take Trump down, not to be the nominee,” said Veronica Steinkirchner, 75, who came to the conference from the Pittsburgh area and supports Trump. “If you look at the polls, they’re not going to catch him.”
DeSantis recently signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida that Trump said some in the anti-abortion movement considered “too harsh.” Both DeSantis and Pence have used that phrase to criticize the former president, though neither did so on Friday.
“It was the right thing to do,” DeSantis said Friday of signing the law. “Don’t let anyone tell you it wasn’t.”
Tellingly, some of the loudest cheers at the conference were not for any of Trump’s rivals, but for Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina who is running for governor and who made a surprise endorsement of the stage of the former president.
“This nation is at war,” Robinson said. “We need a warrior.”
The story continues
Still, the Republican candidates present, including Pence and DeSantis, see abortion as providing a major political opening to Trump’s right flank and an opportunity to appeal to evangelical voters, who are a particularly large voting block in two of early voting states, Iowa. and South Carolina.
In a sign of the influence Christian conservatives are expected to wield in the party’s primaries, the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s conference is the first gathering to draw major candidates for the Republican nomination to the same event. Seven Republican candidates addressed the crowd in the windowless ballroom of the Washington Hilton on Friday; others will speak Saturday, including Trump, who will headline an evening gala.
“There is no path to the nomination that doesn’t go through the evangelical community,” Ralph Reed, who is the president of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a decades-long member of the Christian right, said in an interview.
DeSantis, who is Catholic, recently sat down for an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody, telling him, “Our home is a Christ-centered home.” She explained that her son, then 4, had wanted a slingshot for Christmas “to be like David killing Goliath.”
The long-standing tension in Trump’s relationship with the evangelical right lies between the New York businessman’s personal behavior and the policies he pursued as president. He is both a thrice-married celebrity who was indicted in Manhattan, New York, this year over a payment of money to an adult film actress and a former president who rarely strayed from the political preferences of conservative evangelical leaders while was office
Although Trump has repeatedly taken credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade has so far resisted adopting a federal ban and blamed the backlash around the “abortion issue” for some of the party’s losses in 2022.
Pence, who has tried to position himself as a leading opponent of abortion, pressed this point, declaring: “Every Republican candidate for president should support banning abortion before 15 weeks as to minimum standard at national level”. He told the audience that “we must not rest and we must not relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state.”
Trump has repeatedly avoided taking a clear position on whether he would support a national abortion ban that would curb access to the procedure even in Democratic-controlled states. In his CNN town hall earlier this year, Trump said he would reach some kind of indefinite deal on abortion if he returned to the White House. “What I’m going to do is negotiate to make the people happy,” Trump said at one point. “Make a deal that’s good,” said another.
At the conference, Trump also received pressure on the issue from supporters, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, RSC, who has backed Trump and is the sponsor of a 15-week ban in the Senate. Graham urged all candidates to support the proposal.
“I challenge everyone who wants to be the standard bearer of the Republican Party to be proudly pro-life,” Graham said. “You should want to talk about this. You need to talk about this.”
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who has yet to endorse the race, told reporters after his own speech Friday that a 15-week ban was a “consensus position.”
“The deal should be 15 weeks,” Hawley said. “There, we make it easy.”
While abortion was a dominant topic on the eve of the anniversary of Dobbs’ decision at the evangelical gathering, there was also a heavy focus on transgender policies in nearly every speech.
Pence, who received a polite reception, also spurred applause when he vowed, “We will end the gender ideology that is being imposed on our school.”
Some of the candidates mixed messages on abortion and transgender issues.
“God is real. Unborn life is life. There are two genders,” Vivek Ramaswamy, another Republican presidential candidate, said in his speech, which drew louder applause than some more prominent Republican candidates.
But if there were loud cheers for every mention of “gender ideology,” it was a different story when the candidates talked about Trump, including when Christie criticized him for blaming his own flaws on his aides.
“That’s not leadership, everybody,” he said, “that’s a failure of leadership.” The crowd booed, with some shouting, “We love Trump!”
“You can love him all you want, but I can tell you that doing this kind of thing makes our country smaller,” Christie retorted.
Like many in the crowd, Billy Walkowiak, who is running as a Republican for county commissioner in Gastonia, North Carolina, said he still liked Trump’s message. But with all the legal threats facing Trump, who was indicted this month for the second time this year on charges of obstruction and mishandling classified documents, “There’s a lot of uncertainty about what’s going to happen with him.”
“The door” for Trump’s rivals, Walkowiak said, “is ajar.”
c.2023 The New York Times Company
