Yesterday, in Omaha, Nebraska, the expected anti-Trump backlash failed to materialize. Omaha’s Republican mayor Jean Stothert defeated the Bernie Sanders–backed Democrat, Heath Mello, with 53 percent of the vote to Mello’s 46.
Mello maintained an anti-Trump message but faced opposition from the left over once supporting a bill requiring abortion providers to notify women of the availability of ultrasounds. During the campaign, newly minted DNC chief Tom Perez took issue with Mello for his less-than-unflinching support of abortion. “Every Democrat,” he said, “like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health. That is not negotiable.”
Bernie Sanders and others defended Mello, arguing that the party should allow room for pro-lifers and rallying support for him as a true-blue progressive. At a campaign event in April, Sanders asked supporters, “Are you ready for a political revolution?”
Evidently, voters were not. Now Democrats must decide how to proceed, and some are actually arguing that this weakens the position that pro-life views should be tolerated. In the Associated Press, Thomas Beaumont called Mello’s loss “a setback for supporters who argued that the Democratic National Committee and abortion rights groups were wrong to attack the anti-abortion former state senator.” If Democrats take from this loss that Mello didn’t support abortion enough, they would be requiring pro-choice purity that somehow exceeds Mello’s 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood in 2015.
The debate around Mello’s abortion views created an intraparty feud in the middle of a high-profile race, and it may have cost them their win. The Trump “resistance” must now look elsewhere to score a major post-November victory against the GOP.