The A-Word: “These small-town lawmakers need to get with the program or their career is going to wind up in the trunk of a car.”

Arizona Republicans have an abortion problem. And a Trump problem.

(Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images)

Arizona’s GOP has an abortion problem.

And that means Donald Trump has an Arizona problem.

Last Friday, following the Arizona Supreme Court’s reinstatement of an 1864 law criminalizing abortion, Trump called on the Republicans who control the legislature to strike down the statute.

“The Supreme Court in Arizona went too far on their Abortion Ruling, enacting and approving an inappropriate Law from 1864,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

But that’s not an easy fix.

Arizona Republicans have two-seat majorities in the state House and Senate. The overwhelming majority of the GOP caucus is either in favor of the 1864 law on the merits, or fear changing it would incur the wrath of social conservatives led by Cathi Herrod, the president of the Center for Arizona Policy. Herrod called on legislators to keep the 160-year-old law intact and make good on the promises many of them made in 2022 to stand by it.

Today, in a test of Trump’s influence, the Arizona House convenes and may take up the law to repeal it. A similar effort failed last Wednesday, before Trump issued his directive.

“Who are Republicans in the Legislature more scared of? Cathi Herrod,” says Chuck Coughlin, a veteran Arizona Republican consultant. “She has a lot of influence. She’s everywhere in the state Capitol. She pays attention. She has done this for decades. And you don’t cross her.”

Even Republicans allied with Trump are bucking him.

Arizona state Sen. Jake Hoffman, who handsomely profited in 2020 from the pro-Trump Arizona group Turning Point, issued a statement Friday, along with his Arizona Freedom Caucus group, pledging to oppose any changes to the abortion law. Hoffman didn’t mention Trump by name, nor did Herrod.

Today’s vote, or lack thereof, is not just a test of Trump’s political influence. It’s also a defining moment for the Arizona GOP, which has failed to moderate in tandem with the growing electorate in the Sunbelt state.

Since 2018, Arizona Republicans have lost both U.S. Senate seats, the governor’s mansion, the attorney general’s office, and Trump’s 2020 reelection, while also seeing their majorities in the legislature diminish to almost nothing.

To the degree abortion damaged the GOP in Arizona post-Dobbs, Trump blames Republicans for not learning how to properly message the issue.

But Trump has tried to avoid giving specifics about what he calls “The A Word.” The day before the Arizona Supreme Court reinstated the territorial law, he issued a new official position saying abortion should be left up to the states. But then he intervened in Arizona, saying that the state’s decision was wrong. And he still won’t say how he’ll vote on a proposed abortion initiative in his home state of Florida.

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One Republican who could be of help to Trump is Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma. The speaker could bring the legislation to overrule the 1864 law to the floor, but he’s not inclined to help Trump. That’s because Toma is running for Congress this cycle and Trump has already endorsed his opponent, Abe Hamadeh.

“Let’s say that endorsement doesn’t look like a brilliant idea right now,” said one Trump adviser of the Toma snub. And Toma—along with his counterpart in the Arizona Senate, Warren Petersen—had also urged the Arizona Supreme Court to reinstate the 1864 abortion ban.

Meanwhile, former gubernatorial candidate and current U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake has embraced Trump’s position. Last week, she reversed her support for the territorial abortion law, even though she had supported it during her failed 2022 gubernatorial bid. She has privately begun lobbying legislative leaders and social conservatives like Herrod in an attempt to persuade them to eliminate the old law because of its unpopularity. Lake’s argument is that the current law will help abortion-rights groups garner more support for a citizens’ initiative that will wind up allowing abortion up until “viability,” which could be as many 24 weeks.

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Arizona currently has a 15-week abortion limit which  was passed in 2022 under then-Gov. Doug Ducey. To garner support from social conservatives, that legislation allowed for the 1864 ban to supersede the 15-week limit if the Arizona Supreme Court reinstated the territorial law after Roe v. Wade had been overturned.

“If you want the pro-life position, 15 weeks is more palatable. You thought it was acceptable when you voted for it,” Lake told lawmakers, according to a source familiar with her remarks. “If we keep this total abortion ban, you’re going to get the Planned Parenthood 24-week law you hate.”

Republican polling shared with The Bulwark shows the ballot initiative reaching 60 percent approval.

Lake has also told legislators that Trump holds the same position and “abortion is not the issue we need to talk about. We need to talk about the economy, immigration, and inflation.”

The Biden campaign and Lake’s opponent, Rep. Ruben Gallego, announced abortion-rights ad campaigns in Arizona, and last Friday Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Tucson to keep the pressure on by blaming Trump for the abortion ban.

“Trump did this,” she said.

But Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, says Democrats are over-focused on abortion.

In a polling memo released Monday by the Trump campaign, Fabrizio’s data showed Arizona voters overall aren’t preoccupied by the abortion ruling and that immigration, protecting democracy, inflation, and honesty in government ranked as more important issues. The poll showed Trump up by about 4 points over Biden in the state (a statistical tie due to the survey’s 4.9 percent margin of error).

“The media has been hyperventilating and the Biden team salivating since the Arizona Supreme Court Abortion ruling. According to their narrative, this is a game-changer for Biden and the trajectory of this race,” Fabrizio wrote. “Well just like Team Biden was wrong about voters buying that inflation was actually coming under control or that Biden couldn’t do anything to stop the flood of illegals across the border, they are wrong again about the impact of the ruling.”

Yet for all its confidence, the Fabrizio memo was released to quell panicking Republicans in the state.

“[The memo] was to stop the bedwetting,” said one adviser.

But is it just bedwetting? Barrett Marson, an Arizona Republican political consultant, said the shift in political winds has been notable.

“Before the Supreme Court, the issues were immigration, the economy,” he said. “After the ruling it was just one thing: abortion, abortion, abortion.”

The pressure wasn’t just obvious in Lake’s flip-flop and Trump’s decision to speak about the issue. A handful of Republican legislators in swing districts also called for the law to be repealed, including state Sen. Shawnna Bolick, whose husband, Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick, voted to reinstate the pre-statehood abortion ban.

There’s been chaos in the Republican ranks. Last week, House Republican Rep. Matt Gress tried to advance a Democratic bill to eliminate the territorial law, but he was voice-voted down by his Republican colleagues, whom he then joined in voting to stop debate on the bill.

Gress, locked in a tight race for a seat in a district Biden carried in 2020, is expected to try to force a vote again today, according to those who have spoken with him. Whether he can get two or three other Republicans to join him and provide the 31 votes necessary to pass legislation on the House floor is unclear.

Meanwhile, House Republicans are considering whether to put rival abortion initiatives before voters, but it’s not clear if they have the votes for that, either.

“There’s no legislative leader who’s willing to stand up and say, ‘We lose a lot more in the long run if we lose the majority.’ It’s legislative malpractice at this point,” said Kirk Adams, a Republican and former Arizona House speaker who was Ducey’s chief of staff.

Adams said only Trump can “thread this needle by keeping the base enthused and energized while appealing to the middle,” but Trump hasn’t tried to broaden his appeal and is over-confident in polls that show him marginally ahead.

“There’s a fatigue with Trumpism. What has changed for the professional suburban woman in Maricopa County to make her vote for Trump since 2020? He’s not expanding his appeal,” Adams said. “I’m not sure anyone believes him flip-flopping on abortion anyway.”

Former U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon, a Republican who unsuccessfully ran against Lake for governor in 2022 and earned Trump’s ire for refusing to endorse his stolen election lie, said he wouldn’t be surprised if Democrats ultimately decided not to help undo the 1864 abortion ban in the legislature.

“There’s really no incentive for Democrats to help bail Republicans out,” Salmon said. “As it stands now, Democrats are probably going to win the presidency, the Senate, pass the abortion initiative, and flip at least one chamber of the legislature.”

But the state’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, has nevertheless called for repeal of the 1864 law. Though technically reinstated by the Arizona Supreme Court, the law is in abeyance due to legal technicalities. And Hobbs and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, also a Democrat, say the state won’t enforce it.

Anti-abortion activists have made clear they don’t like Trump’s new position on abortion as a states’ rights issue, but they’re hesitant to criticize him by name. Many also believe Trump would approve a federal abortion ban if he were president and it somehow got to his desk.

“Abortion is not merely a state’s right issue. Without the Supreme Court ruling in Roe, it is an issue for every level of government, as it should be. Any human rights atrocity that has resulted in the loss of more than 65 million lives deserves attention at every level of government,” Students for Life Action President Kristan Hawkins said in an email.

Another national leader on abortion, however, told The Bulwark on condition of anonymity that evangelical voters have nowhere to go but Trump. Picking Biden, the source said, was a nonstarter.

“We know Trump. We trusted Trump. He got Roe repealed,” the abortion opponent said. “This law is too harsh. We lose too much with it in November: the presidency, a Senate seat, and the legislature. The fact is these small-town lawmakers need to get with the program or their career is going to wind up in the trunk of a car. It’s finished.”