Dems go on offense for ERA

Democrats used this past weekend to push for the Equal Rights Amendment, and battleground districts got some special love, with senior officials like state Attorney General Letitia James making the trek to suburbia to make sure the ballot proposal, supposedly a shoo-in, doesn’t succumb to conservative messaging across the state. Organizers on the ground say that the support from top-level Democrats is creating an environment that lends itself to offense rather than defense. 

On Long Island, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal knocked doors in the 1st and 4th Congressional Districts while also stumping for the Equal Rights Amendment. In the 18th Congressional District, James joined Rep. Pat Ryan and Mini Timmaraju, the president of Reproductive Freedom for All, on Sunday for an abortion rights rally in Poughkeepsie. In the neighboring 17th Congressional District, James was with state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins in Yonkers doing the same the day before. Even in Queens, Assembly Member Jessica González-Rojas was urging voters to flip their ballots to vote for the amendment on Election Day. 

“You want to piss off the American people? Take their freedom away,” Ryan said in a statement. “Abortion rights are on the ballot this fall, and I’m lucky to have proven champions like Attorney General James and Mini Timmaraju by my side who know exactly what’s at stake. As long as these extremists continue their campaign to rip away reproductive rights, we’ll continue our fight to protect them.”

The flurry of movement this weekend came after months of attacks from conservative organizations who have attempted to link the Equal Rights Amendment to concerns about adolescent access to gender affirming care, equality in girls sports and immigrant rights. Democrats have mounted a concerted push to educate voters about what the ballot proposal does and doesn’t do, especially as conservative talking points have been shown to be persuasive, even when inaccurate. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul steered $1 million towards the ballot proposal last month to aid messaging and organizing efforts throughout the state, and the push for the Equal RIghts Amendment remains intertwined with Democrats' fight to pick up House seats in the suburbs while defending those they currently have. Hochul and other state officials’ attention to the campaign has also had a noticeable effect on morale, and output. 

“We're going through a lot of ERA lit, which I think is a good sign,” said Danielle Brecker, co-lead organizer at Empire State Indivisible. “I had 5,000 palm cards in my apartment two weeks ago, and we handed almost all of them out. So, you know, there's that.”

Brecker said that the mobilization of state officials, working in tandem with Democrats’ coordinated campaign, has made organizing around the Equal Rights Amendment more impactful. But at the door, voters still need to be clued in to what is going to be on the back of their ballot. 

“The thing I'm finding is that people don't even know that it's on the ballot or what it is, they're not even at that rhetoric yet,” she said. “They're at, ‘What? Oh, I'll have to look into that.’ So they don't even have any base of knowledge that it's bad, from some other conservative’s point of view.” 

And with that playing field, Brecker says that the task at hand isn’t to play defense but to continue to spread the word in the little over a month left until Election Day. “It's about doing the work, and then if they come at us with something, then we have to pivot to deal with it,” she said.