Republicans In Key Races Remove Online References To Trump Abortion

Comment Yesli Vega, a Republican candidate for the US House in a competitive Virginia district, no longer lists her connection to former President Donald Trump in the bio section at the top of her Twitter page. Colorado state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, also in a House race, stopped promoting language advocating “The Sancity of Life” on her campaign website. Now, there is no mention of an abortion, a review of the website showed. And the campaign of Blake Masters, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Arizona, removed from his campaign website references to hard-line anti-abortion positions he once espoused, along with references to false claims that the 2020 election was stolen by Trump . At least nine Republican congressional candidates have scrubbed or edited references to Trump or abortion from their online profiles in recent months, distancing themselves from divisive issues that some GOP strategists say are two of the party’s biggest liabilities ahead of the post-Labor Day sprint. until election day. “THE Dobbs The decision has clearly energized Democratic voters to the point where they have closed the enthusiasm gap with Republicans,” said longtime GOP pollster Whit Ayres, referring to the Supreme Court ruling that ended the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. Asked if it hurts the GOP to have Trump back in the news, Ayres said: “The best case for Republican candidates in the midterms is to make the upcoming election a referendum on the Biden administration.” He added: “Anything that distracts from that focus weakens the Republican position.” Returning to the political middle after a primary is a common practice that has long been used by candidates of both parties. But efforts by Republicans in competitive races to distance themselves from abortion and Trump have emboldened Democrats to aggressively attack those issues, which they see as key to their efforts to overcome once-dim expectations in congressional races. A Pew Research Center poll earlier this summer found that 57 percent of Americans disapproved of the Supreme Court Dobbs decision, while a Washington Post-Schar School poll found 65% that the court’s decision represents a significant loss of rights for women in America. Some states do not allow abortion when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. A Washington Post-ABC News poll this spring found 79 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in such cases, a consistent polling finding for more than three decades. Both President Biden and Trump, who received renewed attention recently after the FBI investigated his Mar-a-Lago estate, are unpopular, making them targets for the opposing party in the interim. Trump’s favorability rating was just 38 percent and Biden’s just 43 percent, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. But during the primaries, Trump loomed large as he remains popular among many Republicans. Many Republicans filed as candidates aligned with him, a dynamic that has caused some discomfort as the general election race has begun. Vega, who is trying to unseat Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) in one of the key seats Republicans hope to flip to regain control of the House, used to say in her Twitter bio that she was “ Prep. Trump Appointee,” a reference to her December 2020 appointment to the President’s Advisory Commission on Hispanic Prosperity. Several weeks ago, after Vega secured the GOP nomination, he disappeared. Asked about the change, Vega campaign adviser Sean Brown shrugged off the question and responded with an apparent reference to Biden’s recent announcement that he would cancel some of the student loan debt many Americans carry. “Is it safe to tell the story of Democratic candidates refusing to say whether they then support Biden’s blatant political fare?” Brown wrote. Kirkmeyer is running for a new open seat in the northern suburbs of Denver after the Colorado delegation gained an extra seat due to the state’s population growth in the 2020 Census. He once included in a column called “The Conservative Fighter” that he would “defend the sanctity of life”. Now, a similarly placed section at the top of the page is called “Choose Colorado.” It does not mention abortion. “Our campaign recently completed a complete redesign of Barb’s website. “Rather than dealing with a lot of issues (among them abortion), we’re focusing on the three issues that voters care about the most,” said Alan Philp, campaign consultant. The page now lists spending and inflation, energy and crime as top topics. Both Democrats running for Vega and Kirkmeyer attacked them on abortion. Spanberger recently released an ad to Vega over comments she made inaccurately suggesting the pregnancy may not be the result of rape. Some Republican strategists have warned against getting into abortion debates with Democrats. Such strategies will only turn by-elections into opposition-friendly contests, they said. “The more Republicans explain their position on the Supreme Court decision, the more they play into the battleground that Democrats want,” said John Brabender, a veteran GOP communications consultant. “I think we’re letting Democrats frame the issue and candidates are falling into that trap in too many of our races.” National Democrats quickly sought to capitalize on these apparent efforts by Republicans to suppress their less popular positions. David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a statement: “Republican candidates for the Senate will not be able to escape their records. The truth is that they have made their positions clear and in many cases we have them on videotape.” Helen Kalla, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, issued a statement Tuesday saying, “No matter how fast Republicans run to delete their toxic, unpopular and dangerous positions — Democrats will make sure voters know exactly threat Republicans pose to our liberties.” Representatives for the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee did not respond to a request for comment. The campaign of Masters, who is running against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) in a race seen as central to the Senate majority race, has removed hardline positions on abortion from his campaign website, including of his support for a federal “personhood law.” A segment on abortion now opens by attacking Kelly’s position instead of calling the Masters “100% pro-life.” Now he’s specifically calling for a national ban on third-trimester abortions, a change first reported by NBC News. During the primary, he offered support for a much stricter ban on public comment. Zachery Henry, a spokesman for the Masters campaign, said the site was “updated after the primary to create a sharp contrast to Mark Kelly’s radical left-wing views on a range of issues, including Kelly’s support for extreme no-limits abortion policies.” Kelly voted for the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have codified Roe v Wade — ensuring access to abortion up to the point of fetal viability and beyond that point when a health care provider believes a pregnancy would endanger someone’s life or health. “If Blake Masters thinks he can quietly delete quotes from his website and hide how ignorant and dangerous his stance on abortion is, he’s in for a rude awakening,” Sarah Guggenheimer, Kelly’s campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement. Masters’ website also said that “if we had a free and fair election, President Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today.” By August 25, that line had disappeared from a section about “election integrity,” a change first reported by CNN. Shortly after winning the Pennsylvania Republican primary for US Senate in May with the help of Trump’s endorsement, Mehmet Oz removed many references to the former president from his website and social media. Trump is still listed on the page under Oz’s endorsements, and the two are scheduled to campaign together later this week. “I think you’re seeing some first-time candidates who realized that maybe they weren’t very smart during their primaries and now they’re trying to fix that. They played the role in the primaries, they got Trump’s endorsement, they made calculations to win the primaries that aren’t that great in general,” said a former Trump campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the GOP candidates. Asked if Trump’s increased presence is hurting Republicans, the former official said, “Yes.” Jim Bognett, running in a competitive US House district in Pennsylvania against Democratic Rep. Matthew Cartwright, once littered his campaign website with references to Trump. Shortly after the election, he removed all but two. Among the deleted quotes is one that read: “In 2020, I ran for Congress to fight against the Democratic witch hunt to remove President Trump from office. In this election, we’ve seen Democrats break every rule they can to rig this election.” A spokesperson for Bognet did not respond to a request for comment, but told HuffPost, which first reported the changes, that “the entire campaign website has been rebuilt and redesigned.” Other Republican candidates have tried to soften their language around abortion. Michigan state Sen. Tom Barrett (R), who is trying to unseat Democratic Rep. Elisha Slotkin, had said on his website that he would “protect life from arrest.” He replaced it with a section called “Life,” which calls him a “consistent pro-life state legislator” and then focuses on Slotkin’s positions on abortion, as the Detroit News first reported. “The website is regularly…

title: “Republicans In Key Races Remove Online References To Trump Abortion Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-15” author: “Neal Harris”

Comment Yesli Vega, a Republican candidate for the US House in a competitive Virginia district, no longer lists her connection to former President Donald Trump in the bio section at the top of her Twitter page. Colorado state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, also in a House race, stopped promoting language advocating “The Sancity of Life” on her campaign website. Now, there is no mention of an abortion, a review of the website showed. And the campaign of Blake Masters, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Arizona, removed from his campaign website references to hard-line anti-abortion positions he once espoused, along with references to false claims that the 2020 election was stolen by Trump . At least nine Republican congressional candidates have scrubbed or edited references to Trump or abortion from their online profiles in recent months, distancing themselves from divisive issues that some GOP strategists say are two of the party’s biggest liabilities ahead of the post-Labor Day sprint. until election day. “THE Dobbs The decision has clearly energized Democratic voters to the point where they have closed the enthusiasm gap with Republicans,” said longtime GOP pollster Whit Ayres, referring to the Supreme Court ruling that ended the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. Asked if it hurts the GOP to have Trump back in the news, Ayres said: “The best case for Republican candidates in the midterms is to make the upcoming election a referendum on the Biden administration.” He added: “Anything that distracts from that focus weakens the Republican position.” Returning to the political middle after a primary is a common practice that has long been used by candidates of both parties. But efforts by Republicans in competitive races to distance themselves from abortion and Trump have emboldened Democrats to aggressively attack those issues, which they see as key to their efforts to overcome once-dim expectations in congressional races. A Pew Research Center poll earlier this summer found that 57 percent of Americans disapproved of the Supreme Court Dobbs decision, while a Washington Post-Schar School poll found 65% that the court’s decision represents a significant loss of rights for women in America. Some states do not allow abortion when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. A Washington Post-ABC News poll this spring found 79 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in such cases, a consistent polling finding for more than three decades. Both President Biden and Trump, who received renewed attention recently after the FBI investigated his Mar-a-Lago estate, are unpopular, making them targets for the opposing party in the interim. Trump’s favorability rating was just 38 percent and Biden’s just 43 percent, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. But during the primaries, Trump loomed large as he remains popular among many Republicans. Many Republicans filed as candidates aligned with him, a dynamic that has caused some discomfort as the general election race has begun. Vega, who is trying to unseat Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) in one of the key seats Republicans hope to flip to regain control of the House, used to say in her Twitter bio that she was “ Prep. Trump Appointee,” a reference to her December 2020 appointment to the President’s Advisory Commission on Hispanic Prosperity. Several weeks ago, after Vega secured the GOP nomination, he disappeared. Asked about the change, Vega campaign adviser Sean Brown shrugged off the question and responded with an apparent reference to Biden’s recent announcement that he would cancel some of the student loan debt many Americans carry. “Is it safe to tell the story of Democratic candidates refusing to say whether they then support Biden’s blatant political fare?” Brown wrote. Kirkmeyer is running for a new open seat in the northern suburbs of Denver after the Colorado delegation gained an extra seat due to the state’s population growth in the 2020 Census. He once included in a column called “The Conservative Fighter” that he would “defend the sanctity of life”. Now, a similarly placed section at the top of the page is called “Choose Colorado.” It does not mention abortion. “Our campaign recently completed a complete redesign of Barb’s website. “Rather than dealing with a lot of issues (among them abortion), we’re focusing on the three issues that voters care about the most,” said Alan Philp, campaign consultant. The page now lists spending and inflation, energy and crime as top topics. Both Democrats running for Vega and Kirkmeyer attacked them on abortion. Spanberger recently released an ad to Vega over comments she made inaccurately suggesting the pregnancy may not be the result of rape. Some Republican strategists have warned against getting into abortion debates with Democrats. Such strategies will only turn by-elections into opposition-friendly contests, they said. “The more Republicans explain their position on the Supreme Court decision, the more they play into the battleground that Democrats want,” said John Brabender, a veteran GOP communications consultant. “I think we’re letting Democrats frame the issue and candidates are falling into that trap in too many of our races.” National Democrats quickly sought to capitalize on these apparent efforts by Republicans to suppress their less popular positions. David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a statement: “Republican candidates for the Senate will not be able to escape their records. The truth is that they have made their positions clear and in many cases we have them on videotape.” Helen Kalla, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, issued a statement Tuesday saying, “No matter how fast Republicans run to delete their toxic, unpopular and dangerous positions — Democrats will make sure voters know exactly threat Republicans pose to our liberties.” Representatives for the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee did not respond to a request for comment. The campaign of Masters, who is running against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) in a race seen as central to the Senate majority race, has removed hardline positions on abortion from his campaign website, including of his support for a federal “personhood law.” A segment on abortion now opens by attacking Kelly’s position instead of calling the Masters “100% pro-life.” Now he’s specifically calling for a national ban on third-trimester abortions, a change first reported by NBC News. During the primary, he offered support for a much stricter ban on public comment. Zachery Henry, a spokesman for the Masters campaign, said the site was “updated after the primary to create a sharp contrast to Mark Kelly’s radical left-wing views on a range of issues, including Kelly’s support for extreme no-limits abortion policies.” Kelly voted for the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have codified Roe v Wade — ensuring access to abortion up to the point of fetal viability and beyond that point when a health care provider believes a pregnancy would endanger someone’s life or health. “If Blake Masters thinks he can quietly delete quotes from his website and hide how ignorant and dangerous his stance on abortion is, he’s in for a rude awakening,” Sarah Guggenheimer, Kelly’s campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement. Masters’ website also said that “if we had a free and fair election, President Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today.” By August 25, that line had disappeared from a section about “election integrity,” a change first reported by CNN. Shortly after winning the Pennsylvania Republican primary for US Senate in May with the help of Trump’s endorsement, Mehmet Oz removed many references to the former president from his website and social media. Trump is still listed on the page under Oz’s endorsements, and the two are scheduled to campaign together later this week. “I think you’re seeing some first-time candidates who realized that maybe they weren’t very smart during their primaries and now they’re trying to fix that. They played the role in the primaries, they got Trump’s endorsement, they made calculations to win the primaries that aren’t that great in general,” said a former Trump campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the GOP candidates. Asked if Trump’s increased presence is hurting Republicans, the former official said, “Yes.” Jim Bognett, running in a competitive US House district in Pennsylvania against Democratic Rep. Matthew Cartwright, once littered his campaign website with references to Trump. Shortly after the election, he removed all but two. Among the deleted quotes is one that read: “In 2020, I ran for Congress to fight against the Democratic witch hunt to remove President Trump from office. In this election, we’ve seen Democrats break every rule they can to rig this election.” A spokesperson for Bognet did not respond to a request for comment, but told HuffPost, which first reported the changes, that “the entire campaign website has been rebuilt and redesigned.” Other Republican candidates have tried to soften their language around abortion. Michigan state Sen. Tom Barrett (R), who is trying to unseat Democratic Rep. Elisha Slotkin, had said on his website that he would “protect life from arrest.” He replaced it with a section called “Life,” which calls him a “consistent pro-life state legislator” and then focuses on Slotkin’s positions on abortion, as the Detroit News first reported. “The website is regularly…

title: “Republicans In Key Races Remove Online References To Trump Abortion Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-15” author: “Charles Samuel”

Comment Yesli Vega, a Republican candidate for the US House in a competitive Virginia district, no longer lists her connection to former President Donald Trump in the bio section at the top of her Twitter page. Colorado state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, also in a House race, stopped promoting language advocating “The Sancity of Life” on her campaign website. Now, there is no mention of an abortion, a review of the website showed. And the campaign of Blake Masters, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Arizona, removed from his campaign website references to hard-line anti-abortion positions he once espoused, along with references to false claims that the 2020 election was stolen by Trump . At least nine Republican congressional candidates have scrubbed or edited references to Trump or abortion from their online profiles in recent months, distancing themselves from divisive issues that some GOP strategists say are two of the party’s biggest liabilities ahead of the post-Labor Day sprint. until election day. “THE Dobbs The decision has clearly energized Democratic voters to the point where they have closed the enthusiasm gap with Republicans,” said longtime GOP pollster Whit Ayres, referring to the Supreme Court ruling that ended the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. Asked if it hurts the GOP to have Trump back in the news, Ayres said: “The best case for Republican candidates in the midterms is to make the upcoming election a referendum on the Biden administration.” He added: “Anything that distracts from that focus weakens the Republican position.” Returning to the political middle after a primary is a common practice that has long been used by candidates of both parties. But efforts by Republicans in competitive races to distance themselves from abortion and Trump have emboldened Democrats to aggressively attack those issues, which they see as key to their efforts to overcome once-dim expectations in congressional races. A Pew Research Center poll earlier this summer found that 57 percent of Americans disapproved of the Supreme Court Dobbs decision, while a Washington Post-Schar School poll found 65% that the court’s decision represents a significant loss of rights for women in America. Some states do not allow abortion when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. A Washington Post-ABC News poll this spring found 79 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in such cases, a consistent polling finding for more than three decades. Both President Biden and Trump, who received renewed attention recently after the FBI investigated his Mar-a-Lago estate, are unpopular, making them targets for the opposing party in the interim. Trump’s favorability rating was just 38 percent and Biden’s just 43 percent, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. But during the primaries, Trump loomed large as he remains popular among many Republicans. Many Republicans filed as candidates aligned with him, a dynamic that has caused some discomfort as the general election race has begun. Vega, who is trying to unseat Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) in one of the key seats Republicans hope to flip to regain control of the House, used to say in her Twitter bio that she was “ Prep. Trump Appointee,” a reference to her December 2020 appointment to the President’s Advisory Commission on Hispanic Prosperity. Several weeks ago, after Vega secured the GOP nomination, he disappeared. Asked about the change, Vega campaign adviser Sean Brown shrugged off the question and responded with an apparent reference to Biden’s recent announcement that he would cancel some of the student loan debt many Americans carry. “Is it safe to tell the story of Democratic candidates refusing to say whether they then support Biden’s blatant political fare?” Brown wrote. Kirkmeyer is running for a new open seat in the northern suburbs of Denver after the Colorado delegation gained an extra seat due to the state’s population growth in the 2020 Census. He once included in a column called “The Conservative Fighter” that he would “defend the sanctity of life”. Now, a similarly placed section at the top of the page is called “Choose Colorado.” It does not mention abortion. “Our campaign recently completed a complete redesign of Barb’s website. “Rather than dealing with a lot of issues (among them abortion), we’re focusing on the three issues that voters care about the most,” said Alan Philp, campaign consultant. The page now lists spending and inflation, energy and crime as top topics. Both Democrats running for Vega and Kirkmeyer attacked them on abortion. Spanberger recently released an ad to Vega over comments she made inaccurately suggesting the pregnancy may not be the result of rape. Some Republican strategists have warned against getting into abortion debates with Democrats. Such strategies will only turn by-elections into opposition-friendly contests, they said. “The more Republicans explain their position on the Supreme Court decision, the more they play into the battleground that Democrats want,” said John Brabender, a veteran GOP communications consultant. “I think we’re letting Democrats frame the issue and candidates are falling into that trap in too many of our races.” National Democrats quickly sought to capitalize on these apparent efforts by Republicans to suppress their less popular positions. David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a statement: “Republican candidates for the Senate will not be able to escape their records. The truth is that they have made their positions clear and in many cases we have them on videotape.” Helen Kalla, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, issued a statement Tuesday saying, “No matter how fast Republicans run to delete their toxic, unpopular and dangerous positions — Democrats will make sure voters know exactly threat Republicans pose to our liberties.” Representatives for the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee did not respond to a request for comment. The campaign of Masters, who is running against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) in a race seen as central to the Senate majority race, has removed hardline positions on abortion from his campaign website, including of his support for a federal “personhood law.” A segment on abortion now opens by attacking Kelly’s position instead of calling the Masters “100% pro-life.” Now he’s specifically calling for a national ban on third-trimester abortions, a change first reported by NBC News. During the primary, he offered support for a much stricter ban on public comment. Zachery Henry, a spokesman for the Masters campaign, said the site was “updated after the primary to create a sharp contrast to Mark Kelly’s radical left-wing views on a range of issues, including Kelly’s support for extreme no-limits abortion policies.” Kelly voted for the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have codified Roe v Wade — ensuring access to abortion up to the point of fetal viability and beyond that point when a health care provider believes a pregnancy would endanger someone’s life or health. “If Blake Masters thinks he can quietly delete quotes from his website and hide how ignorant and dangerous his stance on abortion is, he’s in for a rude awakening,” Sarah Guggenheimer, Kelly’s campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement. Masters’ website also said that “if we had a free and fair election, President Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today.” By August 25, that line had disappeared from a section about “election integrity,” a change first reported by CNN. Shortly after winning the Pennsylvania Republican primary for US Senate in May with the help of Trump’s endorsement, Mehmet Oz removed many references to the former president from his website and social media. Trump is still listed on the page under Oz’s endorsements, and the two are scheduled to campaign together later this week. “I think you’re seeing some first-time candidates who realized that maybe they weren’t very smart during their primaries and now they’re trying to fix that. They played the role in the primaries, they got Trump’s endorsement, they made calculations to win the primaries that aren’t that great in general,” said a former Trump campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the GOP candidates. Asked if Trump’s increased presence is hurting Republicans, the former official said, “Yes.” Jim Bognett, running in a competitive US House district in Pennsylvania against Democratic Rep. Matthew Cartwright, once littered his campaign website with references to Trump. Shortly after the election, he removed all but two. Among the deleted quotes is one that read: “In 2020, I ran for Congress to fight against the Democratic witch hunt to remove President Trump from office. In this election, we’ve seen Democrats break every rule they can to rig this election.” A spokesperson for Bognet did not respond to a request for comment, but told HuffPost, which first reported the changes, that “the entire campaign website has been rebuilt and redesigned.” Other Republican candidates have tried to soften their language around abortion. Michigan state Sen. Tom Barrett (R), who is trying to unseat Democratic Rep. Elisha Slotkin, had said on his website that he would “protect life from arrest.” He replaced it with a section called “Life,” which calls him a “consistent pro-life state legislator” and then focuses on Slotkin’s positions on abortion, as the Detroit News first reported. “The website is regularly…

title: “Republicans In Key Races Remove Online References To Trump Abortion Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-10-24” author: “Shella Blume”

Comment Yesli Vega, a Republican candidate for the US House in a competitive Virginia district, no longer lists her connection to former President Donald Trump in the bio section at the top of her Twitter page. Colorado state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, also in a House race, stopped promoting language advocating “The Sancity of Life” on her campaign website. Now, there is no mention of an abortion, a review of the website showed. And the campaign of Blake Masters, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Arizona, removed from his campaign website references to hard-line anti-abortion positions he once espoused, along with references to false claims that the 2020 election was stolen by Trump . At least nine Republican congressional candidates have scrubbed or edited references to Trump or abortion from their online profiles in recent months, distancing themselves from divisive issues that some GOP strategists say are two of the party’s biggest liabilities ahead of the post-Labor Day sprint. until election day. “THE Dobbs The decision has clearly energized Democratic voters to the point where they have closed the enthusiasm gap with Republicans,” said longtime GOP pollster Whit Ayres, referring to the Supreme Court ruling that ended the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. Asked if it hurts the GOP to have Trump back in the news, Ayres said: “The best case for Republican candidates in the midterms is to make the upcoming election a referendum on the Biden administration.” He added: “Anything that distracts from that focus weakens the Republican position.” Returning to the political middle after a primary is a common practice that has long been used by candidates of both parties. But efforts by Republicans in competitive races to distance themselves from abortion and Trump have emboldened Democrats to aggressively attack those issues, which they see as key to their efforts to overcome once-dim expectations in congressional races. A Pew Research Center poll earlier this summer found that 57 percent of Americans disapproved of the Supreme Court Dobbs decision, while a Washington Post-Schar School poll found 65% that the court’s decision represents a significant loss of rights for women in America. Some states do not allow abortion when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. A Washington Post-ABC News poll this spring found 79 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in such cases, a consistent polling finding for more than three decades. Both President Biden and Trump, who received renewed attention recently after the FBI investigated his Mar-a-Lago estate, are unpopular, making them targets for the opposing party in the interim. Trump’s favorability rating was just 38 percent and Biden’s just 43 percent, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. But during the primaries, Trump loomed large as he remains popular among many Republicans. Many Republicans filed as candidates aligned with him, a dynamic that has caused some discomfort as the general election race has begun. Vega, who is trying to unseat Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) in one of the key seats Republicans hope to flip to regain control of the House, used to say in her Twitter bio that she was “ Prep. Trump Appointee,” a reference to her December 2020 appointment to the President’s Advisory Commission on Hispanic Prosperity. Several weeks ago, after Vega secured the GOP nomination, he disappeared. Asked about the change, Vega campaign adviser Sean Brown shrugged off the question and responded with an apparent reference to Biden’s recent announcement that he would cancel some of the student loan debt many Americans carry. “Is it safe to tell the story of Democratic candidates refusing to say whether they then support Biden’s blatant political fare?” Brown wrote. Kirkmeyer is running for a new open seat in the northern suburbs of Denver after the Colorado delegation gained an extra seat due to the state’s population growth in the 2020 Census. He once included in a column called “The Conservative Fighter” that he would “defend the sanctity of life”. Now, a similarly placed section at the top of the page is called “Choose Colorado.” It does not mention abortion. “Our campaign recently completed a complete redesign of Barb’s website. “Rather than dealing with a lot of issues (among them abortion), we’re focusing on the three issues that voters care about the most,” said Alan Philp, campaign consultant. The page now lists spending and inflation, energy and crime as top topics. Both Democrats running for Vega and Kirkmeyer attacked them on abortion. Spanberger recently released an ad to Vega over comments she made inaccurately suggesting the pregnancy may not be the result of rape. Some Republican strategists have warned against getting into abortion debates with Democrats. Such strategies will only turn by-elections into opposition-friendly contests, they said. “The more Republicans explain their position on the Supreme Court decision, the more they play into the battleground that Democrats want,” said John Brabender, a veteran GOP communications consultant. “I think we’re letting Democrats frame the issue and candidates are falling into that trap in too many of our races.” National Democrats quickly sought to capitalize on these apparent efforts by Republicans to suppress their less popular positions. David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a statement: “Republican candidates for the Senate will not be able to escape their records. The truth is that they have made their positions clear and in many cases we have them on videotape.” Helen Kalla, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, issued a statement Tuesday saying, “No matter how fast Republicans run to delete their toxic, unpopular and dangerous positions — Democrats will make sure voters know exactly threat Republicans pose to our liberties.” Representatives for the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee did not respond to a request for comment. The campaign of Masters, who is running against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) in a race seen as central to the Senate majority race, has removed hardline positions on abortion from his campaign website, including of his support for a federal “personhood law.” A segment on abortion now opens by attacking Kelly’s position instead of calling the Masters “100% pro-life.” Now he’s specifically calling for a national ban on third-trimester abortions, a change first reported by NBC News. During the primary, he offered support for a much stricter ban on public comment. Zachery Henry, a spokesman for the Masters campaign, said the site was “updated after the primary to create a sharp contrast to Mark Kelly’s radical left-wing views on a range of issues, including Kelly’s support for extreme no-limits abortion policies.” Kelly voted for the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have codified Roe v Wade — ensuring access to abortion up to the point of fetal viability and beyond that point when a health care provider believes a pregnancy would endanger someone’s life or health. “If Blake Masters thinks he can quietly delete quotes from his website and hide how ignorant and dangerous his stance on abortion is, he’s in for a rude awakening,” Sarah Guggenheimer, Kelly’s campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement. Masters’ website also said that “if we had a free and fair election, President Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today.” By August 25, that line had disappeared from a section about “election integrity,” a change first reported by CNN. Shortly after winning the Pennsylvania Republican primary for US Senate in May with the help of Trump’s endorsement, Mehmet Oz removed many references to the former president from his website and social media. Trump is still listed on the page under Oz’s endorsements, and the two are scheduled to campaign together later this week. “I think you’re seeing some first-time candidates who realized that maybe they weren’t very smart during their primaries and now they’re trying to fix that. They played the role in the primaries, they got Trump’s endorsement, they made calculations to win the primaries that aren’t that great in general,” said a former Trump campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the GOP candidates. Asked if Trump’s increased presence is hurting Republicans, the former official said, “Yes.” Jim Bognett, running in a competitive US House district in Pennsylvania against Democratic Rep. Matthew Cartwright, once littered his campaign website with references to Trump. Shortly after the election, he removed all but two. Among the deleted quotes is one that read: “In 2020, I ran for Congress to fight against the Democratic witch hunt to remove President Trump from office. In this election, we’ve seen Democrats break every rule they can to rig this election.” A spokesperson for Bognet did not respond to a request for comment, but told HuffPost, which first reported the changes, that “the entire campaign website has been rebuilt and redesigned.” Other Republican candidates have tried to soften their language around abortion. Michigan state Sen. Tom Barrett (R), who is trying to unseat Democratic Rep. Elisha Slotkin, had said on his website that he would “protect life from arrest.” He replaced it with a section called “Life,” which calls him a “consistent pro-life state legislator” and then focuses on Slotkin’s positions on abortion, as the Detroit News first reported. “The website is regularly…