Nikki Fried is trying to make the Florida governor’s race about abortion.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Fried, the agriculture commissioner who’s seeking the Democratic nomination has sought to paint her opponent Charlie Crist as anti-abortion. Crist, who has pledged to veto abortion restrictions as governor, has largely ignored these attacks.
So which Democratic candidate’s abortion messaging is connecting voters?
It’s not easy to tell. But according to a Tampa Bay Times analysis of campaign finance records, Crist appears to be outpacing Fried in at least one key metric.
The day Roe v. Wade was overturned, Nikki Fried received about 340 small (defined as under $100) donations to her candidate account, which ranked as the 20th-best small-dollar fundraising day of her campaign to date.
Meanwhile, that same day was Charlie Crist’s fourth-best for small donations, with about 1,120 checks written to his candidate account.
The day after Politico published the leaked draft Supreme Court draft opinion on abortion, Crist recorded more than 1,200 small donations to his candidate account. That made it his third-best day so far for such contributions. That day doesn’t rank in Fried’s top 50.
Comparatively, Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has broken state fundraising records with massive hauls, collected about 450 small donations to his candidate account on the day Roe was overturned, and about 830 checks the day after the draft opinion was leaked.
While large sums help campaigns offset more of their costs, smaller donations are a metric often used to estimate how clearly candidates’ messages are resonating with everyday voters.
It’s impossible to know for sure that every donation on those days had to do with abortion. But both campaigns sent out messages to supporters about the issue on the day Roe was overturned.
Fried said the difference between the two leading Democratic candidates was influenced by her reluctance to immediately raise money in the wake of the Roe decision. Just minutes after Roe was overturned on June 24, Fried’s campaign sent out an email urging supporters to donate to abortion providers.
“Women are going to die,” Fried said in an interview last week. “We made a conscious decision to not fundraise that day because it was going to be a very hard day and a very sad day — which is also why we don’t fundraise after mass shootings.”
However, Fried’s campaign did send out a fundraising email later the day of the Supreme Court ruling. The message, presented as coming from Fried’s deputy campaign manager and finance director, asked supporters to “rush a $20 donation right now to help us elect a Governor who will protect Florida women.”
Crist sent out fundraising emails about the need to elect a governor who supports abortion rights on both June 24 and May 3, the day after the draft opinion was leaked.
“Our campaign was proud to earn the support of thousands of grassroots donors this month who are ready to join our fight to make Charlie our next governor — to protect choice across our state,” campaign spokesperson Samantha Ramirez wrote in an emailed statement.
For weeks, abortion has been central to Fried’s anti-Crist messaging. She’s pointed to Crist’s record of appointing conservative judges when he was a Republican governor — including Florida Supreme Court Justice Charles T. Canady, who is still on the court and will have a hand in deciding whether to uphold the state’s new ban on abortions after 15 weeks.
While Fried said her campaign has seen an uptick in donations since the fall of Roe, her best days for small donations have been the last or first days of a month. That trend reflects her strategy of sending out fundraising blasts before the end of campaign finance reporting periods.
Steve Schale, a Tallahassee-based Democratic strategist, said that approach is common and effective. But he theorized that Crist, as a longtime fixture of Florida politics and a member of Congress, has a more robust email list of people to whom he can appeal for financial support.
“My suspicion is the core of Crist’s list is ... people who are primed on ideological moments,” he said. “It probably has more to do with the type of donor on the list and the way both candidates are approaching their fundraising than a signal one candidate is engaging more than another.”
Democrats nationwide have seen an uptick in voter enthusiasm and donations because of the Roe decision, Schale said, a sign that some politicians and groups are not letting a “crisis go to waste.” Schale is not working with either Fried or Crist’s campaign; he is the CEO of a super PAC supporting President Joe Biden.
“In February, things were bleak, just to be honest,” Schale said of the energy level among liberal voters. Now, “it’s an issue that is motivating Democrats to write checks and motivating Democrats to vote.”
Schale predicted that after the primary is over, Democratic voters from across the country will want to chip in for whichever person is running against DeSantis — possibly helping them to inch closer to the incumbent governor’s soaring totals.
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