Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition (FFC), opened the political action committee’s annual Road to Majority Policy Conference with a call for conservative political candidates to “grow a backbone” as they defend their views on faith, family, and their opposition to abortion.
The Road to Majority Policy Conference runs from June 22 to 24, and is coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Supreme Court case concluded with the decision that the individual states can regulate aspects of abortion not already covered by federal law.
Reed said the dates for this year’s Road to Majority Policy Conference were scheduled years ago. He said that in overlapping, the timing of the conference and the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision is a “serendipitous coincidence”—but a coincidence that he hopes will strengthen the resolve of pro-life political candidates.
“We’re certainly going to do everything that we can, as an organization and as a pro-life and pro-family movement, to give our candidates a little bit of a testosterone booster shot, and explain to them that they should not be on the defensive,” Reed said in an interview. “Those who are afraid of it need to, candidly, grow a backbone.”
Reed formed FFC in 2009 as a political action committee (PAC) focused on promoting traditional values and limited government. The PAC says its annual Road to Majority Policy Conference has “empowered conservative activists to fight for their values at the polls and in the public arena,” and “equips attendees with the knowledge and connections they need to drive engagement and voter turnout.”
This year’s conference includes a slate of Republican governors, lawmakers, and media personalities. Several 2024 Republican presidential candidates are also scheduled to speak at the conference, including former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, and radio host Larry Elder.
“This year’s timely gathering will accelerate conservatives further down the road to majority ahead of the 2024 presidential election,” the FFC said of its conference.
Political Stakes on Abortion Policy
Trump has been keen to claim credit for the new precedent on abortion set by the Dobbs decision, noting that the three U.S. Supreme Court justices he nominated during his time as president—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—all ruled in favor of the opinion.
In the wake of the Dobbs decision, several states have begun imposing new policies to restrict abortions. While Republicans and conservatives celebrated the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling, Democrats and liberal activists have credited the decision with motivating their own base to vote for candidates in the mid-term elections that favored the preservation of unfettered access to abortion.
While the incumbent party typically suffers in mid-term elections, Democrats managed to pick up one seat in the Senate. Republicans managed to flip control of the House, albeit by a narrow margin.
In a Jan. 1 post on his Truth Social media platform, Trump rejected criticism for candidates he endorsed that failed to win office, and suggested the blame for the mid-term underperformance belonged to Republicans who mishandled the issue of abortion.
“It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations in the MidTerms,” Trump’s Jan. 1 Truth Social post reads. “I was 233-20! It was the ’abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters.”
Just weeks before launching his 2024 presidential campaign, DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban into law. The bill includes exceptions for cases involving pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.
Trump, the 2024 Republican frontrunner, has gone on to question the Florida abortion bill, which was signed by his leading contender in the 2024 Republican primary race.
In a May 15 interview with The Messenger, Trump said, “If you look at what DeSantis did, a lot of people don’t even know if he knew what he was doing. But he signed six weeks, and many people within the pro-life movement feel that that was too harsh.” During that interview, Trump would not say whether he would have signed a six-week abortion ban if he had the chance.
DeSantis pushed back on Trump’s comments about Florida’s ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.
“Protecting an unborn child when there’s a detectable heartbeat is something that almost 99 percent of pro-lifers support,” the Florida governor said last month. “As a Florida resident, you know, he didn’t give an answer about, ‘Would you have signed the heartbeat bill that Florida did, that had all the exceptions that people talk about?’”
Not far from FFC’s conference site, Democratic President Joe Biden was set to attend a competing event on Friday afternoon with activists who support access to abortion. Earlier this week, Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison said all the 2024 GOP presidential candidates are “running on an extreme anti-choice record.”
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who is head of the Democrats’ Senate campaign arm, has predicted that top Republican presidential candidates will back a nationwide abortion ban in the GOP primaries, before adopting a more moderate position ahead of the general election.
Other Family Values Issues
Among its topics of concern, FFC lists “education reform that puts children first” as an area of focus.
Republicans and conservatives have seen some successes while focusing on education reforms.
Polling data taken during the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election showed Virginia voters were swayed toward Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin after Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe said “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Polling by CreativeDirect (pdf) observed that voters who found McAuliffe’s education comment significant broke heavily for Youngkin. Exit polling from that election showed that 80 percent of respondents said parents should have at least “some” influence in their children’s education. Youngkin won the governorship in that election, thus ending an eight-year streak of Democratic control.
Republicans and conservatives have also placed renewed emphasis on school board elections and advancing legislation to expand school choice programs.
DeSantis endorsed 34 candidates in school board elections throughout Florida in the 2022 elections; 29 of those candidates went on to win their races and gain seats on school boards across the state.
Last year, American Federation for Children senior fellow Corey DeAngelis said support for school choice measures was popular among voters of all affiliations—Republican, Democrat, and Independent.
“Seventy-five percent of the candidates who are supported by AFC Action Fund and our state affiliates moved on to either run-offs or won their primaries outright. And so we’re seeing that school choice is politically popular and advantageous,” DeAngelis told NTD’s Paul Greaney at FreedomFest 2022.
AFC touted 2022 midterm wins by candidates who supported school choice measures. In a post-election interview with Fox News, DeAngelis said 76 percent of candidates supported by AFC won on election night or appeared to be leading as votes were still being tallied.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.