Texas Primary Is Democrats' First Big Test On Abortion Rights After Supreme Court Leak

“With abortion rights on the line, it’s essential we elect Democratic pro-choice women like Cisneros because she not only understands that abortion is a fundamental right, but also knows that it’s central to economic and social justice for people in Texas,” said Danni Wang, a spokesperson for EMILY’s List, a group that backs pro-choice Democratic women and is supporting Cisneros.Cuellar, for his part, maintains that his opposition to abortion rights is at once not as radical in nature as that of a hardline Republican, and a better fit for the socially conservative voters of Texas’ 28th Congressional District, which is predominantly Latino and working class.“Cisneros is probably closer to the modal or median Democrat on abortion rights,” said Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, Austin. Don Davis and Valerie Foushee, two candidates AIPAC endorsed in North Carolina, won their Democratic House primaries last Tuesday, while Steve Irwin, another AIPAC endorsee, fell short of progressive Summer Lee in a Pennsylvania primary.Given the confluence of different factors at play in Texas’ 28th, it is impossible to say just how much of an impact abortion rights will have.In a low-turnout runoff in a Democratic primary though, the Supreme Court leak almost certainly benefited Cisneros by raising the stakes of the two candidates’ differences on the issue.“What the Roe draft decision leak did is reinforce Cisneros’ campaign message that Cuellar was not a representative Democrat,” Blank said.The Supreme Court leak is the second major break Cisneros has received in the run-up to an election against Cuellar in Texas’ 28th Congressional District.Just over a month before Cuellar and Cisneros squared off on March 1, the FBI raided Cuellar’s home in Laredo as part of a federal probe reportedly associated with Azerbaijan’s influence peddling in Congress.