The American Civil Liberties Union is set to spend $25 million boosting abortion and voting rights in the midterm elections, the group told HuffPost, putting money into referenda, state legislative battles and state Supreme Court races in nine states.
Focus on State-Level Battles
“The next generation of battles over abortion, voting rights and democracy will not be decided primarily in Washington,” Deirdre Schifeling, the ACLU’s chief political and advocacy officer, said in an interview. “They are being decided right now in real time at the state level.”
The spending aims to set up long-term “constitutional infrastructure” in each state to protect both abortion and voting rights. Many Democrats have reduced their focus on such issues during President Donald Trump’s second term and prioritized affordability and other economic issues.
Key State Initiatives
In Montana and Kansas, the ACLU plans to fund groups opposing referenda that would make state Supreme Court elections partisan. In Missouri, they are spending to protect the results of a successful referendum protecting abortion rights that was passed in 2024 after the legislature put a measure on the ballot to reverse it. And in Virginia, they will back a referendum aiming to add language protecting abortion rights to the state constitution.
The ACLU is supporting “pro-civil rights” Supreme Court candidates in Michigan, Montana and North Carolina, and putting money into state House races in Georgia, Montana and North Carolina to prevent Republicans from gaining supermajorities in each. They’re also backing the incumbent Democratic secretaries of state in Nevada and Arizona.
The 'ACLU Sway' Strategy
The group plans to focus its spending on the “ACLU Sway” – a roughly 14% chunk of the electorate that they believe they can uniquely influence. That chunk is about two-thirds low-propensity Democrats, Schifeling said, and about one-third Republicans and independents.
“There’s a whole segment of the Republican Party that actually does believe in rights and liberties and democracy, and is not part of this MAGA force,” she said, noting many were older white women, along with a population of libertarian-leaning men.
“Our brand is recognizable,” Schifeling added. “We’ve been around for 106 years. We are able to uniquely move them and motivate them to vote and to vote for pro civil rights, civil liberties candidates.”
History of Political Involvement
The group greatly increased its direct involvement in politics during the first Trump era, getting involved in federal elections for the first time and even backing primary challenges to incumbent prosecutors in major cities across the country, pushing candidates on criminal justice and immigration issues in particular. That ultimately culminated in an effort to influence the 2020 Democratic primary, including a now-famous questionnaire where then-Sen. Kamala Harris indicated she supported funding gender-affirming care for people who were incarcerated. Her answer became one of the Trump campaign’s most prominent ads, alleging Harris was for “they/them” while Trump was for “you.”
Centrist Democrats, in particular, criticized the ACLU and other liberal groups for pushing candidates to take definitive stances on controversial cultural issues. When asked if the group’s comparatively narrow focus was a reaction to said criticism, Schifeling said the ACLU was focused on “the core civil rights and liberties issues that we think are going to motivate voters to come out and vote.”
“Our commitment to fundamental rights and equality for every person in this country is unchanged,” she said, pointing to transgender rights in particular. “Our electoral program is oriented around educating voters around the issues they care most deeply about, and abortion is one of those issues that they care most deeply about, as is voting rights.”
Is the group planning to do a 2028 questionnaire? “We’ll see kind of where we are then,” Schifeling said. “We have not backed away from asking candidates the questions that we think voters need to understand about their positions and records.”
