(This story has been updated because an earlier version contained an inaccuracy.)
GREEN BAY — Two members of the Michigan governor's security detail delivered Gretchen Whitmer in a Chevrolet Suburban and Ford Expedition Saturday morning to the Brown County Democratic Party's parking lot.
She brought along the national Democratic rhetoric on abortion that Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz have found does well with voters.
Abortion is not something Republicans in northeast Wisconsin seem eager to talk about.
The word "transgender" was featured often in the most recent Republican bus tour to Green Bay; "abortion" was not. The economy, immigration, and medical freedom were prominent in the area's first Republican primary debate ; abortion was brought up by happenstance. The winner of the GOP primary in the 8th Congressional District, Tony Wied, sidestepped a question on abortion twice in Friday night's debate with Democrat Kristin Lyerly.
Whitmer, next to Lyerly and two reproductive health advocates, called out Republicans' wariness to take up the second most important issue to Wisconsinites this election cycle. A former lawyer, Whitmer argued that a second Trump administration would restrict women's reproductive rights, something the former president has had trouble convincing many voters otherwise.
The 35-minute bus stop solidified abortion as a top-of-mind issue for northeastern Wisconsinites during the first leg of her two days with the Wisconsin bus tour that started Friday with U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Madison and will end Sunday in Waukesha, continuing the conveyor belt of Democrat ic and Republican surrogates to the area.
Here's what stood out from Whitmer's visit to Green Bay to take away.
8th Congressional District debate hangover into the next day
Lyerly did not let go of the most contentious moment with Wied in Friday night's 8th Congressional District debate.
She opened on Saturday for Whitmer by referencing her Republican rival's argument that abortion is an issue best left to the states. During the debate on Friday, Wied said to Lyerly that "if you're so passionate about this, why don't you run for state Assembly like you did once before?"
"That helped me understand how Republican are losing on the issue," Lyerly said to Saturday's crowd of just under 100 people. "They're desperate for help, but we're not going to give it to them."
In a press release from the Wied campaign Saturday morning, Wied's staff said that, "On the issues most important to Wisconsin voters, such as the economy, the southern border, and reckless government spending, Tony Wied laid out a clear vision to tackle these problems in Washington," during Friday's debate.
Abortion was not mentioned except in two of the three media links the campaign attached.
'Abortion is health care'
Kate Cox , the first woman to ask the Supreme Court for abortion authorization since before Roe v. Wade, is expecting her next baby in January. Anna Igler, a local OB-GYN who choked up while describing the decision to have an abortion for her daughter who would be born with irreversible brain damage, was 32 weeks' pregnant.
The four-year anniversary of that day she decided to get an abortion is Tuesday. Igler flew to Colorado for the procedure after what she described as a painful decision with her husband, considering the child would experience seizures, deafness, possible blindness, "and would never call me 'mom,'" she said through sniffles.
"I think about her and mourn for her everyday. These memories are painful enough, but when Trump says that women should be punished for having an abortion is unbelievably cruel," Igler said, referring to a 2016 comment the former president made and later walked back on after claiming the punishment would be self-inflicted by women following an abortion.
"Self-inflicted punishment" in Trump's words; "mourning" in Igler's and Cox's.
Not having an abortion, in some cases, as Cox mentioned, can result in death, an outcome she wanted to avoid by having an abortion. Cox referred to Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, two Georgia women whose deaths were first reported by ProPublica this month as resulting from Georgia's abortion restrictions first implemented in July 2022.
It's why for her, "abortion is health care."
Whitmer filled the space on abortion that Republicans left empty
Whitmer hardly needed a microphone to make herself heard, arguing in green Vega sneakers, green jeans, and a "Kamala for Everybody" T-shirt, that on an issue important to people of all political stripes, "We have to choose between Harris who would codify Roe. v. Wade or the guy who took it away."
She asked the crowd to close their eyes. There were two questions that she wanted people to raise their hands to. The first, who knows someone who's had an abortion? The second, who knows someone who's used in-vitro fertilization?
She didn't have to get to the second question before nearly all 100 hands — some wrinkled, some smooth — were raised. After the second question, some raised both hands.
"It's maddening that we have to bare our souls to get attention on this issue," Whitmer said. "because young women now have less rights than I've had my whole life," the 53-year-old governor said, of which Roe v. Wade was the law of the land for 49 of those years.
Jesse Lin is a reporter covering the community of Green Bay and its surroundings, as well as politics in northeast Wisconsin. Contact him at 920-834-4250 or jlin@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer campaigns for Democrats in Green Bay, calls out GOP silence on subject
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