On paper, a ballot initiative designed to protect abortion rights in New York should be an easy sell to voters in this bright blue state.
But Democrats are concerned that the vaguely worded constitutional amendment known as Proposition 1 — placed on the ballot by the state legislature — isn’t breaking through to voters. Some lawmakers are now squarely blaming state Democratic Party officials for not putting enough educational resources behind the measure and — in the absence of consistent messaging from Democrats — Republicans have been able to fill the void in their fight against it.
Democratic Party officials “pretty much dropped the ball from the beginning on taking on this issue,” state Sen. Liz Krueger, the author of the amendment, told NOTUS.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Democratic politicians have aligned themselves with measures protecting abortion rights, given how much it drives voter turnout. But Prop 1 stands out from other state initiatives because it does not specifically seek to enshrine abortion protections into the New York State Constitution. In fact, it doesn’t even contain the word “abortion.”
The measure aims to expand the state’s Bill of Rights, which currently explicitly prohibits discrimination based on race, color, creed and religion, to add as protected classes ethnicity, national origin, age, disability and sex. The “sex” category includes “sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.” Those last four categories, legal experts advocating for Prop 1 argue, cover abortion.
In the summer, the campaign behind Prop 1 — the nonpartisan group New Yorkers for Equal Rights — and Democrats, including Krueger and state Attorney General Letitia James, tried to get the Board of Elections to add the word “abortion” to the measure, but ultimately failed to do so. (New York law requires measures to be written in “plain language,” and a judge tweaked the language but did not add additional words.) While the messaging around Prop 1 has tried to make up for that, it’s not clear yet what will happen when a voter sees the ballot for the first time and doesn’t find any mention of protecting abortion. A late October Siena College survey shows 69% support for the amendment, but the poll asks about protecting “abortion rights” instead of the specific ballot language.
State Sen. James Sanders Jr. said voter education around Prop 1 “was very slow.”
“If we are going to back these things, then we need to make sure we do the necessary education. And I don’t believe that the state party has done it,” he told NOTUS.
In the redder areas of Long Island, volunteers who have been calling left-leaning voters on behalf of the Working Families Party told NOTUS that most of the people they’ve talked to did not know about Prop 1.
“I talk to people about voting for Harris-Walz and then I go, ‘And by the way, do you know anything about Proposition 1? It’s on the back of the ballot.’ They’re like, ‘What is that?’” said Joe Sackman, a volunteer who is also chair of WFP in Nassau County.
Volunteer Shoshana Hershkowitz, also chair of WFP in Suffolk County, said having to educate voters on the language of Prop 1 has been difficult, particularly since the state Republican Party and the Coalition to Protect Kids New York, the conservative campaign opposing Prop 1, are using an anti-trans argument to sway voters.
“In my own neighborhood, somebody down the street has ‘No on Prop 1, protect girls’ sports,’ you know, and that’s the angle they’ve chosen,” Hershkowitz told NOTUS. She added that because the state Democratic Party didn’t fully address the language concerns, conservatives “had the opportunity to message the way they wanted to, and now we’re answering those questions instead of, you know, playing offense.”
Former GOP Rep. John Faso, one of the main New York Republicans campaigning against Prop 1, told NOTUS that he has focused on telling New Yorkers that the amendment “is not what its proponents say it is” because it “doesn’t even mention the term ‘abortion.’”
“It has very little to do with abortion, and it has many other negative consequences,” Faso told NOTUS, alleging it will instead allow “a biological male” to participate “on a girl’s or a woman’s sports team,” let minors undergo “transgender treatment” without parental consent and allow noncitizens, “including illegal immigrants,” to vote. The New York City Bar Association put out a memo saying Republicans’ arguments are wrong and it would not change existing law around parental consent or bar noncitizens from voting. The association noted that the proposition is “consistent” with Title IX, which currently allows children to play on teams that match their gender identity.) The campaign against Prop 1 recently received over $8 million in donations from conservative donors in late October to amplify its message, per campaign finance disclosures.
Sasha Ahuja, campaign director for New Yorkers for Equal Rights, said that the “late money” against Prop 1 “spreads lies, but doesn’t kill the overwhelming support we have and clear momentum behind us.” She added that the campaign has spent $4.7 million “to contact voters in every part of the state on the airwaves, on their phones and at their doors.”
However, New Yorkers for Equal Rights has been under scrutiny recently following a Politico report that alleged that most of the campaign’s money went to consulting and consulting firms and only 16%, around $320,000, went to ads, mailings and lawn signs. (A source close to the campaign disputed the 16% number as an “inaccurate representation,” reiterating the $4.7 million investment.) Gov. Kathy Hochul has tried to put space between herself and the measure. After the story came out, Politico asked Hochul if she believed the campaign had been mismanaged, and she said that “we are stepping in now to provide assistance because it is apparently necessary.”
The New York Democratic Party did not start spending money on the Prop 1 campaign until September, before the Politico story on the campaign’s spending came out. At the time, Hochul announced a $1 million investment from the state’s party. As this story was being reported, Hochul spokesperson Jen Goodman told NOTUS that the state party’s investment had increased and that it would spend an overall $2 million on paid communications “to get Prop 1 over the finish line.”
The recent push from the party for Prop 1 is significantly higher than the last time there were statewide constitutional amendments on the ballot in 2021, when Hochul had just become governor following Andrew Cuomo’s resignation. State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs said the party did not spend any money on three voting rights measures to expand access in the state, and those ultimately failed.
“Everyone pointed out to [state Democratic Party leadership], ‘You didn’t do anything for the ballot initiatives three years ago on voter rights, and they went down,’” Krueger told NOTUS. “Let’s not make that mistake again.”
But New York lawmakers say the state Democratic Party is still bungling the opportunity with the abortion initiative.
“Let’s piggyback on this message that is a winning message for Democrats across the country: Protecting reproductive rights is a winning message,” said state Sen. Gustavo Rivera.
He added that while individual candidates have been pushing for Prop 1, since it’s a statewide initiative, it’s the party’s responsibility to “provide a more robust campaign that … actually translates across the entire state.”
Jacobs called the current criticism “ridiculous” and added that the official party apparatus is “propping up the campaign with $2 million in paid communications and a massive ground game infrastructure that is getting the word out across the state.”
“Anyone who is wasting their time criticizing the efforts of the State Party should look in the mirror and ask themselves what they’ve done to support Prop 1,” Jacobs added. New York requires that constitutional amendments be added to the ballot by the state legislature. Every single state lawmaker NOTUS talked to for this story voted to add Prop 1 to the ballot.
After the campaign behind Prop 1 failed to get a mention of abortion added to the ballot language, Common Cause New York, a prominent good government group, sent a letter to Hochul urging her to “mobilize the vast communication modalities of the state — including digital billboards and direct-to-voter communication — to inform voters.”
“As New York’s top elected official, it is your responsibility to ensure New Yorkers understand what they are asked to vote on. With two months before voters head to the polls, and no immediate legal remedy for the issue, your office must do more to educate voters and dispel misinformation on the issue,” wrote Susan Lerner, the group’s executive director.
Goodman, Hochul’s spokesperson, said the governor has “headlined dozens of events across the state focused on getting the word out about Prop 1 and has amplified Prop 1’s message at every campaign stop” since at least February 2024. As of Sunday, she added, “Prop 1 has been mentioned on more than 245,000 door knocks and 685,000 phone calls by New York Democratic Party volunteers.”
In audio recordings of two recent campaign events reviewed by NOTUS, Hochul indeed urged voters to vote yes on Prop 1 because, she said in one event, it will “enshrine the rights that all of America had” — the “rights of women” — that Donald Trump and his Supreme Court nominees “stripped away,” but she did not mention the vagueness of the measure. Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan, who Hochul has campaigned with and who has made abortion rights a focal point of his own campaign, told NOTUS that the governor has been “central in the fight for reproductive freedom” in the state.
When the campaign first launched in June 2023, it was touted as an effort to drive voter turnout in 2024, with significant backing from Hochul and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Republicans had flipped four New York House seats in 2022, losing Democrats the majority, and the thinking went that an initiative to protect abortion rights would help Democrats regain those seats. New Yorkers for Equal Rights planned to raise $20 million for the initiative, per The New York Times, but has fallen short of that effort.
To the dismay of state lawmakers, the effort from the party to shore up the campaign and see it over the finish line has been lacking.
“It’s just been an immense frustration how disengaged the state Democratic Party has been on so many issues,” said state Sen. Rachel May. “Those voting rights issues, was it three years ago, that they just completely dropped the ball on. I think a lot of the congressional elections two years ago that they dropped the ball on, too, you know, that they are, I think, trying this year to have a role in addressing that issue, but I wish they could walk and chew gum at the same time.”
Similarly, state Sen. Andrew Gounardes told NOTUS that state Democratic Party officials took the voting rights measures “for granted” because the party believed “they would get passed on the strength of how meritorious they were.”
“As it turns out, when your opponents see an opening, they will exploit it,” he added. (That year, conservatives spent over $3 million in opposition, outspending New York state Senate Democrats who campaigned in favor.)
When Hochul ran for governor in 2022, she beat former GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin by around 6 percentage points, with Zeldin earning the highest vote a Republican gubernatorial nominee has received in the state in decades. The governor also has a low approval rating in New York state, most recently at 36%.
If Hochul intends to run for reelection in 2026, “this is a popular issue,” said former state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi. “You basically want to be able to make the case to New Yorkers that you did everything that could in your power, in your office, to protect the right to an abortion.”
“I think that not backing it earlier may hurt her. If Prop 1 does not pass, there will be enough blame to go around. And people are saying that under her watch, we lost several congressional seats in days gone by. To lose Prop 1 — there’s a lot of people who may draw the inference,” Sanders said.
Given the barriers facing Prop 1, Biaggi added, the state party leadership should have prioritized it.
“If New York fails to protect the right to an abortion in their state constitution … what does that say about the infrastructure of our New York state Democratic Party?” Biaggi told NOTUS. “To me, it says that they’re not serious. They’re not a serious institution of people.”
Correction: Kathy Hochul became governor of New York in 2021 after Gov. Cuomo resigned.
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Oriana González is a reporter at NOTUS. Violet Jira is a reporter at NOTUS and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.