Ballot Initiatives Fail to Gather Signatures
Dear Pro-Choice Friends: I’m writing to update you on the welcome demise of both of the ballot initiatives for November’s Missouri ballot. We received direct, personal word from the organization that filed the ballot initiatives that they have been abandoned—then we uncorked a bottle of champagne in the office and called our coalition partners in the fight against the ban to let them know what we had just heard straight from the horse’s mouth. The circumstances surrounding our discovery that the Eliott Institute/Stop Forced Abortions Alliance had abandoned its initiatives are pretty amusing. These two groups, through their alter ego, David Reardon, were in the press and on the internet stating that they were recruiting signature-gatherers and sending out packets. We and our allies went on high alert, sending urgent messages to our activists to look for petitions in church parking lots, in the streets at Mardi Gras, at community fairs. We heard nothing except Reardon’s indications in the media that he was pursuing signatures even though he could not be sure whether a court or the Secretary of State would eventually change the language of the measure, invalidating all those signatures. We were curious, but we were also worried about being blindsided by a stealth campaign like the one that percolated in Washington state a few years ago. So we got creative. We invented a pro-life ringer to infiltrate Reardon’s camp. Our “plant” got the word from Reardon himself: delays resulting from his own action of filing a second petition and from a legal challenge caused Reardon to “aim for 2010.” He conceded that “unfortunately we do not believe we will be able to get the petition on the ballot and therefore are not pushing hard to gather the signatures at this time.” He implored our NARAL ringer to “gather signatures for the purpose of educating people, and helping us to develop a list of supporters for the next time.” He promised, “Next time around, we will start the process FAR earlier,” and he cited 2010 as his “next time around.” He signed off “Yours for Life in Christ, Dave.” The ballot initiatives failed for two reasons. First, NARAL spearheaded the first message out of the box on the first ballot initiative, characterizing it as a ban. At a press conference December 3 that we organized and which included our friends at RCRC and Sen. Joan Bray, we got the first shot at framing the ballot measure. We called it a ban because it was a ban. The press coverage of our message was immediate and intense, from Jeff City to Chicago to Baltimore. Our framing of the issue forced Reardon and company to retool, remessage—and ultimately, to draft a whole new initiative (with a letter to the Secretary of State explaining why the new petition was not a ban), without withdrawing the first one. This cost our opponents even more time lost to yet another set of necessary reviews by the Secretary of State and the Attorney General. Second, Planned Parenthood challenged the measures in court. There still has not been a ruling on either of the petitions. The two-pronged strategy of political messaging and court action made it impossible for Reardon to deliver a convincing message to the public and to get 86,000 signatures. So, when May 4 comes and goes without an anti-choice ballot measure, you now have the back story. We believe our efforts and those of our allies were instrumental in stopping these ballot measures. If we had had to fight them in November, we had secured promises from NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation and another national foundation to fund dedicated staff to work only on the ballot measures from May-November, and we were prepared to devote at least 20% of the time of every member of our staff to defeat them. Because we have Reardon’s word that he will be back in 2010, we will keep a watchful eye out and will participate in formalizing the coalition of pro-choice allies that has been working together for the last several months to mobilize against ballot measures. Since Reardon says he will start far earlier this time, so will we. I will keep you informed about developments. Thank you for your continued friendship and support of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri. Respectfully, Pamela L. Sumners, Esq. Executive Director
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