The headline is from captioning of an online item Published November 16, 2022, titled, "Scott Jensen says Minnesota GOP can't win without new stance on abortion;" the item stating in large measure -
(FOX 9) - Scott Jensen, who lost to Gov. Tim Walz in last week's midterm election, says he and other Republicans erred on the abortion issue and [...] "The hardline position on abortion isn’t going to win,[...] So, if that’s where a group of people say that’s where we have to stay, and we have to do everything we can to ban abortions legally, completely, I think that there’s no way we win."
Jensen lost to Walz by 193,000 votes, or 7.7 percentage points. The race turned when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, leaving abortion access up to states.
While trying to win the GOP endorsement this spring, Jensen said he would try to ban abortion. He later shifted his stance, but Democrats spent millions of dollars on an avalanche of television attack ads using his previous comments.
[...] "I remember talking to someone who provided some very sensible advice, and he said, ‘You need to respond to this within 48 hours,’" Jensen said. "I said, 'We have no capability of doing that.' We didn’t have production capabilities, we didn’t have scripts, ideas, and we didn’t have the money."
Jensen said his wife, Mary, predicted around the Fourth of July that the abortion issue would hurt his campaign. But he shrugged off the political potency of the issue on the advice of his inner and outer circle that were "demanding" that he focus on inflation, crime, and education while believing the abortion issue would "fizzle" before Election Day.
[...] Jensen said Republicans need to support some initiatives he started talking about on the campaign trail this fall: making birth control available over the counter with a $10 per month maximum copay, paid maternity leave, and a tax credit for adopting a child.
Jensen, who served a single term in the Minnesota Senate before launching his bid for governor, said he had no plans to run for anything in the future.
"The Democrats have a chance now to move forward with a lot of their initiatives. They earned it. They won," he said. "And I think Republicans are going to have to watch and ask themselves, 'Hmm, how do we change that in the future?'"
[italics added]
Other Republicans. We hope for and await a similar reasoned expression of fact from abortion opponents who also ran statewide and lost, specifically Catholic GOP candidates Matt Birk, James Schultz, and Ryan Wilson. Are they as practical and open in hindsight to the clear majority will of the people as Jensen? Or is there an impediment to their outlooks, an impediment to realizing after losing, "The hardline position on abortion isn’t going to win,[...] So, if that’s where a group of people say that’s where we have to stay, and we have to do everything we can to ban abortions legally, completely, I think that there’s no way we win." And a failure, hiding from disclosure of who you really are, that is worse:
Abortion
Blaha: “Health and human services are a significant part of local government budgets, so we need an auditor who understands that healthcare includes abortion. An auditor pushing an anti-abortion agenda could disrupt local access to reproductive care, particularly for low-income Minnesotans. I’m proud of my history supporting abortion rights as a president of the National Organization for Women of Minnesota and am proud to be endorsed by Planned Parenthood and EMILY’s list,” Blaha told MPR News in a written statement.
Wilson: “It’s really not a part of our race,” he told MPR News.
Evasion doesn't cut it. Yet evasion allowed Wilson to gain a tighter race. All citizens of Minnesota must be vigilant against issue evasion in politicians, what they say vs. who they are. As Blaha clearly pointed out, "An auditor pushing an anti-abortion agenda could disrupt local access to reproductive care, particularly for low-income Minnesotans." Evasion and honest candor seem opposed to one another.
What Jensen did not say and should have, the voucher issue is another pure loser position loved by too many Republican politicians. So watch out in the future for evasion of that issue by tarting it up as something - as anything - beyond allowing public education and public schools to be victimized by permitting any of the too-often inadequate funding to be highjacked into sectarian indoctrination. Even childless people pay taxes toward general public education as a public good, while sectarian indoctrination is short of that.
Last, there is wisdom in not allowing the abortion issue to "fizzle" after election day.