How We Mobilized Doctors to Win Statewide Ballot Fights in Florida and South Dakota

“Now DeSantis and a goon squad of anti-choice doctors, dressed in immaculate white lab coats, are barnstorming the state from Jacksonville on down, railing against Amendment 4.”

One of Florida’s leading liberal news outlets sounded hysterical in the days before Florida’s abortion amendment was decided at the ballot box. They were right to do so. We were organized, we were strategic, and we would win.

Medical professionals finally turned the tide for life-affirming care with a huge win in Florida. It was the first statewide pro-life win after seven consecutive statewide ballot losses for the pro-life movement. We worked with our client, AAPLOG Action — AAPLOG’s new c4 — to identify, train, and mobilize hundreds of Florida physicians to defeat the measure. Our coalition started with a physician-authored Op-Ed in the Miami Herald that framed this fight for our patients.

We brought in the expert writers at the Washington Writers Network to help research and draft the piece; the incisive, fast team there also supported statewide coalitions in other key states and nationally for our initiative. Then we worked with AAPLOG Action and allied organizations to support the dinners they held with physician leaders across the state, engaging, organizing, and motivating doctors and other medical professionals who became the core leaders of our statewide coalition.

Our experience in Ohio taught us that we needed to frame the fight as a battle by doctors defending their patients — our goal was to protect those patients from harm. We knew countless physicians and other medical professionals agreed with our position. Our job was to identify those who did and provide them with bulletproof messaging, enabling them to advocate for themselves and their patients. Our messaging followed two tracks: that Amendment 4 was Bad for Doctors (violating basic standards of care and forcing doctors to try and follow poorly-defined political language), and Bad for Women (making abortionists a protected class and removing vital health and safety standards, and removing the possibility of fully informed consent).

We also knew we had a short window of time to build both scale and depth in our coalition. Fortunately, a suite of innovative campaign tools was available to help us.

RumbleUp is a leading SMS texting tool. Though it’s typically used for voter contact and voter mobilization (GOTV) efforts, we learned it was a powerful ‘secret weapon’ for coalition building. The RumbleUp team helped us build a contact list overlaying actively registered voters who were likely conservatives across the state. Sending texts with coalition signup details to this target helped us scale a vetted coalition of FL medical professionals up to more than 700, with broad geographic representation across the state.

These tactics allowed us to ultimately recruit 718 medical professionals from all across Florida. We provided media training to dozens of them. Then we barnstormed up and down the state, holding half a dozen major press events, most featuring Governor DeSantis standing alongside our physicians. 

Our coalition earned 52 physician press interviews in English and Spanish, secured 335 press stories, and more than half a million voters across the state watched our physician videos by Election Day, when Amendment 4 was defeated. We’re proud of everything our doctors did to defeat it. In the words of Governor DeSantis on FOX & FRIENDS:

“If you’re pro-life, this is an easy ‘no’, but even if you’re not, I don’t know a lot of people who want to see abortion until birth or who think that physicians should be displaced”

We ran a similar playbook in South Dakota, working closely with a brave physician to claim a commanding victory in that state. We started with an anchor op-ed in the South Dakota Scout, a leading state newspaper, and transitioned to an aggressive earned media program. After the pro-life side emerged victorious, the State Secretary of Health told us that, “Doctor’s voices were critical in truly demonstrating that South Dakota’s laws work to protect the lives of women in our state. Thank you to the physicians who brought their expertise to this crucial election decision.”

We’re excited to keep running smart, integrated communications campaigns to help AAPLOG maintain and expand its leadership position within the pro-life movement.