Vice President Kamala Harris issues call to action on abortion during Minnesota visit

Vice President Kamala Harris touched down Saturday in the Twin Cities two weeks before the midterm election to issue a call to action on abortion, imploring an auditorium full of students and state leaders to "pick up the movement" for reproductive rights that started more than five decades ago.

Saturday's stop in Minnesota — her first since becoming vice president — was the latest in a series of moderated conversations held by Harris since a U.S. Supreme Court draft decision leaked in May signaling the court's plans to overturn Roe v. Wade. The ruling kicked the issue of abortion access back to individual states and thrust it into the middle of a contentious campaign.

"We are seeing an intentional restriction of rights. What is that saying about the trajectory and the direction of our country?" Harris said on the St. Paul campus of Metropolitan State University.

"There is so much at stake with this seemingly one issue that is actually chock full of issues that should concern us."

The event wasn't billed as a campaign event, but Harris repeatedly reminded the audience that "there's an election in 17 days." She spoke afterward at a Minneapolis fundraiser for DFL Gov. Tim Walz, who is seeking a second term.

Even before she arrived in town, Republicans were using Harris' visit to tie Walz to the decisions of the Biden administration.

"It's significant that Gov. Walz has invited Vice President Harris to Minnesota to try and bolster his faltering campaign," state GOP Party Chair David Hann said Friday. "The Biden-Harris administration has a clear record of failure borne out by their extremely low approval rating here in Minnesota."

Harris' 45-minute appearance was recorded for a podcast in front of an audience of several hundred supporters. Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Emily Tisch Sussman, host of the "She Pivots" podcast, took turns asking Harris questions about her political trajectory and work on the issue of abortion rights.

As a district attorney in California, Harris pushed back on a parental notification ballot initiative, and as a U.S. senator, she sponsored the Women's Health Protection Act, which would codify abortion protections established in Roe in federal law.

On Saturday, she said the Biden administration "will not allow the filibuster to get in the way" of passing and signing the act into law — but she added that the administration will need a majority in both chambers of Congress to support it.

The program included DFL Attorney General Keith Ellison, who is locked in a close re-election fight with Republican Jim Schultz. Since Roe's reversal, Ellison and Walz have made abortion rights a central issue in their campaigns.

"It matters who represents the people of the state and is responsible for doing justice on behalf of those people when it comes to an issue like this," said Harris. "Where the state has laws that can protect individual rights, we would want and hope as patriotic Americans that the person who has the power to enforce those rights, protects those rights."

Walz, a first-term Democrat, holds a narrow lead in recent polls over Republican Scott Jensen, a physician and one-term state senator. Democrats have spent millions on TV ads in the race, most of them attacking Jensen for past comments promising to ban abortion if he's elected governor.

After the high court overturned Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization in June, Jensen said he wouldn't push for changes to abortion access in Minnesota, which is constitutionally protected by a 1995 state Supreme Court decision.

In a September Star Tribune/MPR News/KARE 11 Minnesota Poll, voters listed abortion as the third most important issue in the race for governor, after the economy and crime.

Minnesota Republicans tried to keep the message focused on rising crime Friday, holding a news conference to criticize Harris for encouraging people in 2020 to contribute to a state fund that pays criminal and immigration bail bonds, mostly for inmates booked on low-level charges.

"There are numerous stories of where people who were graduates of the no-cash bail program went out to do violent crimes," said Jensen. "Kamala Harris is a little bit of a slap in the face to Minnesota, because she has not helped us at all in regards to public safety."

The audience of several hundred people that came to see Harris at Metropolitan State consisted largely of women who echoed Harris' message about the importance of abortion rights in the midterm election.

"We can't sleep on that," said Sharon Dykes, a surgeon who attended the event alongside members of the Minnesota chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first sorority founded by Black women. They met briefly after the event with Harris, who is also a member of the sorority.

"I have a daughter," said Dykes. "We need to impress on them that they need to be concentrating on our legislators who are trying to take our rights away, and make sure we're putting in office people who are here to support us."