Democrat Kristin Lyerly hopes abortion rights message helps turn 8th Congressional District blue

It’s no secret that Kristin Lyerly is passionate about abortion rights.

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, the Green Bay-area Democrat and OB-GYN became a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s pre-Civil War abortion law, and served on a White House reproductive rights task force. 

Lyerly also helped with campaigns for Gov. Tony Evers’ reelection and state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, both of which leaned into the abortion issue.

Now, she’s hoping to flip the state’s 8th Congressional District for the first time in more than a decade, and become the first woman to represent northeast Wisconsin in Congress.

“The only person who should be making your personal health care decisions is you with the counsel of a healthcare professional in the context of your life, with your faith leaders and your family members, and whoever else helps you make those decisions,” Lyerly told WPR at a town hall in Appleton last month. “Politicians should never be making your health care decisions.”

That message has been a political winner for Democrats in Wisconsin’s statewide elections for the past two years. But whether it can carry Lyerly to victory in the Republican-leaning 8th Congressional District remains an open question.

She’s running in a media market where the Protasiewicz campaign, which emphasized reproductive rights, did not run abortion ads on television. According to Politico, the campaign thought an advertising push on abortion in and around Green Bay would hurt more than help.

That isn’t deterring Lyerly, a Kaukauna native, who said the people making those decisions “weren’t from here.”

“My family has been in this district for six generations,” she said. “They came because they were Catholics from Germany, and they were escaping religious persecution.”

“I know the people here,” she added. “I have taken care of the people here who have had complicated pregnancies, who have sought contraception and abortion care.”

Lyerly said she hasn’t been practicing medicine in Wisconsin while the lawsuit challenging the 1849 abortion law plays out. She’s been practicing in rural northern Minnesota, where she said she’s been delivering babies for about 10 days a month before returning to Wisconsin to campaign.

She said she became involved in politics in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic because, as a doctor, she felt she couldn’t sit on the sidelines any longer. She ran for an Assembly seat that year, but lost to incumbent state Rep. John Macco, R-Ledgeview.

In this race, Lyerly said she’s been making an effort to reach rural parts of the district that Democrats have overlooked in the past.

“A lot of those people have not had a space where they can talk about these sensitive issues,” she said. “We made a point and said, ‘We’re going to be in Shawano. Let’s talk about Dobbs and how that’s affected your life.’”

Aaron Weinschenk, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, said Lyerly’s experience as a doctor and her messaging around abortion has the potential to make the 8th District’s general election more competitive than it has been in recent years.

“The Republican Party seems to be out of step with what the public thinks on the issue of abortion, so play to your strengths,” Weinschenk said. “If you have a candidate who can speak about that issue, has worked on that issue and has clear ties to it due to their profession and their gender, then why not take advantage of that?”

While abortion can be divisive, Lyerly has hinted that she might take more moderate positions on other issues.

For example, when it comes to health care, she said she’s “skeptical” of Medicare for All, because Medicare reimburses independent physicians and hospitals below the actual cost of care.

In November, Lyerly will face the winner of a three-way GOP primary between businessman Tony Wied, state Sen. Andre Jacque and former state Sen. Roger Roth. Wied and Roth have both framed abortion as a state issue, not a federal issue, while Jacque indicated he’s open to cutting federal subsidies for abortions.

“If, I believe, this is her No. 1 issue, she’s running for the wrong office,” Roth told WPR at a campaign event when asked about Lyerly. “She ought to be running for state office, because that is where this issue will be settled.”

But some attendees at Lyerly’s July town hall felt differently. For Kaukauna resident Leslie Hayes, reproductive rights are top of mind this election. 

“I have a daughter who is in her teenage years,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Are we really fighting this battle again, for the new generations?’ It’s so frustrating.”

Hayes said she plans to vote for Lyerly in November.

“She talks to you like she’s talking to her neighbor at the end of the driveway, picking up the mail,” Hayes said of Lyerly. “She’s approachable, and she’s from this area.”