Florida’s History Shows That Crossing Voters on Abortion Has Consequences

Abortion rights are on the ballot in 10 states, but their presence looms especially large in Florida. Last year, Governor Ron DeSantis, with the approval of the Republican-majority state legislature, signed a six-week abortion ban into law. In response, Floridians Protecting Freedom (FPF) sponsored the Right to Abortion Initiative, which is on the ballot as Amendment 4. 

The tension between supporters of the state-sanctioned ban and its opponents has heightened as the election approaches. Early this month, the Florida Department of Health sent cease-and-desist letters to local TV stations, ordering a halt to airing commercials supporting the amendment. However, a judge blocked these efforts. Amendment 4 is a stark reminder of the deep-rooted divide on abortion in the state.

And it’s not new. In 1986, Floridians elected Republican Robert “Bob” Martinez as governor. A Democrat turned Reaganite, Martinez’s election marked the rise of the new conservative wave in Florida. Three years later, however, he was undone by abortion politics. He demanded the legislature enact an abortion ban, which provoked a fierce backlash that contributed to his 1990 loss.

The blowback against Martinez illuminates how politicians can’t underestimate how single-issue politics transcend party affiliation. As Martinez learned, sticking to your guns and ignoring your constituents — especially on abortion — can prove politically fatal. 

From the end of the Civil War to the middle of the 20th century, the Democratic Party was the party of white southerners. Segregationist white Democrats maintained one party rule over the “Solid South,” with Republican candidates having little chance at winning elections. Yet, beginning in the 1950s, Republicans began making inroads in the region, which accelerated with the enactment of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in the 1960s. The GOP played on perceptions of Democrats as the party of civil rights and minority voters, as Republicans tried to convert white Southerners.

By the time Martinez was elected as the conservative Democratic Mayor of Tampa in 1979, the region was becoming highly competitive. In 1980, Ronald Reagan won all of the Southern states except for Jimmy Carter’s native Georgia, signaling that the GOP was ascendant in the region. After Reagan’s win, Republicans courted conservative Democrats like Martinez to switch parties. In 1983, the Tampa mayor visited Reagan at the White House. Noting their political similarities, Reagan encouraged Martinez to become a Republican, reminding the governor that he too was once a Democrat.

Read More: Here’s Where Abortion Will Be on the Ballot in the 2024 Election

The move made political sense for Martinez. Reagan’s conservative brand of politics appealed to the scores of Floridians who recently flocked to the state and had no ancestral connection to the Democratic Party. Several other conservative Florida Democratic politicians had recently changed parties in response to the state's shifting political tide.. 

Later that year, Martinez finally made the jump. 

To many onlookers, the party switch smacked of political opportunism. Martinez wanted to run for governor in 1986, and he appeared to have a clearer path to the Republican nomination than the Democratic one. Despite such accusations, Martinez ended up beating Democratic State Representative Steve Pajcic. Surprisingly, even though it eventually became his undoing, he didn’t campaign on abortion restrictions, though that had become a staple of the new conservative Republican playbook. While anti-abortion “family values” voters were now the base of the GOP, Martinez focused on economic issues, promising to cut taxes and “trim government fat,” a reference to cutting $800 million from the state budget over the next 4 years. 

Martinez became Florida's first Hispanic governor and only the second Republican governor since Reconstruction. His election heralded the growing success of the GOP in the sunshine state and the revival of two-party politics.

Martinez’s ascendance came as the the battle over abortion raged on in the courts. While Reagan had pledged his support for a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution that would’ve banned abortion, it went nowhere in Congress. That left judges continuing to grapple with the question of how far states could go to limit access to the procedure.

In 1989, in a 5-4 decision in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Missouri statute prohibiting the use of public employees, facilities, and funds to provide abortion services with additional restrictions on doctors who provided that care. The 1976 Hyde Amendment already banned the use of federal taxpayer dollars for abortion services. But now, the Court seemed to indicate that states could go further than previously believed in limiting access to abortion. 

Three weeks later, Governor Martinez announced his support for an anti-abortion law and called for an October special session of the state legislature to move forward on enacting such restrictions. He specifically called for a 20-week abortion ban. 

Suddenly, Martinez wanted to put himself at the forefront of the fight against abortion. He gave an unclear answer to the New York Times’s Jeffrey Schmalz when asked why. “Religion could have a part in it; I’m Roman Catholic. Maybe the years I taught school reinforced it.” Another possibility existed, however: Martinez had failed to deliver on his promise to cut taxes and the state government budget. Instead, he had argued for increased spending to meet the needs of the state’s rapidly growing population. Martinez might’ve wanted to distract from his flip-flop, or to court his party’s religious right base.

Read More: Florida's Six-Week Abortion Ban Would Limit Access Across the South

Yet, while Martinez was aligning himself with his party’s base and lawmakers in other states like Illinois and Pennsylvania were moving to restrict access to abortions, he was ignoring the politics of the issue in Florida. By the time the legislature convened for its special session, polls showed that two-thirds of Floridians supported a woman’s right to choose. Even more ominous for Martinez: one poll showed that not only did Floridians oppose restrictions on abortion in overwhelming numbers, but “only 24% would vote for Martinez again.”

If there were any wavering state legislators, the 10,000 protesters who descended on the state capital, led by organizations like Gainesville Women’s Liberation, to protest the proposed restrictions probably made their choice clearer. 

While Martinez ignored public opinion, the Democratic-controlled state legislature had no desire to anger the voters and swiftly defeated his proposed abortion restriction bill. 

It was a humiliating defeat — one that dramatically weakened Martinez. The governor had fatally misread the politics of abortion. While he won renomination in 1990, veteran Democrat Lawton Chiles defeated him in the general election. The race was about more than abortion, but it played a pivotal role in Martinez’s downfall. After his loss, the director of the National Abortion Rights Action League, Kate Michelman, commented, “Bob Martinez has been the nation’s most prominent anti-choice governor and today he paid the price at the polls.”

On Tuesday, Florida residents face a momentous decision —whether to vote yes or no on Amendment 4. Unlike Martinez, DeSantis has successfully signed his abortion ban into law, taking advantage of conservative Republican control of the state legislature. However, the introduction of Amendment 4 underscores that the abortion debate is far from over. People will always make their voice heard, whether through protest or gathering enough signatures to put an amendment on the ballot. Whether the amendment passes or DeSantis pays a price for opposing it remains to be seen. 

Yet, Martinez’s experience should serve as a cautionary tale for all politicians — no amount of political posturing outweighs the fact that on policy issues, like abortion, people are determined to shape the laws and react poorly to politicians who ignore their will.

Allison Mashell Mitchell is a postdoctoral fellow at the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center and Africana Research Center at Pennsylvania State University. She researches 20th Century African American political history.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.