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Nella Domenici campaign sends Sen. Heinrich a cease and desist letter over abortion ad
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Republican Senate candidate Nella Domenici’s campaign sent a cease and desist letter to Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich’s campaign over a television ad on the abortion issue but has no plans to take further legal action. Heinrich has no plans to stop running the 30-second spot.
A cease and desist letter is a warning that someone will take legal action if behavior they believe is illegal continues. Cease and desist letters can be the first step toward a lawsuit, but are not legally binding.
The back-and-forth highlights the importance of abortion in the national political conversation, and attack ads in the Senate race are likely to get more negative before ballots are counted in November.
”I’ll never forget being in the grocery store with my daughter, when I heard that Roe was overturned,” the ad begins, with a female OBGYN speaking in what looks like a medical office. “Like being crushed with a ton of bricks,” another woman says. “I’m absolutely worried about a national abortion ban,” a third woman says. The ad read continues in voice-over before jumping back to different women, “Mitch McConnell and the MAGA Republicans are the ones who recruited Nella Domenici. Republicans have an agenda, and that agenda is to get rid of abortion in America.”
Domenici took issue with the ad because it says a vote for her “is a vote for a federal abortion ban,” and her campaign asked Heinrich to stop airing the ad and offer a formal apology. Domenici has said repeatedly that she would vote against a federal abortion ban, and instead supports reducing abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies through education and better use of birth control.
“Nella has been unimpeachably clear in articulating her position on this very critical issue from day one,” Domenici’s campaign manager Noah Jennings said in a statement directed to Heinrich on social media platform X. “The fact that you now have to write a three-page letter doing more mental gymnastics than the U.S. Olympic team could handle is telling. You are lying to New Mexicans in your desperation to hold on to your political ambitions.”
Heinrich’s campaign argues that “it is not defamatory to point out when a wolf drapes itself in a sheep’s clothing,” in the three-page letter responding to the cease and desist request. The letter points out that the National Republican Senate Committee has supported Domenici’s campaign with funding, as has NRSC chair U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., with mentorship.
“The NRSC has thrown its weight behind Ms. Domenici to secure a Republican majority that will enact Donald Trump’s and Congressional Republicans’ anti-reproductive freedom agenda, including a national abortion ban,” the letter argues. “Republicans do not get to re-write history in an election year to claim otherwise, just as Ms. Domenici does not get to suddenly disaffiliate herself from her party and biggest supporters.”
Domenici’s campaign does not plan to take further legal steps at this time, Jennings said.
Complaints to broadcast stations about the veracity of an opponent’s TV ad are common in political races, said New Mexico political analyst and pollster Brian Sanderoff, and campaigns have been known to threaten legal action.
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According to Heinrich’s campaign, he has not gotten legal communications about ads from Domenici’s campaign previously or from other opponents’ campaigns in previous elections.
Campaigns have an uphill battle actually convincing a judge that a political ad should be pulled, because political speech is well-protected by the First Amendment. But sending a cease and desist letter does garner a campaign something valuable: media attention and the chance to spread its narrative.
“So even if they’re not successful, they would have conveyed that in their view, the Heinrich campaign’s ad is at a minimum, deceptive and at a maximum, malicious,” Sanderoff said.
In Heinrich’s 2018 Senate race, which he won by 23 points, Democrats were having a good year nationwide, and part of his strategy seemed to be ignoring his opponents, Libertarian and former Gov. Gary Johnson, and Republican Mick Rich, according to Sanderoff. But this is a different race.
Both Domenici and Heinrich have aired attack ads, and both have attempted to connect their opponent to China. The attack ads are likely to intensify as election day draws closer, according to Sanderoff.
“Running for office is not for the faint of heart. It’s rough and tumble,” Sanderoff said.
