PAC Leader at Faith & Freedom Coalition Conference: Pro-Family Candidates Must Stay Assertive

Ralph Reed Calls for Conservative Candidates to “Grow a Backbone” on Faith, Family, and Abortion

Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition (FFC), opened the political action committee’s annual Road to Majority Policy Conference with a call for conservative political candidates to “grow a backbone” as they defend their views on faith, family, and their opposition to abortion.

The Road to Majority Policy Conference runs from June 22 to 24, and is coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Supreme Court case concluded with the decision that the individual states can regulate aspects of abortion not already covered by federal law.

Reed said the dates for this year’s Road to Majority Policy Conference were scheduled years ago. He said that in overlapping, the timing of the conference and the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision is a “serendipitous coincidence”—but a coincidence that he hopes will strengthen the resolve of pro-life political candidates.

“We’re certainly going to do everything that we can, as an organization and as a pro-life and pro-family movement, to give our candidates a little bit of a testosterone booster shot, and explain to them that they should not be on the defensive,” Reed said in an interview. “Those who are afraid of it need to, candidly, grow a backbone.”

Reed formed FFC in 2009 as a political action committee (PAC) focused on promoting traditional values and limited government. The PAC says its annual Road to Majority Policy Conference has “empowered conservative activists to fight for their values at the polls and in the public arena,” and “equips attendees with the knowledge and connections they need to drive engagement and voter turnout.”

This year’s conference includes a slate of Republican governors, lawmakers, and media personalities. Several 2024 Republican presidential candidates are also scheduled to speak at the conference, including former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, and radio host Larry Elder.

“This year’s timely gathering will accelerate conservatives further down the road to majority ahead of the 2024 presidential election,” the FFC said of its conference.

Political Stakes on Abortion Policy

Trump has been keen to claim credit for the new precedent on abortion set by the Dobbs decision, noting that the three U.S. Supreme Court justices he nominated during his time as president—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—all ruled in favor of the opinion.

In the wake of the Dobbs decision, several states have begun imposing new policies to restrict abortions. While Republicans and conservatives celebrated the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling, Democrats and liberal activists have credited the decision with motivating their own base to vote for candidates in the mid-term elections that favored the preservation of unfettered access to abortion.

While the incumbent party typically suffers in mid-term elections, Democrats managed to pick up one seat in the Senate. Republicans managed to flip control of the House, albeit by a narrow margin.

In a Jan. 1 post on his Truth Social media platform, Trump rejected criticism for candidates he endorsed that failed to win office, and suggested the blame for the mid-term underperformance belonged to Republicans who mishandled the issue of abortion.

“It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations in the MidTerms,” Trump’s Jan. 1 Truth Social post reads. “I was 233-20! It was the ‘abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters.”

Just weeks before launching his 2024 presidential campaign, DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban into law. The bill includes exceptions for cases involving pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.

Trump, the 2024 Republican frontrunner, has gone on to question the Florida abortion bill, which was signed by his leading contender in the 2024 Republican primary race.

In a May 15 interview with The Messenger, Trump said, “If you look at what DeSantis did, a lot of people don’t even know if he knew what he was doing. But he signed six weeks, and many people within the pro-life movement feel that that was too harsh.” During that interview, Trump would not say whether he would have signed a six-week abortion ban if he had the chance.

DeSantis pushed back on Trump’s comments about Florida’s ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.

“Protecting an unborn child when there’s a detectable heartbeat is some