With a little over four weeks until Election Day, interest is growing in the race to replace the nation’s longest-serving current U.S. Senator.
Vermont’s Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, is retiring, and the issue of reproductive liberty has emerged as an issue dividing the major-party candidates who want to succeed him.
Friday, a former presidential candidate was in Vermont endorsing the Democrat running for the office.
"We’ve got to elect Peter Welch to the U.S. Senate," Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, said Friday ahead of a roundtable discussion of reproductive liberty initiatives in Vermont.
Klobuchar, a guest of Vermont Democrats for a series of events, is backing current U.S. House Rep. Peter Welch in his run for the Senate. Klobuchar pointed to what she called his strong support of reproductive freedoms.
"We want to have the codification of Roe v. Wade be part of our legacy of progress," Klobuchar said of Senate Democrats.
In an interview Friday with NECN & NBC10 Boston, Welch said he wants to be a part of delivering a bill to the president that would restore Roe v. Wade nationwide — after the Supreme Court overturned it and left it up to the states to decide whether abortion would be legal.
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"It’s a major issue in the country," Welch said of accessing abortions. "This is absolutely outrageous, that a woman can’t make her own decision about reproductive choices. This should not be up to a man, it shouldn’t be up to legislatures, it should be up to a woman making her own decision and we’ve got to restore that reproductive freedom."
Gerald Malloy, an Army veteran, business consultant, and experienced emergency management leader, is Welch’s Republican opponent.
He said Friday in an interview with NECN & NBC10 Boston’s Vermont affiliate, NBC5 News, that he does not support the push to enshrine reproductive liberty in the Vermont Constitution. He said he thinks the U.S. Supreme Court was absolutely right to send abortion decisions back to the states.
"I am pro-life," Malloy said. "I want to be a United States senator to serve all Vermonters, and represent all Vermonters. And serve under the Constitution. So my view now is it is a state issue — I believe it’s going to stay a state issue."
Vermont Independents Mark Coester, Stephen Duke, Dawn Ellis, Cris Ericson, and Kerry Raheb are also running for U.S. Senate. Green Mountain Party candidate Natasha Diamondstone-Kohout will be on the ballot, too.
Information on registering to vote in Vermont can be found on this website from the secretary of state’s office: https://sos.vermont.gov/elections/voters/registration/
