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Incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray has long been a proud champion of abortion rights. Her challenger, Whitworth University alum Tiffany Smiley, a Republican, has long been an advocate for veterans, ever since Smiley's husband was blinded while serving in the Army in Iraq.

Those issues remain at the top of their minds.

Murray points to the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade as the reason why Americans need to vote against Republicans.

"Today," Murray wrote after the decision in late June, "Republicans dragged this country backwards by half a century. The American people will not forget Republicans' crueltynot today, not tomorrow, and not this November."

Smiley, meanwhile, was particularly horrified by President Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, and the psychological toll it had on veterans who served there.

"Does he not understand that he has given the interpreters, guides, and others who have supported coalition forces a death sentence at the hands of the Taliban?" Smiley wrote in a statement about Biden last year.

Both have tried to defuse the other's strength.

Smiley post-primary, at least has struck a much more moderate position on abortion than the rest of her party: She says she doesn't oppose Washington state's current abortion law, and proclaimed in an ad, "I'm pro-life, but I oppose a federal abortion ban."

Murray, meanwhile, ran her own ad featuring a retired Army captain, wearing an Army T-shirt, lamenting the assault on "our temple of Democracy" on Jan. 6. and attacking Smiley for publicly questioning the integrity of the 2020 election.

The rest is here:
Abortion and Afghanistan: The race for U.S. Senate - Inlander