Republicans Concerned Over State Focus on Social Issues Seth Perlman/Associated Press Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin signed a law allowing schools to teach abstinence rather than contraception. Fiscal issues and union rights were front and center in many Republican-controlled legislatures last year. But this year, with the nation heading into the heart of a presidential race and voters consumed by the country's economic woes, much of the debate in statehouses has centered on social issues. Tennessee enacted a law this month intended to protect teachers who question the theory of evolution. Arizona moved to ban nearly all abortions after 20 weeks, and Mississippi imposed regulations that could close the state's only abortion clinic. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin signed a law allowing the state's public schools to teach about abstinence instead of contraception. The recent flurry of socially conservative legislation, on issues ranging from expanding gun rights to placing new restrictions on abortion, comes as Republicans at the national level are eager to refocus attention on economic issues. Some Republican strategists and officials, reluctant to be identified because they do not want to publicly antagonize the party's base, fear that the attention these divisive social issues are receiving at the state level could harm the party's chances in November, when its hopes of winning back the White House will most likely rest with independent voters in a handful of swing states. One seasoned strategist called the problem potentially huge. But others said that actions taken by a handful of states would probably have little impact on the national campaign. Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, a Republican who created a stir a couple of years ago with his suggestion for a "truce" on social issues, said in an interview that such issues are best handled at the state and local levels. They become more polarizing, he said, when people try to settle them nationally. "If we don't address soon what I believe are the lethal threats of our debts, our unaffordable commitments, our slow-growth economy, and so forth, every other problem will seem small," said Mr. Daniels, whose state did see union protests this year when it enacted a so-called right-to-work law. He noted that Mitt Romney's campaign was already emphasizing the economy at every opportunity. "The genuine risk to our party comes if we allow it to appear that these are our first preoccupations," he said. But John Weaver, a Republican strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Senator John McCain and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., said that the attention Republicans were paying to social issues at the state level could cost the party support from several important blocs of voters, including independents, women and young people voting for the first or second time. "I think it's problematic," he said, "not just for this national election we're facing, but for the long-term health of the party." The risks of focusing on social issues were highlighted this week when the American Legislative Exchange Council, a business-backed group that pushes conservative laws at the state level, announced that it would be refocusing its efforts on economic issues. Several sponsors had recently withheld their support after the group came under public pressure for advocating voting restrictions and self-defense legislation modeled on Florida's Stand Your Ground law, which became an issue after the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. It is not only Republican-led states that have turned to social issues as some of the immediate pressures of the fiscal crisis have begun to ease: Washington and Maryland, which are controlled by Democrats, both enacted laws legalizing same-sex marriage this year, and Connecticut voted this month to repeal its death penalty. But Republicans have more states: recent election victories have left them in control of both the executive and legislative branches of 21, while Democrats control both branches in only 11, and power is divided in the others. Many Republican governors are focusing on fiscal issues as well: in states including Kansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee, Republican governors have been pressing for tax cuts. But debates over social issues have drawn much of the attention in some states. After Tennessee's Republican-led Legislature passed a bill to protect school teachers who review "the scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories" in areas including "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming and human cloning," it drew denunciations from a number of scientists and civil libertarians. Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, decided this month to let the bill become law without his signature. Mr. Haslam said in an interview that the law had passed by a wide margin, so the Legislature could have easily overridden a veto. And he said that while he feared that the law would muddy state policy for teachers rather than clarify it, he had been assured by state education officials that it would not actually change the way science is taught in Tennessee. But he said he also worried that the law could damage the reputation of a state that was home to another famous legal battle over the teaching of evolution, the Scopes "monkey trial" of 1925.