by Joseph P. Tartaro | Executive Editor
What trait do New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Syrian President Bashar Assad share? They both think their positions of power, not to mention wealth, make them right, no matter who tells them they are wrong.
The same can be said for at least one of the losers in the Colorado recall election held Sept. 10: ex state Sen. Angela Giron.
Unwillingness to admit errors is a trait that does not allow the mighty to admit their errors nor to change their agendas.
Assad won’t change even if he had his sails trimmed by Vladimir Putin, his patron and ally in Moscow.
Nor, apparently, is Bloomberg changing his tune, as you will soon see.
Giron, however, changes her tune, if not her style, to stay in the headlines.
The historic Mountain State recall was reported by some to have been launched by a 28-year-old plumbing business executive in Pueblo, CO, which caused some to rate the political campaign in a “plumber vs. billionaire” context because of billionaire Bloomberg’s involvement both personally and as the dictator for Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Bloomberg and the mayor’s cabal spent way more than the pro-gunners in the event.
Before the recall votes were counted, the anti-recall, anti-gun side can make excuses, but it needs to be and was at one time clear-eyed about the stakes. In an interview with The New Republic a little while ago, Giron explained, “For Mayors Against Illegal Guns, if they lose even one of these seats, they might as well fold it up. And they understand that.”
After the election, Giron was finding all kinds of excuses for her loss as a Democrat in a district dominated by Democrat enrollment. Not one of them involved admitting that her Democrat constituents were more concerned about their gun rights, and open government with constituent input, than they were about a powerful political figure.
But Bloomberg apparently did not understand what she said earlier.
Now, although Bloomberg’s gun control group took a beating with the recalls of two state senators, officials with the group said on Sept.
12 that they believe the battle nationwide is far from over.
The MAIG officials reportedly told TPM.com that Mayors Against Illegal Guns is eying five other states where they think they could make their mark if they invest resources. Or at least Bloomberg’s vast resources.
“The short answer is full speed ahead,” the group’s executive director, Mark Glaze, told TPM.com by phone.
Bloomberg himself reacted to the defeat hours after the polls closed on Sept. 10, saying the fight would continue. Glaze and another official previewed for TPM what could come next.
The states the group is looking at are: Oregon, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada and Washington.
The issues of course will focus on the same items that have been in the Bloomberg and Obama- Biden agenda from the beginning.
Some political websites and magazines have suggested that the Colorado recall results coupled with the failure of the universal background check legislation in the US Senate this spring may have set the anti-gun crowd back some 10 years. That’s what a commentator for The Atlantic suggested.
All of which means that those who support and work for the right to keep and bear arms must remain as committed and stubborn as Bloomberg and the anti-gunners.
He’ll be out of office in a few months, but not out of the fight to curtail the Second Amendment any more than Assad will establish a real republican form of government in Syria.
