by Tanya K. Metaksa
Although the political landscape is dominated by the focus on the 2016 presidential elections with over 20 announced candidates, on Nov. 3 there were important elections for gun owners in several states. As usual the National Rifle Association’s Political Victory Fund (NRA PVF) got involved in races that effect gun rights. Chris Cox, chairman of the NRA PVF, released a statement in which he summarized the election results.
In Texas a constitutional amendment to recognize the Right to Hunt and Fish won with an overwhelming 81% of the voters casting an Aye vote. In Kentucky there were two statewide races in which there was a decided difference between the Republican and the Democrat candidates: governor and commissioner of agriculture. In both races the NRA candidate rated an A beat the C-rated candidate. In the governor’s race Matt Bevin surprisingly defeated former Agriculture Commissioner Jack Conway, rated a C. The New York Times reported, “Mr. Bevin, a Tea Party favorite and wealthy Louisville businessman who has never held elective office, in a long-shot campaign that ended Tuesday as he trounced his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Jack Conway, and remade the political landscape in a state where his party has held the governorship for just four of the past 44 years.” The new commissioner of agriculture, Ryan Quarrels, is a former member of the Kentucky House of Representatives where he was rated an A for both of his elections in 2010 and 2014.
In Mississippi, where the highest percentage of NRA endorsed candidates won, the winning percentage was 97%. Republican A+ rated Governor Phil Bryant easily won re-election for a third term. In Louisiana, the election held on Oct. 24, did not result in any candidate getting 50% of the vote. A runoff election was scheduled for Nov. 21 between the two top candidates, John Bel Edwards (D) and US Sen. David Vitter (R). Current Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is running for president, is term limited.
However, the election that got the most ink was the Virginia statewide legislative contests. The Virginia Senate was the only legislative body in the country that had a possibility of switching from Republican to Democrat control. The Republicans held a 21-19 advantage prior to election day. In 2013, Terry McAuliffe, the former chairman of the Democrat party under Bill Clinton, ran as an anti-gun Democrat for governor and won. Since then he has touted his gun control agenda, even though it was thoroughly discredited and voted down in the legislature. To make it even easier for the Democrats to change the balance of power only two Democrat senators were retiring while 4 Republicans had announced their retirement. McAuliffe with the help of Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun apparatus was hoping to flip one Republican seat thereby making the Senate 20-20 with the Democrat Lt. Governor then able to cast the tying vote during the legislative session.
According to the Petersburg Progress-Index, “Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group made a splash at the tail end of the 2015 elections by announcing it was spending $2.2 million in two key open state Senate races to help the Democratic candidates.” Bloomberg spent more than 50% of that money on an open Senate seat in Northern Virginia that had been reliably a Democrat seat. According to the Washington Post, “Less than two weeks before Election Day, Everytown for Gun Safety announced Thursday that it would spend $1.5 million in TV and online ads for Democrat Jeremy McPike. He is running against Manassas Mayor Harry J. “Hal” Parrish II (R) to succeed retiring Sen. Charles J. Colgan (D-Prince William).” Previously Bloomberg had announced a $700,000 purchase of ads for Democrat Dan Gecker in a suburban Richmond District. The Republican, Glenn Sturtevant, a lawyer and a member of the Richmond School Board, with an NRA rating of A had this quote on his webpage: “I’ll defend our constitutional freedoms and protections, including the 2nd Amendment.” Another article in the Washington Post prior to the election alleged that Bloomberg’s group planned an ad against Sturtevant that had racist overtones. In the end, McPike won and Gecker lost, thus the Bloomberg millions did not have the desired result.
On Nov. 4, the headline on the Washington Post was, “Did gun control cost McAuliffe and Democrats the Virginia election?” Here’s how the Post explained it:
“When Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and his fellow Democrats study what went wrong for them in Tuesday’s crucial legislative elections, one possible mistake stands out: Their aggressive advocacy of gun control in a pivotal Senate race in the Richmond area may have backfired by producing a pro-Republican backlash. In a race that proved decisive in enabling Republicans to retain control of the Senate, Republican Glen H. Sturtevant won the 10th District seat after benefiting from a huge turnout in conservative Powhatan County, which analysts attributed in part to the gun issue.”
On the Fox News program, The Five, one of the moderators during their Winners and Losers segment, called Bloomberg and McAuliffe the biggest losers of the election as a result of the election in Virginia’s 10th District Senate race.
The Progress-Index summed up the Virginia election by writing:
“Here’s what the Election Day outcome suggests for Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s political future, Virginia’s role in the 2016 presidential campaign, and the role of heavy spending outside groups in Virginia. Virginia’s governor raised and spent a lot of money trying to flip control of the state Senate. McAuliffe took advantage of Virginia’s limitless campaign finance system to raise money from Democratic mega donors around the country while spending heavily on data-driven voter identification and turnout. His unsuccessful push to flip the Senate reduces his already slim chances of passing legacy-defining legislation during his tenure, said Bob Holsworth, a consultant and retired Virginia Commonwealth University political analyst.”
It will be interesting to see how the political pundits treat the 2015 election results. From all appearances the Democrat party is promoting gun control as a basic plank in their platform for 2016. Yet, this push to demonize guns and gun organizations such as the NRA may not be the wisest course for Democrat politicians. After all Gallup in a poll released in October stated, “Despite a year of blistering criticism from gun control advocates about the National Rifle Association’s hard-line stance against gun restrictions amid a spate of mass shootings nationwide, 58% in the US have a favorable opinion of the NRA.”
