Our opponents are telling Caren Merrick to release her NRA questionnaire, or they shall taunt her a second time. You can see why they are doing anything they can to turn the pressure up, because the polling in this district. But gun control is just not an issue that energizes people to get to the polls, no matter how much our opponents want to make it appear to work that way. They can get a lot of attention from a sympathetic media, but when it comes to putting people in the voting booth, they come up empty. Nonetheless, the Democrats are trying to scare voters on social issues in an election that looks increasingly likely to hinge on economic issues.
I guess after tomorrow we’ll see how things go. If you’re a gun owner in Northern Virginia, I’d go see whether Caren Merrick, or any of the other GOP Senate candidates need any help on election day tomorrow. This is going to be an important election for gun owners. Not only is lowering Virginia’s Brady score at stake, but so is giving Bloomberg a boost if he’s able to eke out some victories, and the Democrats are able to retain control of the Virginia Senate.
UPDATE from Bitter: I realize that some folks are confused by this post. Merrick is rated A- and running against an F-rated opponent. Winning in the state Senate is particularly important for gun owners, according to previous reports we’ve heard from Dave Adams with the VSSA. Anti-gunners have been harassing volunteers for this candidate because they claim she hasn’t released her NRA questionnaire to them in order to use to attack her.
I don’t get it, shouldn’t we also be interested in the results of this questionnaire, too?
Couple things: first, full disclosure. I hosted a very small campaign event for Caren Merrick after discussing the gun issue with her when she was canvassing our neighborhood.
She is quite pro gun, at least when speaking to me she was. She knew about my NRA membership because I have NRA plates on my truck and an NRA sculpture on my doorstep, so she certainly could have been preaching to the choir rather than expressing deeply held beliefs. That said, I got the sense she is far more conservative (small government type) than she is letting on, which makes sense in her deep, deep purple district. In our conversations, she seemed to have a decent grasp of the gun issues in Virginia and advocated the correct positions without my leading her (for example: I did NOT say “Should I be allowed to sell a gun at a gun show without filling out a ton of paperwork and paying a hefty fee for a background check I cannot run?) Lastly, got a postcard from NRA PVF endorsing her yesterday, so clearly the NRA thinks both that she can win and that she will be on our side. If the GOP takes the VA senate, we will probably get castle doctrine in VA and repeal one handgun a month, so this race is vital.
Check here for up to the minute results.
http://election2011.vpap.org/home
Right now, its pretty clear the Republicans won’t lose any seats. Democrats on the other hand, are currently losing four races – with two others extremely close.
Remember, the Republican’s only need to pick up three to gain control of the Senate.
Unfortunately, it looks like Favola is crushing Merrick. Chalk that up to the results of gerrymandering. The Washington Post has already called it for Favola. I think that’s premature with 50% of the votes in, but is probably the likely result due to the gerrymandered nature of the district.
Its also worth pointing out that the two biggest contributors to Favola are John Shooshan, a Maryland real estate developer and Michael Bloomberg.
Disgusting.