Category: Anti-Gun Folks

Don’t let it be said that Bloomberg can’t make the most of his money. Although I guess we shouldn’t underestimate a multi-billionaire.

In Pennsylvania, once he lost mayor after mayor to pressure from NRA members, he sent his shared Brady Campaign staffer to recruit. But, wisely, they kept their cards close to their chest. They refused to release names until after Election Day. For the 17 they lost, they updated with 66 new ones. Now, that’s not a clear addition of 66. Without even really digging in deep, I know at least a few of those new mayors will be gone by year’s end. They already planned to retire, or in one case, the town voted to do away with the mayor’s office. (Changing local government system isn’t unheard of here, another non-MAIG township in our area voted to do the same thing last week.)

View Bloomberg’s Anti-Gun Mayors in Pennsylvania in a larger map

As you can see by the updated map, he added a good chunk of his mayors out in the western part of the state again. I haven’t done a formal count, but I would not be shocked if the western part of Pennsylvania is now home to half or very nearly half of the anti-gun mayors.

Not all of the mayors are up at the same time, so there will be more municipal races to fight in the next year to two years. And more importantly, if your mayor’s name is on this updated list, make their phone ring off the hook. Make this a distracting issue for them. Give them a headache from the stream of phone calls from you and your shooting club buddies.

After last night’s results came in, Bloomberg’s anti-gun group is down another 16 mayors in Pennsylvania – and that’s the minimum number. Unfortunately a few of the rural counties (and at least one not-so-rural county) don’t seem to have heard of this new-fangled internet thingamajig. They don’t post their results online. Another has a weird thing of not posting municipal races online even though at the county level, they still have to count those votes.

Most of Bloomberg’s losses in Pennsylvania actually came through attrition. Most of those mayors opted not to run again. Some lost in their primary elections, and others in the general election last night.

Overwhelmingly, Bloomberg will claim success though. The reason? Most of his mayors won re-election with more than 90% of the vote! (Because they had no challengers.) But don’t you know, his lobbyist that he shares with Handgun Control, Inc. – Max Nacheman – will no doubt claim that it is an overwhelming mandate for more gun control in the Commonwealth.

Of course, Nacheman has also been claiming that he has tons of new mayors in Pennsylvania who signed up with Bloomberg just to spite NRA. Funny, those dozens he claimed to Monica Yant Kinney – a whooping one. And he’s from a Philly suburb. There’s a shocker. So Nacheman’s claims are, at best, dubious until he shows his hand.

There were less than a dozen contested races for MAIG mayors in Pennsylvania. Most were won by the incumbents because their challengers weren’t serious candidates based on returns. However, there were a few who were very close to being knocked out – by 4 or 5 points. To think, NRA’s Pennsylvania liaison wasn’t even involved in these local races and yet MAIG sent CeaseFire PA out to endorse in those close races. (That’s a reasonably safe assumption since Nacheman is also connected to them through his previous political work.) Can you imagine if NRA had stepped in to those towns? That could have been a fun game to play.

NRA doesn’t really play at this level of politics. So whether we like it or not, Bloomberg has a leg up on us at this point. He’s got a paid lobbyist that he shares with a national gun control group and who has a long relationship (and sway) with a state gun control group on the ground here. We rely on volunteers for most of these battles. This is a brand new challenge for us, and it will bite us in the ass in Harrisburg if we don’t cut it off right now. For the Pennsylvania readers, that means work to do over the next 2-4 years. It won’t be fun work. But on election night, it will feel damn good.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has the story here. Out of the 12 Mayors they have endorsed, 8 of them are members of Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and two of the races are currently MAIG towns. Any victories here will be touted as victories against NRA and against the “gun lobby” and will be used to boost CeaseFire PA’s credibility and political capital.

As I’ve said, MAIG isn’t a joke. They are probing for vulnerabilities. If they find we’re vulnerable at the local level, you can expect consistent challenges to preemption, and expect Mayors to use their own credibility to destroy your Second Amendment rights at the State and National level. We have to be as vigilant at the local level as we are at the state and national level.