Michael Bloomberg can’t win over public opinion for his gun control views based on merit or logic, and so he’s going to spend millions of dollars of his own money to buy ads in an effort to “buy” the Virginia state senate and turn back the clock on gun rights in the Commonwealth.
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s gun control advocacy group is pouring $2.2 million into TV ads backing two Virginia candidates for state Senate, in a bid to wrest control of the chamber from Republicans.
A victory on Tuesday by one of the Democrats backed by Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety would switch control of the 40-seat Senate in the state, home of the powerful National Rifle Association gun lobby.
That could be a big boost for Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe, a gun control advocate who is seeking legislative victories as he heads presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s election effort in Virginia.
“Guns are always a hot-button issue in Virginia,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a political analyst at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. “It’s a wise investment to put money in a campaign that matters.”
The Virginia races are an Everytown national focus in the off-year election. The issue of gun control has gained a higher profile nationally after a spate of mass shootings, and President Barack Obama has called gun deaths a “political choice.”
Everytown has bought $1.5 million in TV ads to back Jeremy McPike, an Alexandria city administrator, in his campaign against Republican Hal Parrish, a mayor in Washington’s suburbs.
The advocacy group founded by Bloomberg, a media tycoon and former New York mayor, also is pouring $700,000 into ads for Dan Gecker, who faces Republican lawyer Glen Sturtevant in a Richmond-area district. Both races are for seats from which incumbents are retiring.
The advertisements feature Andy Parker, the father of Alison Parker, a Roanoke, Virginia, television reporter slain in an August on-air shooting along with her cameraman.
Bloomberg’s ads feature the same Andy Parker who has Facebook-stalked and threatened another Virginia state senator, William Stanley, after Parker’s daughter was killed by racist gay black prostitute/failed reporter and supporter of President Barack Obama.
The National Rifle Association has spent just $110,000 on these same two races, which undermines the preferred left-wing narrative that the NRA’s money influences legislators (the NRA’s actual power is in turning out voters).
Bloomberg hopes that if he is able to capture these seats that he will give Virginia’s carpetbagger governor and Clinton crony Terry McAuliffe legislative support to push his radical anti-gun agenda in the state senate.
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