New York Governor Kathy Hochul easily won her reelection bid. Hochul is one of those disgusting politicians who said all the right things when she was representing a pro-gun district, then jumped on the anti-gun bandwagon as soon as she sought statewide office. She had to appeal to NYC voters somehow, right?
Now that she's held onto her seat, there are likely to be some questions about what this all means.
Over at Ammoland, my friend Dan Wos, a New York resident, offered his thoughts on what Hochul's reelection means. Most of it isn't surprising. Expect four more years of gun control, as well as a renewed assault on things like body armor and anything else that might be of interest to the gun community. Basically, more of what we've already seen from her.
However, what was interesting to me was Dan's take on what future opponents should do.
Some will say gun owners simply lost an election. I think the lesson runs deeper than that. Bruce Blakeman probably would have been an improvement over Hochul. That’s not a high bar. But throughout this race, he never made clear where he actually stood on guns. Early on, I asked him directly to be specific about his position on the Second Amendment. I didn’t get a straight answer. During the Republican primary, critics within his own party called him soft on gun rights, pointing to his support for background checks and social media reviews for license applicants, the same kind of hoops Hochul built into the CCIA.
Then, about a week before Election Day, Blakeman suddenly came courting gun owners. He has said himself that a million New York gun owners sat out the last governor’s race. He’s right that our votes matter. But you don’t earn a voting bloc’s trust in the final week. You earn it on day one.
That’s the message for every candidate who wants our support. Gun owners are not a box to check in the closing days of a campaign. We pay attention, and we remember who answered our questions and who ducked them. Be specific. Be early. Be consistent. Anything less creates doubt.
At first, I was thinking that Dan might be off on this, but no, he's not.
The truth of the matter is that anti-gun voters aren't going to vote for a Republican anyway. Guns aren't their driving issue, much of the time, and they will generally go to the Democrat because of not just gun control but all of the other issues that Democrats tend to favor.
There's literally no upside to playing nice and trying to woo anti-gun voters or even to just stay out of their sights.
But failure to acknowledge gun rights and to actively seek those votes, especially knowing a million votes could just be sitting there, isn't exactly a wise strategy. All you do is alienate those voters who are already disenchanted with turning out to the polls because they don't see their people winning anyway.
Of course, if there were a million votes out there, and all of them had voted for Blakeman, he still would have lost by a couple hundred thousand votes, but it would have been a much better turnout for him and possibly have swayed some races down the ticket. If any of those had voted for Kathy Hochul because they liked the other policies but not where the governor stands on guns, but didn't see Blakeman as a champion for their rights, that might have changed the outcome.
Or it might not have, because I don't see true gun rights advocates voting Democrat only because the Republican in the race is, at best, lukewarm on gun rights.