by If you are a gun control group running ads against pro-gun incumbents, why would you shy away from mentioning guns? Could it be that you know that gun control is not a winning issue given the massive number of new gun owners?
Mike Blomberg’s Everytown PAC is running negative ads in North Carolina and Iowa against Republican incumbent Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Joni Ernst (R-IA).
Here is an ad that is running in Iowa against Joni Ernst. Nary a word about guns is mentioned.
While they do have one ad running in North Carolina that barely mentions firearms, here is their primary ad against Tillis.
The Free Beacon ran an article written by Stephen Gutowski about this today. One of the people he interviewed for the article is Miles Coleman of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said Everytown’s attempt to appeal to issues beyond the Second Amendment could indicate that the group is not confident in gun control’s appeal in swing states.
“One reason Everytown brings up those other issues may be that the Democratic Senate candidates in Iowa and North Carolina will probably need some Trump voters to win,” Coleman told the Washington Free Beacon. “In both states, there were several Obama-to-Trump counties in rural areas. Hitting Republicans on gun control may not be enough to make them unacceptable to those voters.”
Given that it is obvious that Mike Bloomberg and his organization want to swing control of the US Senate from Republicans to Democrats, it would instructive to look at what the candidates who benefit from these ads think about gun control.
In Iowa, Democrat Theresa Greenfield had this on her website. It must not be an issue that she wants to publicize too much as it was somewhat hidden away. She lumped it under “public safety”.
In the Senate, Theresa will fight for legislation that keeps our kids and our communities safe. Whether it’s working to expand background checks, funding critical gun violence research, keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and other criminals, such as those on the No Fly list, she will bring people together to find commonsense solutions to ensure we address gun violence.
In North Carolina, Cal Cunningham, who you know won the Bronze Star, no V for Valor for his JAG work in Iraq, is a bit more obvious about it. He also touts that Everytown and Giffords have endorsed him.
Cal believes there are commonsense steps we can take to protect our communities from gun violence while protecting the rights of law-abiding citizens. Cal will work to keep our kids safe and to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, criminals, and terrorists by supporting efforts to expand background checks, ban the sale of high-capacity magazines, pass extreme risk laws, and fund gun violence research on an issue that has become a public health crisis.
To be perfectly blunt, there is nothing moderate about their stances on gun control and that is exactly what Everytown wants to obfuscate in their advertising.