Reader CTSheepdog writes:
In Connecticut yesterday, John McKinney, state Senate Minority Leader, lost his bid for the GOP candidacy to face Governor Dan Malloy in November. McKinney, one of the architects of Connecticut’s restrictive 2013 gun laws, was beaten by 11 percent by businessman Tom Foley. Tens of thousands of CT gun owners turned out in a low turnout primary to lift Foley to victory in all but one CT county . . .
McKinney, whose district includes Newtown, worked with the Democrat leadership to craft CT’s more restrictive ban on black rifles and standard capacity magazines of more than 10 rounds. Law-abiding gun owners have challenged McKinney since then, but the Leader has remained adamant in his views that the gun law will make citizens safer.
Foley, while not a gun owner himself and having to navigate the difficult Connecticut ideological landscape, has publicly supported citizens’ rights to bear arms. Most recently, Foley has pointed out the role defective mental health plays in rampage killings and has opined that the 2013 law will do little to nothing to prevent a future rampage.
The November election pitting Foley against Malloy will bring out both sides of the gun rights/control issue. Next month the major gun control advocacy groups will be holding a seminar on political activism and how the true believers can help support gun control supporting politicians in the coming election.
It is an uphill fight and gun control is not the top priority for a majority of CT voters. The weak economy, state-wide job losses, rising taxes, unfunded liabilities and other more mainstream concerns might be enough to unseat Malloy. However, in 2010, Foley lost to Malloy by less than 7,000 votes so a strong turnout by gun owners could represent a decisive margin in another close election.
One down, one to go.
Foley isn’t the ideal pro-gun candidate, but he’s light years ahead of that reprehensible thug Malloy.
When it comes to gun control, it’s either for or against.
If he doesn’t harass law abiding gun owners, and instead attempts to fix the other problems of connecticut, I would consider that a win.
It’s not like electing Foley will provide a path to the repeal of the 2013 law, but it might stop even worse ones, or a replacement law if the courts strike down the current law.
Guess the voters weren’t buying McKinney’s “Look, if I hadn’t worked with the D’s, the resulting law would have been worse” story…
He could handle it like Obama/Holder do for the US and Brown/Harris do for California: Refuse to enforce, or de-prioritize and de-fund enforcement of, the laws he doesn’t like.
The ideology of the Governor and the AG affect how the DESPP enforces laws. The recent rush of Risk Warrants in CT is the result of political pressure. A pro-gun Governor could change things immediately.
Don
keep ’em coming. Traitors will be punished
November is going to be fracking awesome! lol
Agreed. And, PLEASE, get out and vote anyway. Lets make this November the month we deliver a mandate. Big time.
I ALWAYS vote. It’s the first and most basic step to our liberty and freedoms.
I’ll give you an Amen on that. And I wasn’t suggesting that you get out to vote. It was a rhetorical suggestion to all of us.
That’s how gun owners can make a difference and that is in local elections.
It’s really common for low voter turn out all around the country. A few thousand extra pro gun people can make or break getting a pro-gun politician into office.
… and send a strong message as well.
Only a moron would confuse that Act for complying with the 2nd Amendment.
And only a narcissistic pos would think so highly of themselves, so as to believe we’d allow them to change that definition.
The only option we usually have for dealing with this kind of jerk is to primary them, that is unless you have pictures of them red handed, and even then, they have to be really damning pictures.
Good on them. Now only if we could do that to congress and th president.
We can; we just have to choose to do so.
The problem is, the whole you-get-the-government-you-deserve thing? That’s a collectively, not individually, applicable statement…
Has he rushed off to blame the NRA bogeyman yet?
No, he has not. Despite McKinney’s anti-gun stance, he is first and foremost since his first term, a budget hawk. Since Malloy has taken office, the state has gotten a billion dollars more in debt. Everyone from the fact checker at WaPo to ratings agencies have said that Malloy’s budget are nothing but accounting tricks.
McKinney has pledged his support for Foley with zero excuses. In his speech last night, he went through just how dire the state finances have become. While the CT media and Malloy have made gun control a campaign issue, it is a big smoke screen for the budget crises and debt the state has today.
The only way Malloy’s been able to keep companies from leaving is via tax and loan bribes. Just like Obama, Malloy has no clue how to run the state.
ahhh, no wonder he wants to run for president then !
No, that’s O’Malley. The other pompous incompetent jerk.
The irony is that he won the office based upon railing against the exact same accounting tricks that he is now using. Gotta love New England politics and politicians.
Pascal is correct to point out that McKinney has been quite classy as a loser. He HAS pledged his full support of Foley and the GOP ticket. I thought yesterday’s administration of McKinney’s ALS Ice Bucket challenge to Foley to be a good sign that they will get along.
http://www.nhregister.com/government-and-politics/20140813/watch-as-mckinney-douses-gop-primary-winner-foley-in-als-challenge
And Pascal is also correct that Malloy will make discussion of firearms more of an issue than it is in voters’ minds (based on polling). Foley has walked a fine line on gun rights and Malloy is going to do his best to trip up Foley as he walks that line in the inevitable debates.
Let’s remember, at the time of the Sandy Hook massacre, Malloy was actively courting Bushmaster to bring their manufacturing operations to Connecticut. This included inducements with tax money and tax relief. That effort was somewhat quietly dropped after 14Dec2012 but Foley should keep that on his list of retorts if Malloy pushes him on gun stance in some future debate.
Foley: “So Governor Malloy, were you being Kerry-esque when you were for Bushmaster’s assault rifles before you were against them?”
First Clarke, now this! Cheers!
Ahhh reap the whirlwind McKinney. Reap it!
Malloy is probably going to lose, even to Foley who is not a strong candidate.
Enough gun owners are pissed that if the election is close it will swing to Foley.
Remember dems are not usually single issue voters, gun control is but one issue for them. But their are a lot of pissed off single issue voters in CT; gun owners…
Here’s to hoping Foley beats Malloy, whether by an inch or a mile.
Foley’s stance on the gun laws:
“It would have looked a lot different if I were in office.”
When pressed on how it would look different, he had precisely NOTHING to say. Foley may not be an enemy of gun rights, but he’s definitely not a friend. Just because he’s not Malloy doesn’t make him better. That’s why I’m hoping for a third party candidate so at least I have someone to vote for.
STOP using the idiotic verbage “craft legislation/bill/etc” The preparation of legislation is more closely related (at best) to a bowel movement than anything else.
Norm Abrams might craft a piece of fine furniture. Or Tommy Silva a new house. The Founding Fathers did CRAFT a Constitution.
A bunch of damn lawyers and lobbyists in a smoke filled room are crafting anything.
I unfortunately predict Dan Malloy is going to win in November. The state leans democrat to begin with, and this year I would put money on getting some very big campaign boosts from Bloomberg and other Anti gun groups. The loss of politicians that supported their gun control agenda in Colorado might seem like a big deal to us but because its a swing state, democrats in blue states can justify writing it off in their minds as not a huge deal. To lose Connecticut, a blue state in which Newtown happened, based on their passage of more strict gun control however is a complacently different story. I suspect it would put an end of any serious gun control pushes except in the bluest of blue states, and even they maybe unusually cautious about it. It’s a race the anti’s know they can’t afford to lose, so they are going to be dumping a ton of money into it.
That was what we all thought after the massacres of 1994, and it held for a while, but ideologies combined with liberal (see what I did?) doses of lies eventually makes these loons think it was just a mistake, let’s try again.
Agreed, even if this were to kill off the gun control agenda for now it will be back in 10-20 years again. On the plus side that leaves us with some breathing room to focus more on growing are numbers which will make us hopefully much stronger the next time.
Agreed JSF01; Bloomberg and other likeminded anti-gun groups will ante up copious amounts of cash to keep control over and influence CT politics in favor of their anti-gun agenda for the reasons you state. Losing ground on that issue in CT would ‘constitute’ a huge failure for them.
Thank you for mentioning this. I want to point out that, as a CT Republican Party Primary voter, my vote against McKinney was entirely based on the fact that he supported SB1160, just in case the press happens to claim that it affected nobody’s vote.
Ya know, I thought 2012 would be our year, but it wasn’t. So we ended up with Obama for four more years!
2014 might just surprise all of us, if we aren’t careful and everybody get out and vote. Let’s all do our part!
ADC USN/Ret
Turnout for this GOP primary was abysmally low, but I believe that helped make gun owners’ votes more significant. Relative to the 2010 primary (when there were more seats on the line and greater awareness), this primary saw a 11% falloff in turnout and was even low by the normal 20-25% turnout rates for primaries.
But if 10,000 or more gun owners turned out (estimates are there may be up to 500,000 gun owners in CT), then in this low turnout election, we made a serious impact.
I would argue that the same will apply in November and that turnout will mean the difference at the margin. Our plan has to be to energize as many gun owners as we can to vote in November, particularly those who did not vote against Malloy in 2010. That means finding registered gun owning voters who did not vote in 2010 but are not motivated to vote against Malloy this cycle. It also means finding those gun owners who may have voted for Malloy in 2010 and persuading them to vote for Foley in this cycle.
Similar to real estate, in close elections it is TURNOUT TURNOUT TURNOUT.
Thanks for posting this RF.
I posted this at CTGunTalk yesterday:
2010 Primary
419,237 eligible GOP voters
124,754 votes cast
29.8% turnout
2014 Primary (based on 99% precincts reporting from yesterday)
436,500 eligible GOP voters (using Oct. 2013 data)
80,027 votes cast for Foley or McKinney
18.3% turnout
Sorry, thanks to Dan for posting and for Robert passing it to Dan.
Lets not forget that you cannot vote in a primary if you are not registered to a party. So I would not consider primary turnout as very accurate. I’m unaffiliated so I can’t vote in a primary but you can bet your ass I’ll be voting in November.
Matt – I too am unaffiliated and switch to GOP just to vote against McKinney. I am now back to unaffiliated once again.
Indeed; a strategy that I did not utilize myself but a good one.
I am not current with CT politics, but I sure hope the people responsible for their recent batch of draconian gun laws end up unemployed, homeless and living under a bridge while digging thru fast food dumpsters for food. I say that, because in a few year’s time, the rest of the middle class will be there too, and THAT”S when I get to seriously get to kick some butt with no reprocussions.
Gun laws passed in CT do not go away after the election. Even if those who constituted them do go away. And, more will follow, it I the current trend. In spite of their do no good at all. We already have 20,000 laws against guns, murder, mayhem, so what good will one more law do? Laws never stopped any crime. Witness drugs, drunks, gambling, prostitution, graft, corruption, those occur daily everywhere. Laws only make for easier prosecution of offenders. Crime spree killers usually self-sacrifice, no prosecution. Safer? hardy.
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