*Bloomberg fondles a hated Black rifle* |
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The campaign that Mr. Bloomberg and his “gun team” came up with in the hours and days after Aurora involved carpet-bombing Washington with millions from the mayor’s immense fortune and a media blitz that would be deployed following the next massacre.
“He was so frustrated by the lack of conversation around this issue … that he decided to force the conversation himself,” Howard Wolfson, deputy mayor for government affairs and communications, told Politicker.
By 5 a.m., just a few hours after the shooting, Mr. Bloomberg was emailing members of his staff, preparing a media offensive... The moment had come—in fact, it had come and gone several times. The next time a tragedy like Aurora went down, he would be ready...Bloomberg’s first national initiative was called Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group he co-founded with Boston Mayor Tom Menino in 2006...the group grew from 15 mayors who attended the inaugural summit at Gracie Mansion to more than 900. They shared gun control strategies and launched a PR campaign that included two Super Bowl ads. Bloomberg’s anti-gun battle plan would be driven by data and paid for largely with the mayor’s vast personal fortune, allowing him to fuel the national conversation on gun control. Mr. Wolfson said this strategy “didn’t really crystallize until after Aurora” and stemmed from the mayor’s “real disappointment with the lack of focus...on this issue and the sense that the NRA had the field to itself.”...
With Mayors Against Illegal Guns functioning as the propaganda arm of Mr. Bloomberg’s anti-gun movement, its military arm is Independence USA PAC, a political action committee that the mayor created in October and tapped Mr. Wolfson to lead. The so-called super PAC is dedicated to electing politicians who support his gun control proposals—and defeating those who don’t.
Using approximately $10 million of the mayor’s money, the PAC saw three of the six candidates it backed in November House races go on to win; the impact of the mayor’s money on those races was hard to gauge...Staten Island Congressman Michael Grimm told us during a December conversation about Bloomberg’s stature in Washington. “This is a guy that by virtue—just by the virtue of his financial means, is a player whether you like it or not. I mean he is because he has the clout to be that.”...
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Full report HERE and HERE
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