Nanny Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns is quietly losing membership, according to a report on Buzzfeed.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group Mayors Against Illegal Guns is finding it hard to keep its membership up, thanks to dozens of resignations and lost elections over the last few months.
Worse for Bloomberg, who has become one of the faces of the gun control movement: the people replacing his lost comrades aren’t particularly eager to sign up with the organization, a rare group battling in the trenches against the well-organized and deep-pocketed National Rifle Association. Some appear not quite to have signed on for that level of political heat.
“The original focus, I thought, was going to be on focusing on better on enforcement of our existing laws, and if anything, we have talked about not getting involved with things like banning assault weapons and banning magazine clips,” said Rockford, Il. Mayor Lawrence Morrissey, who left the group in June because, he said at a town hall meeting, the group had veered from what he originally thought it was about.
Bloomberg’s group has come under fire recently for naming murder suspects, including Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in its list of victims of gun violence and for hosting its website on New York City government servers.
Membership in Mayors Against Illegal Guns ends up threatening to become a career-limiting move for ambitious mayors. Many Democrat mayors undoubtedly watched with angst in 2010, when former Houston Mayor Bill White’s membership in the group became a 16-ton albatross around his neck as he ran for governor of Texas. That membership helped identify White as a liberal Democrat who was out-of-touch with Texas values, so much so that he aligned himself with the totalitarian Bloomberg. Gov. Rick Perry clobbered White, who was seen as the Democrats’ best hope to win the governorship since Ann Richards.
Apparently not all Democrats see the downside of sidling up to Bloomberg, or they do, but quietly align with him anyway. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin ran for the Senate as so pro-gun he would literally shoot bad laws. But the lure of Bloomberg’s campaign money seems to be turning Manchin’s head.
WASHINGTON – Mayor Bloomberg, who has spent millions of dollars to attack opponents of gun control, will raise hundreds of thousands this month for an advocate of tougher gun laws.
Bloomberg will host a July 22 fundraiser at his upper East Side home for Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), sources said. Tickets for the event start at $1,000.
Sen. Manchin is happy to take Bloomberg’s money but doesn’t seem to be proud to be seen with the New York mayor in public. West Virginia’s Register-Herald tried to get confirmation of the Bloomberg fundraiser from Manchin’s office for nearly a week, but got a runaround instead. Manchin will just quietly cash a fat check from Bloomberg’s fundraiser later today.
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