“We fully expect to win a pro-gun Senate in this cycle,” said NRA President Jim Porter.
February 3rd, 2014
Washington Examiner | Paul Bedard
Image: NRA
Expecting former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to “double down” on his nationwide anti-gun efforts in the 2014 elections, an invigorated National Rifle Association is planning a massive ground game to win Republican control of the Senate, according to officials.
Here to open the NRA’s new Great American Outdoor Show, the nation’s largest of its kind, top officials from the group described winning the Senate a do-or-die goal this year, especially because of the possibility that President Obama could get another chance to appoint a new, liberal Supreme Court justice.
“We fully expect to win a pro-gun Senate in this cycle,” said NRA President Jim Porter. “It is vital certainly to our issues, but it is vital to the well-being of this country,” he told Secrets.
David Keene, former NRA president, added the group is expanding its effort to tell supporters how critical the election is, though he added that most gun-rights supporters already believe that Democrats and the president are unfriendly.
Acknowledging that the president muddied the gun issue in the 2012 election, Keene said, “now they know and gun owners are like other people: Once fooled, the second time it doesn’t work. So they know what the opposition is, they know how close it is in the Senate, they know that the Supreme Court could be at stake in the next few years.”
Keene added that in past elections where the NRA has weighed in, the group has make a difference of about 3 percent of the vote, enough in close elections to win. “This year it might be more than that and in today’s world that’s everything,” he said, adding that the NRA is preparing a massive ground game to educate and invigorate supporters, as high as 50 million according to some reports.