More on Mayors Against Guns
Michael Silence addresses my concern that no press outlets have mentioned that, in two weeks, MAIG has lost 50 members. He says that the group is mentioned in small papers. I quickly perused the first few news links articles and I didn’t see one that mentioned that 50 members had dropped out. Granted, I could just be missing it. He also notes that the big papers don’t seem to like covering those of us in flyover country. Of course, the press also doesn’t highlight that quite a few mayors have reported being lied to; or reported that they did not, in fact, recall joining but their names show up as members; or that some mayors are upset that their names are affixed to policy positions made by the group.
Meanwhile, the group has removed its handy counter that tallies how many members they have.
September 21st, 2009 at 10:59 am
Actually, my observation was meant to be on the coverage in general. You certainly do make a good point about the specific story of members bailing. That would be a very good “trend story,” as we say in the trade.
September 21st, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Or an analysis by an intrepid New York Reporter (at a Bloomberg News marketplace competitor) – in an election year when the Mayor has been pretty profoundly criticized for single handedly getting the city’s Term Limit provisions temporarily removed for his benefit – on Bloomberg’s general veracity.
September 21st, 2009 at 1:17 pm
The NY Daily News did cover it briefly in their Weekend Wrap montage, 5th from the bottom:
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2009/09/weekend-wrap-59.html
MAIG still lists the Middletown, NY mayor I knocked out in last weeks primary as a partner.
September 21st, 2009 at 4:30 pm
MAIG membership list = NRA election hit list
Not only did Bloomie do us the favor of outing those with anti-gun rights sentiments, he gave us a concrete fact to pin on them – they joined his group.
Bloomie can sip champagne and brag about his big national group that he founded, but his members are going to be losing their heads come election time. The best that the NRA might have been able to do was to mail them questionnaires, but Bloomie suckered them right out into the open where their political careers can be ended by the batch on Election Day.
MAIG needs to become FMAIG – “F” as in “Former”. Then former Fort Wayne mayor, Paul Helmke, could join too!
September 22nd, 2009 at 9:47 am
Not only did Bloomie do us the favor of outing those with anti-gun rights sentiments, he gave us a concrete fact to pin on them – they joined his group.
That hasn’t been the case though. Several mayors have said they don’t ever remember doing anything with the organization, others have said they just agreed to receive emails to find out more to be polite and then were proclaimed members without their permission, and several have confirmed that once he added them to the list, he never once cleared anything with them.
I’m not saying that mayors who stand by him after being informed shouldn’t be ousted from office, but don’t presume that every mayor on the list is anti-gun.